Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, SATURDAY, NOV, 3. 1934 CROSS AND SWASTIKA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18545, 3 November 1934, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, SATURDAY, NOV, 3. 1934 CROSS AND SWASTIKA

The news from Berlin this week is quite the most interesting tlmt has come from that country for some little time for it marks not only a triumph of the cause of religious freedom in the land in which the Reformation of Luther was born, but signifies also that the Nazi dictator has at last found his limitations and has been compelled to subject; himself to the force of public, opinion. Hitler now l..(dare 3 himself to be neutral in the church crisis. It is a great climb down for the Fuhrer (Leader), as lie professed himself to be, whose dramatic ranting had inspired the idea of a Nordic Church, in which only derma ms of true Aryan strain could hope to find immortality, and whose myrmidons had been appointed bishops of tliis church. It is only a few weeks ago that Reichblshop Muller, Hitler’s friend and spiritual adviser, was installed Primate of the German Evangelical Church at the Dorn cathedral In Berlin. The cathedral was filled with clergy, State and party officials in uniform. The Minister for the Interior was received with the Nazi salute. - Aren dn S.A. uniform and civilian “German Christians,” bearing flags of their movement, stood on each side of the altar. The flags displayed the national colors, a cross with a swastika in the middle. The ceremony was watched with tenseness by those in the congregation who knew something of the real situation. There were many of the bishops and clergy absent. Recognition of the Primate was even informally incomplete. Elsewhere in the city the churches were full. People stood outside in the rain joining in the hymns, the favorite of which was Luther’s Reformation hymn, “Ein’foste Burg.” In these churches declarations were read from the pulpits dissenting from the supplanting of the Christian faith by “a hybrid Nordic-Ohristian religion, protesting against the removal of the legal heads of churches and bishops from their offices and the mermen depriving parishes of their rights, The declaration called upon pastors and congregations to tight for freedom, and it has evidently met with such response that Hitler has been compelled to lake notice, and like the droit politician that he is, ho has recognised tho futility of dictatorship against an aroused public conscience. As a consequence Reichbishop Muller, we are told, is taking a long holiday, and the Storm Troops have been told that they must cease interfering in church affairs. Religious liberty once more wins in Germany, a.s it will yet .Jo in Russia and other countries in which, it has been suppressed. What has upheld the opposition of the Evangelical Church in the face of formidable discouragements is a conviction that certain doctrines of the “German Christians” and the outlook of influential leaders of the Nazi movement are not in keeping with the fundamental principles of the Evan-

gelieal, or indeed of any Christian Church. Despite ambiguous denials, orthodox churchmen were forced to the firm conviction that certain “Nordic” conceptions in. the philosophy of Rosenberg, the author of “Mythology of the 20th Century,” which incidentally tho Pope has placed on tlie Index, were being subtly but steadily imposed. Tho real cause of early clashes was the tendency of certain “German Christian” pastors, one of whom was appointed a bishop, 1o place Herr Hitler before anything in their church, even to the extent of condoning the. notorious political murder of Potema in 1032, the perpetrators of which had received his outspoken support. Many German Protestants, states the Times correspondent, felt unable to accept the appointment of men with such an. outlook to offices of spiritual authority in the Christian church, seeing that their utter-, anccs pointed to the acceptance of Aryan race claims as ranking with the Holy .Scripture as a second source of revelation, and very nearly, at nnvrate, of Hevr Hitler as a sort of second Messiah. They even advanced the Nordic conception of the “heroic Christ,” contrasted’with the Oriental “submissive Christ,” and the rejection of the doctrine of sin and atonement ns unmanly and therefore unGerman. Dr. Krause and other clergy who protested against those heresies had to go- —some to imprisonment—but there remained many to oppose the imposition of the Nazi Weltan,schilling, or outlook on life, on the religious communities, and they have received strong., backing from the people. Hitler himself in his references to “the National Church” and to the building up of a new “Ivultur —anchored in the people’s blood” had given the impression that he was behind the Nordic Church movement, which was designed, it was proclaimed, not only to eliminate differences between Protestants and Catholics, but to complete the process and effect unity. The right, of persons or groups in Germany to promote a return to Nordic or Germanic customs or beliefs, or even to endeavor to build up a new German religion distinct from Christianity, has never been challenged, but what has been opposed, happily with success, is the attempt by coercion to graft Germanic ideas on the existing Christian growths, producing a. church that would be neither one thing nor the other. The “German Christians,” with their 1 coarse Nazi philosophy, looked upon violence and breaches of the, law as legitimate means of bringing about external unity, whilst the pastors held this'to be in direct, conflict with the teachings of the. Gospel. There, will be much satisfaction to all lovers of religious liberty that at the latest turn of events the true spirit of Christianity has prevailed over arrogant Nazi-ism.