Christ and Country

                          Putin's Fascist Beliefs: Wars of aggression far too often occur when dangerous despots have absolute power in nations where Christian nationalism and Fascism coexist. Hitler’s Germany and Putin’s Russia have similar patterns. Those of us who were alive during World War II are horrified to observe these patterns being repeated. Seeing the swastika next to the Russian Z causes me heartburn.             In 1933 Hitler encouraged all regional German churches, including Roman Catholics, to became one national German church. He’d tried one coup to take over the German democratic government. On the second try he succeeded. He then appointed a Nazi party member, Ludwig Muller, as bishop. With Hitler’s charismatic leadership style, German Christians were caught up in their Heil Hitlers and repeating the phrase, “One Nation! One God! One Reich! One ...

  Christian Nationalism and Dominionism:     In my previous post I described the Russian Christian Nationalism that exists in Putin’s regime and the Russian Orthodox patriarchy, leading to Putin’s war to take over Ukraine, and a form of American Christian Nationalism called Dominionism. This post will, I hope, help to clarify these two terms.   Christ Nationalism has been evident throughout the history of Christianity, beginning when the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. As Richard Niebuhr wrote in his book Christ and Culture (1951), Christians can challenge the culture in which they live, accommodate to the culture, or practice their faith separate from the culture. Niebuhr makes no ethical distinction between these positions but surmises a kind of dualism that can result. Dualism can be good or bad, depending upon the human frailties of those involved. Throughout two-thousand years of Christian history there ha...

                                Unholy Christian Alliances:                                                                               The golden spires of the Church of Our Savior, one of the cherished Russian churches demolished by the Soviets, once again has risen proudly above the Moscow skyline. On my peacemaking trip to the Russian Republic in 1989 I visited a 1000-year memorial to the birth of the Russian Orthodox Church celebrated the year before. Three years later atheistic Communism collapsed. The Russian people, with prayers of Babushkas (Russian grandmothers) and secret baptisms of infants, had kept the historic faith of their fathers and mothers. The...