Faith Matters: Angst-driven landslide in Germany

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

“Angst is a bad counselor,” a German axiom says. Angst has just caused a landslide in the most prosperous state of Europe’s richest nation. Angst fed by the nuclear disaster 5,900 miles away in Japan has ended the Christian Democrats’ 58-year rule in Baden-Württemberg, home of industrial giants such as Daimler-Benz, the Robert Bosch GmbH and Porsche.

On Sunday, Angst in this most conservative region of Germany swept the environmentalist Green Party to power, a movement agitating for a speedy shutdown of Germany’s nuclear reactors. Winfried Kretschmann, a high school teacher, will be this state’s first Green premier after his party won 24.2 percent of the votes in state elections. He will govern together with the Social Democrats (SPD), who received 23 percent, in Stuttgart, the state capital.

The Christian Democrats dropped from 44.2 percent four years ago to 39 percent, but will still be the largest group in the Landtag, or state assembly. But as their traditional allies, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), only managed to garner 5.1 percent, they could not continue their coalition.

This party, which once gave West Germany Theodor Heuss, its revered first president after World War II, is currently led on the national level by foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, the driving force behind Germany’s troubling decision to break rank with its NATO allies, notably France, the United States and Britain, as their air forces established a no-flying zone over Libya. Even liberal commentators in the German media labeled this policy “shameful,” “disgraceful” and “cowardly.” Thus the FDP’s decline seems richly deserved. In the state elections in Rhineland-Palatinate, this party garnered not a single assembly seat.

It is not this column’s task to speculate on the ramification of these regional ballots for the national government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nor will it attempt to answer the rhetorical question by retired Lt. Gen. Jörg Schönbohm, now a leading CDU politician in the eastern state of Brandenburg: “They will still need electricity in Baden-Württemberg; how will they get it when they close down nuclear reactors?” Indeed, for a state producing some of the world’s most celebrated automobiles and electronic equipment, the popularity of the Greens’ anti-nuclear agitation seems amazingly irrational, given that it manifests an almost hysterical reaction to a disaster that happened 5,900 miles away in Japan, where earth tremors and seismic waves are common, which is not the case in Germany, as Gen. Schönbohm pointed out on television.

The point to be pondered here is a theological one: Whence this crushing angst plaguing rich Germany, and particularly Baden-Württemberg, where Christianity is still stronger than in most other parts of the country? In this state in Germany’s southwest, 70 percent of the people still belong to the Roman Catholic or the Lutheran churches. Baden-Württemberg is home to universities with some of the world’s most renowned divinity schools — Tübingen, Heidelberg and Freiburg. Why then this tremendous angst, which seems so un-Christian? Dietrich Bonhoeffer defined fear as a “symptom of sin,” by which he meant original sin in the sense of man’s innate trust in God (Augsburg Confession article II)? Liberal theologian Paul Tillich, too, described angst as “an absence of trust.”

The Church is still a significant player in Baden-Württemberg (pop. 10.7 million), but the Church, especially its Protestant branch, is stirring nuclear and other fears in its pronouncements instead of championing faith, the very opposite of angst. The fear mongering of Protestant clerics flies in the face of their own Lutheran teachings. “God and the devil take opposite tactics in regard to fear,” Luther said. “The Lord first allows us to become afraid, that he might relieve our fears and comfort us. The devil, on the other hand, first makes us feel secure in our pride and sins, that we might later be overwhelmed with fear and despair.” The point can be made that by stirring up anti-nuclear emotions among Europe’s most comfortable people, as opposed to promoting reasonable discussions of this issue, pastors are actually doing the devil’s work.

Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, one of Germany’s most eminent Lutheran theologians, rightly warned the Church that its irrational behavior is self-defeating because it is ultimately gambling away people’s trust. In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Graf quoted philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), who termed Christianity a “thinking religion.” “I would like to keep it that way,” Graf said; instead, today’s pastors promote “a form of religiosity that combines a cuddly god with bad taste.”

With a rousing lack of political correctness, Graf blamed this deplorable situation on the increasing “feminization” of the Church. His seminars at Munich University are now dominated “by young women of … petit bourgeois origins,” he added. As a result of the gradual female takeover of parsonages psychological jargon, “constant moralizing” and an “infatilization of communication” have taken the place of the “culture of the word” for which the Lutheran Church was once renowned. “Moralizing is intellectually a rather low-brow operation,” Graf explained

He has just subsumed his observation in a book titled, “Kirchendämmerung – wie die Kirchen unser Vertrauen verspielen” (Twilight of the Churches – How Churches Gamble Away our Trust), an allusion to Richard Wagner’s opera “Götterdämmerung,” or twilight of the gods. (Munich, Verlag H.C. Beck, 2011, €10.95). It should be translated into English quickly because its findings describe not just a German but global phenomenon – Christianity’s decline from a thinking faith to kitsch with frightening consequences for the secular as well as the spiritual realms.

