Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.” Mark 13:5-6.
In my previous post, I introduced the core concepts of fascism and introduced Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the only German Christians to oppose Nazism both intellectually and in practice. (If you have not yet read Part I, click here) In Part II, we will explore the various groups of Christians who are deceived by the ideals of fascism. In Ethics, Bonhoeffer describes three general categories of those who fall under fascism’s sway.
1. Centrist Christians
As fascism rises many Christians choose the path of “moderation”, as if by simply being a bit “nicer,” society could be magically healed. I label these people “Centrist Christians.” In our day, people like this often say we just need more “civility,” or simply need a balance between the two extremes. While of course there can be wisdom in moderation, there is something grossly inappropriate in imagining that simply “being nice” is a universal solution when there are irreconcilable divisions and injustices in society. Some things are good, and some things are bad–and to pretend that any solution is to be found somewhere between those two sides is to ultimately choose the side of whichever group has more power. Bonhoeffer writes:
“The failure of ‘reasonable’ people is appalling; they cannot manage to see either the abyss of evil or the abyss of holiness. With the best intentions they believe that, with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joins. In their defective vision they want to be fair to both sides, and so they are crushed between the colliding forces without having accomplished anything at all. Bitterly disappointed that the world is so unreasonable, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness. They withdraw in resignation or fall helpless captive to the stronger party.” -Ethics, 78
In his final sentence, Bonhoeffer prefigures the other two groups who fall into fascism’s sway: the Cloistered Christians who withdraw, and the Fascist Christians who fall captive to the stronger party.
2. Cloistered Christians
Other people choose to withdraw from the fight against fascism, and instead focus on their own personal holiness. Such a response to fascism may be called “The Benedict Option,” a term popularized by Rod Dreher who argues that Christians should give up hope of making a public impact in America, and instead retreat to their own private spheres in society, education, and politics. While there is a certain logic in withdrawing from the empire, in so doing these people are ceding the battleground and refusing to faithfully partake in “responsible action”, which is a key phrase for Bonhoeffer and one that I will expand upon later in this series. Bonhoeffer writes:
“Such people [who withdraw from society] neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But in voluntarily renouncing public life, these people know exactly how to observe the permitted boundaries that shield them from conflict. They must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world.” – Ethics, 80
In fact, Bonhoeffer is quite clear that there is no such thing as actually withdrawing from society in such a way as to keep one’s hands clean. Ultimately, you are either complicit with evil, or you are hard at work fighting it. Later in Ethics, he addresses the idea of “communal guilt,” and points out that in a society there is no such thing as a wholly individual action: every action, good or evil, has an effect on others around them (which is why corporate confession and repentance is so important for Christians to practice). Bonhoeffer writes:
“The quite personal sin of each individual is acknowledged here as a source of poison for the community. Even the most secret sin of the individual soils and destroys the body of Christ. Murder, envy, strife, war…I cannot pacify myself by saying that my part in all these is slight and hardly noticeable. There is no calculating here….I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have spoken, I am guilty of untruthfulness and hypocrisy in the fact of threatening violence; I am guilty of disowning without mercy the poorest of my neighbors; I am guilty of disloyalty and falling away from Christ…these many individuals are joined together in the collective “I” of the church. The church confesses and acknowledges its guilt in and through them…the church was mute when it should have cried out, because the blood of the innocent cried out to heaven…The church confesses that it has misused the name of Christ by being ashamed of it before the world and by not resisting strongly enough the misuse of that name for evil ends. The church has looked on while injustice and violence have been done, under the cover of the name of Christ. Ethics, 136-8
If you can sense the heartbreak Bonhoeffer has in this passage, it’s because he knows he’s fallen short himself in the past. In 1939, a few years before he wrote this section in Ethics, Bonhoeffer had a chance to flee and return to the United States, where he had studied previously. But almost immediately upon arriving he realized that he had made a mistake and quickly returned to Germany. He wrote to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:
“I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people … Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive. or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make that choice from security.”[31]
Upon returning to Germany, Bonhoeffer became even more radically involved in the antifascist movement, and would be arrested within four years. But there is one more group of Christians we must talk about.
3. Fascist Christians
In Bonhoeffer’s day, similar to our own, a majority Christians become totally enamored with their fascist leaders and the basic tenets of fascism (listed in my previous blog). To these Fascist Christians, truth doesn’t matter; all that matters is that the “Christian leader” is successful, that he is a “winner” while everyone else is a “loser”. In fascism the ideals of strength, virility, masculinity, and violence are elevated; while Jesus’ ideals of bearing one’s cross, enduring suffering, and identifying with the least members of society are denigrated as weak, liberal, and effeminate. Bonhoeffer writes:
“Where the figure of a successful person becomes especially prominent, the majority fall into idolizing success. They become blind to right and wrong, truth and lie, decency and malice. They see only the deed, the success. Ethical and intellectual capacity for judgment grow dull before the sheen of success and before the desire somehow to share in it. People even fail to perceive that guilt is scarred over in success, because guilt is no longer recognized as such. Success per se is the good. This attitude is only genuine and excusable while one is intoxicated by events. After sobriety returns it can be maintained only at the cost of deep inner hypocrisy, with conscious self-deception. This leads to an inner depravity, from which recovery is difficult.” Ethics, 89
It is perhaps too easy to pick out evangelical Christians in our day who have fallen under the sway of this type of mentality. Some, like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Mark Driscoll, come to mind as those who actually got caught so publicly exposed by their sin that they were forced to resign from their positions. But there are so many others who believe that winning at any cost is more important than actually maintaining their character and witness. [And even those who are temporarily forced out are almost guaranteed to return to the limelight one day—after all, failed End Time predictions and sexual sins haven’t kept Jim Bakker, Paula White, Jonathan Cahn, Kenneth Copeland, and other unrepentant leaders from returning to the limelight, so why would some consensual cuckolding and emotional abuse permanently keep Falwell and Driscoll from returning to public ministry?]. I could go on and on about how this type of success-oriented, hyper-masculine corruption of Christianity is completely contrary to Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, but hopefully that fact is obvious enough to even the casual reader of the Bible.
I doubt even Bonhoeffer fully knew quite how deadly this type of Christian Fascism would ultimately become in his own country. But he knew enough to know that it was opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and thus must be opposed by Christians at every level possible. I invite you to continue to join me as we further explore Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s antifascist theology.