"It is becoming increasingly clear to me that what we're going to get is a big, popular, national church whose nature cannot any longer be reconciled with Christianity and that we must be prepared to enter upon entirely new paths which we will have to tread. The question really is: Germanism or Christianity? The sooner the conflict comes out into the open, the better. Nothing is more dangerous than concealing this."
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letter to his grandmother on August 20, 1933. (Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition, p. 302)
To me this is the most significant word of comparison between America now and Germany in 1933. Our question today is Americanism or Christianity? Bonhoeffer saw and maintained a clear difference. For America it's a lot more ambiguous as we do not have one officially recognized national church. Evangelicalism is being dubbed the national religion by the press by virtue of its' size and political prowess, and of course because of its seeming overwhelming affinity toward the Bush Administration.
In order to ask "Americanism or Christianity?" we have to move beyond the Bush Administration. We have to see it for what it is but not make the current Administration the line of demarcation. Even so, like Karl Barth after WWI, we have to wake up. Our government represents certain interests in the world that are diametrically opposed to Christian faith. And yet every President has to some degree represented himself (yes always a him!) as a man of Christian faith (usually Protestant, once a Catholic).
This little rant is inspired in part by my viewing the film "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" last night.:)
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