The Aryan paragraph was a policy sought by the Nazis to futher eliminate all trace of jewish influence upon the life of the Folkish state. It sought to create a kind of “Separate but equal, though not really” policy with all christian jews prohibited from pastoring to german folks. It was believed that the racial order was the will of God and must be preserved, but what it really was was the efforts of some to bring the church in line with the State stand on the status of the jew. If the church continued to avoid the State’s perspective, that there was no possibility for assimilation and that the jew could not be a german and was a threat to everything German, the Church, though staying true to it’s highest ideals, set itself against the State.
Now, most americans I know don’t know much about history. I have heard some poeple talk, here, about how Christians are being “persecuted”. I want to present a historical case where that was actually the case. The Young Movement of the Reformation was a valiant group, among others, that decided to battle the wishes of the Fuhrer. Here is part of their response to the question of the Aryan paragraph:
“b. The church, when it excludes the Jewish Christians, establishes by law a condition precedent to belonging to the Christian congregation, namely the law of race. At the entrance of the Church of Christ in Germany, consequently, there stands the question: Are thou Aryan? Only when a man has fulfilled this law can I go with him to the church, pray, hear the Gospel and take the Lord’s Supper by his side. Through the setting up of this racial law at the entrance of the church community, however, the German Church does exactly that which the Jewish Christian Church did before it and against Paul. It demanded jewish nature before membership in the church community became possible”
I want to comment here that the requirements set for Paul’s converts was not to alter their nature, to become racial jews. It was to adopt to jewish ways, their Law, including, at the very extreme of zealot opinion, circumscicion. The situation for the german jew was far more dire as they had no agenda that they might meet and be accepted. They were pronounced guests based on blood. But though the situation has different particulars the general idea was still similar in that something else was needed. Faith was not enough and some other requirement was posited by the judaizers. But there was more to be said…
“The German Christians say:
The church is not permitted to dissolved the order of God or to slight it. Race is such an order; therefore the Church must be racially determined.
We answer:
The given order of race is misunderstood…In the church, Jew remains Jew, Gentile Gentile, man man, capiltalist capitalist, etc, etc. But the call of God summons and collects them all into one people, to the people of God, to the Church, to which they all belong in the same manner and equally with one another.[…] The people of God is an order over all others. Who is my mother and who are my brethren? He who does the will of my Father in Heaven, he is my brother, sister, and mother.”
I read this and I was amazed at the moral honesty but also appalled that German christians could be so duped! That they could forget such a basic passage in the New Testament, where Jesus clearly repealled blood-relations as immaterial. But this is another subject about the fulfillemnt of Nietzsche’s words that God is dead…