British Christians and the Third Reich: Church, State, and the Judgement of Nations. By Andrew Chandler

Abstract

In contrast to much existing historiography, which tends to emphasize Christian complicity or indifference to fascism, Andrew Chandler’s fascinating new monograph argues that British Christians pursued “a succession of initiatives which sought to protest against a … dangerous dictatorship and demonstrate sympathy for its victims” (pp. 51–52). We are introduced early on to the Anglican Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, the book’s main protagonist, due to his affiliation with Germany’s oppositional Confessing Church. Other important figures include Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Manchester (later Canterbury), William Temple, and the relatively sympathetic (to Nazism) Bishop of Gloucester, Arthur Headlam. The “political” pastors on the German side include ardent Nazis, such as the Reich Bishop Lüdwig Müller, whose German Church sought to eliminate all “Jewish” elements from Protestant theology; and non-conformists, such as the conservative Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, and more liberal Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth, whose June 1934 Barmen Declaration, which Niemöller and Bishop Bell also signed, became the founding document of the Confessing Church in its defense of traditional Protestant theology.