Meph:However, I'm really bent on Martin Luther. Yeah, the 95 theses guy. If you are a Lutheran who really 1) bigs up Martin Luther and 2) believes in the centrality of love...how do you deal with this?

Post Edited (AtTheWell) : 5/5/2005 2:49:10 PM (GMT-5)

Laika said...

You know how hard it is to derail trains? 

The Divine Love Train

Post Edited (sparknheart) : 5/5/2005 10:27:14 PM (GMT-5)

Hey Meph,

Thanks for the great links.  I appreciate your digging up some very interesting stuff.  

But, I’m not sure what you’re thinking.  You expose some of the world’s most evil acts in history and then nonchalantly throw out a reference to God, as if he played some part in this evil, without expecting some feed back.  Come on. 

Post Edited (sparknheart) : 5/5/2005 10:11:06 PM (GMT-5)

Hey Meph,

I’m glad you started this thread about the Holocaust.  I find the whole situation very interesting and I’d like to discuss some of the things I learned as well about it…

about Luther…

Have you seen the movie/documentary “Bonhoeffer”?  (I rented it from Blockbuster, one of our local video stores.  Perhaps you may be interested in looking into that?).  Very interesting documentary.  There was a part in it that talked about Luther and his “role” in the Holocaust.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but from what I can recollect, there was a German theologian that discussed Luther in it and made some kind of distinction between “anti-semitism” and “anti-Jewism or anti-Judaism” (I think that’s what it was called… again, it’s been a while). Hitler practiced the “anti-semitism” which was geared towards extermination of the people.  The theologian in the video proposed that Luther was actually “anti-Jewist” or some term related like that.  Luther strived and strived to convert the Jews to Christianity to no avail and toward the end of his life became very frustrated.  (Again from what I remember…) He wanted to get rid of the “religion” because there was something stopping them from converting, but he didn’t intend for this to turn into a racial thing (“anti-Semitism) where people would be killed for being genetically related to Jews.  What’s your take?

about the “already present prejudice” against the Jews…

Yes, I found out from one of my German history courses that there was already a strong prejudicial bent against the Jews.  From what I understand, there was a sort of “love-hate” thing going on between Christiandom (pre-1800’s or 1700’s Europe) and the Jews due to economics.  One of the books we had to read for the course was A Concise History of Germany by Mary Fulbrook.  Here’s one interesting quote:

“The place of Jews was also changing in eighteenth-century Germany.  Since the middle ages Jews, who had no religious prohibition on the usury, had acted as commercial middle-men and providers of credit.  They had been concentrated in a restricted number of ghettoes, the largest being in Frankfurt.  With their distinctive styles of dress and appearance, their different religious beliefs and practices, as well as their unique and easily disliked economic role, Jews had long been a target for vicious anti-semitism. … (Next bit talks about rising myths about Jews stemming from 1476.  If you want to know about it, let me know.) …Many Jewish families became prominent in both productive enterprises and banking.” pp.88-89

On mediaeval “Germany” (the concept of a “nation” didn’t form until much later):

“There was also an increase in trade and in craft production.  Increased trade meant an increased importance of money, and a heightened prominence of Jews as money-lenders (since they had no religious prohibition on usury).  Jews tended to live in separate quarters, the first recorded instance of a walled ghetto being Speyer in 1084.” p. 20

Other info: p. 89:

pre-1781:  Jews had to wear yellow arm-bands in at least Vienna.

1781 Joseph II gave an Edict of Toleration that “gave most non-Catholics the right of private exercise of religion.”

1811-1812 they (Jews) were finally granted legal equality with the other Europeans. 

I found these historical elements very, well, enlightening.  There was already a fair amount of prejudice going on even way before Luther’s time.

I would also like to discuss the Deutsche Christen, the Bekennenden Kirche (The “Confessing Church”) (see http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/C/ConfessiC1h.asp for a brief overview) and the Oxford Group Movement (in the early 1900's led by Frank Buchman) as well.  I read a lot of Barth’s letters to Brunner and did some research about this as well.  I think this is something the Christian church as a whole should NEVER forget… unfortunately many have.  Many people don’t know about this black-mark against the Christian church and the battle that raged on within the church during this time.  Let me know what you think about this… (if nobody’s interested, that’s fine too.  I just find this very interesting.)

Post Edited (Violin for God) : 5/9/2005 1:11:36 AM (GMT-5)