“The Bearers of Unholy Potential”: Confessing Church Sermons on the Jews and Judaism

William Skiles

doi:10.6017/scjr.v11i1.9498

Abstract

This article examines the nature and frequency of comments about Jews and Judaism in sermons delivered by Confessing Church pastors in the Nazi dictatorship. The approach of most historians has focused on the history of antisemitism in the German Protestant tradition—in the works, pronouncements, and policies of the German churches and its leading figures. Yet historians have left unexamined the most elemental task of the pastor—that is, preaching from the pulpit to the German people. What would the average German congregant have heard from his pastor about the Jews and Judaism on any given Sunday? I searched German archives, libraries, and used book stores, and analyzed 910 sermon manuscripts that were produced and disseminated in the Nazi regime. I argue that these sermons provide mixed messages about Jews and Judaism. While on the one hand, the sermons express admiration for Judaism as a foundation for Christianity, an insistence on the usage of the Hebrew Bible in the German churches, and the conviction that the Jews are spiritual cousins of Christians. On the other hand, the sermons express religious prejudice in the form of anti-Judaic tropes that corroborated the Nazi ideology that portrayed Jews and Judaism as inferior: for instance, that Judaism is an antiquated religion of works rather than grace; that the Jews killed Christ and have been punished throughout history as a consequence. Furthermore, I demonstrate that Confessing Church pastors commonly expressed anti-Judaic statements in the process of criticizing the Nazi regime, its leadership, and its policies.

Highlights

The German Protestant churches fractured along theological fault lines when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime came to power in January 1933
Confessing Church pastors responded to these assertions by looking to the Christian scriptures: Christ is the only savior; the gospel is a universal message, for all people regardless of race or ethnicity; Christians and Jews are spiritual cousins, who share values, traditions, and sacred texts; and Judaism and its scripture are the foundation of Christianity and cannot be excised from the German churches
Regardless of the pervasive anti-Jewish prejudice in the German churches, a nuanced picture emerges if we examine the sermons of the Confessing Church, a vastly underutilized source base

Summary

Confessing Church Expressions of Anti-Judaism

After analyzing 910 sermons of the Confessing Church, I found that forty contain messages that express prejudice against the Jewish people or Judaism, voiced by fifteen of the ninety-five Confessing Church pastors examined for this study.[19]. Confessing Church pastors would take common anti-Judaic perceptions of Jews as a wayward people obsessed with race, and use them to criticize Nazis and National Socialism for similar “sins.” Consider an example from Pastor Karl von Schwartz from Braunschweig, who published a sermon late in 1933, but possibly preached earlier, in which he argued that, “The whole history of Israel from Sinai to the Pharisees is a history of waywardness. If today this people had all the gold in the world and all the power in the world, the waywardness will remain: it should be a light to lighten the Gentiles. This research supports the assertion that the primary concern of pastors in relation to the Jewish people was “right belief” and conversion, not their material condition as a people group targeted by the Nazi regime for exclusion from German public life.[70]

Voices of Support for Jews and Judaism from the Pulpit

Findings

Conclusions