“Cogito ergo sum,” French philosopher Réné Descartes (1596-1650) wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” What Graf is observing in his church, and what contributed to the overpowering fear that seems to consume Europe’s wealthiest nation, is a contemporary mindset that has turned Decartes’ dictum on its head. Call it, “Sensio ergo sum,” I feel therefore I am – a truly frightening perversion.

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 54 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.

World Matters: Ashamed by Germany's cowardice

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

This column calls for an elucidation: I am German, and I am ashamed by the cowardly foreign policy of the government I had voted for. My country’s abstention in the United Nations Security Council’s vote to enforce a no-flight zone over Libya and her refusal to participate in NATO’s military operations are disgraceful. My only consolation is that I am not alone in this assessment. The adjectives “cowardly,” “shameful,” “disgraceful,” and “disgusting” abound in commentaries and readers’ blogs of conservative and liberal German publications.

The driving force behind this decision was foreign minister and vice chancellor Guido Westerwelle, leader of the small right of center “Free Democrat Party,” the junior partner of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the coalition government governing in Berlin. According to the liberal weekly, Die Zeit, it was clear that Germany’s breach of solidarity with its NATO partners was primarily driven by domestic considerations. Bitter memories of World War II and its aftermath have turned many Germans into an arguably irrational species of pacifists. While opinion polls show that most Germans support the establishment of a no-flight zone over Libya, an equally large majority opposes and participation of their armed forces, the Bundeswehr, in military operations against Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s tyranny or, for that matter, anywhere else. The participation of 5,350 German soldiers and policemen in the conflict in Afghanistan is hugely unpopular in their homeland.

When the German government abstained in the Security Council vote last week, it faced three crucial state elections at home. One of those ballots took place on Sunday in Saxony-Anhalt. I derive some schadenfreude from its result. Westerwelle’s Free Democrats received only 3.8 percent of the vote and will therefore have no seats in the state assembly in Magdeburg. The victorious Christian Democrats will have to continue their coalition with the Social Democrats, the main opposition party on the federal level. So at least in this state Westerwelle’s gutless policy has not paid off.

But apart from this, a larger ethical issue should be pondered: Is it morally right to allot regional elections a priority over the duty to protect “a freedom-loving people against a crazed dictator,” as Margot Kässmann, the former Lutheran bishop of Hanover and leader of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD), phrased it in a stunning reversal of her previous pacifist stance?

It is bad enough that Germany broke ranks with is closest allies, such as France, the United States and the United Kingdom and aligned herself with Russia and China instead, two nations with flawed systems of government; her friends will not forget this short-sighted act of political infidelity soon. Losing a regional election might be a temporary setback; giving up moral spine when faced with a murderous despot is reprehensible.

Germans should know from history the perils of their inclination to pursue a “Sonderweg,” or special path, in international affairs. With open borders to ten neighboring nations, they cannot afford to isolate themselves once again. The Danes, the Poles, the Czechs, the French and the Dutch participate in the military operations shielding the Libyan people, alongside the British, the Americans, the Canadians, the Australians, the Italians, some Arab nations, and others.

It is sad to observe this display of a mindset marking the self-centered German “Spiessbürger,” or petit bourgeois, with his tendency to retreat into his miniscule universe when, as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote in the early 19^th century, “hinten fern in der Türkei die Völker aufeinanderschlagen,” when far, far away in Turkey (or in this case Libya) peoples clobber each other.

In an international poll last month, Germany was rated as the world’s most respected nation. One might wonder just how much of this esteem remains after her relapse into her past flaws last week at the United Nations.

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 54 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.

Faith Matters: Nutty hints at the Apocalypse

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

The Bible cautions believers against speculating about the date and time of the Apocalypse, although current world events and calamities seem to invite such conjecture. There are the uprisings in the Middle East. In Japan, the tsunami and earthquake disasters are fueling raising nuclear fears. And then the nuttiness of clergymen fitting Luther’s definition of “false clerics and schismatic spirits” reminds us that Christ listed some signs of the looming end of times, for example the appearance of many bogus prophets. The Rev. Steve Lawler, part-time rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal church in Ferguson, Missouri, might just fit this rubric.

Fawler decided to “give up church for Lent,” and to adopt Muslim rituals and dietary rules for the 40 days until Easter. Thankfully, his bishop threatened to defrock him if he continued this practice, which manifestly confirms a Roman verity that preceded Christianity: Whom the gods want to destroy they first make mad. As Bishop George Wayne Smith told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “He can’t be both a Christian and a Muslim. If he chooses to practice as Muslim, then he would, by default, give up his Christian identity and priesthood in the church.”

If the times weren’t so dire it would be fun to spin Fawler’s rationale further: How about giving up love for marriage in Lent? How about giving up death for funerals, or birth for adolescence, or motherhood for fatherhood? One must cheer the bishop for trying to maintain theological sanity, which isn’t easy in today’s religious environment where major denominations are degenerating into post-Christian neo-Gnostic sects, to wit the joint celebration of the Eucharist by Episcopalians and Hindus three years ago in Los Angeles, or a same-sex wedding in a sanctuary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), also in southern California. The most titillating moment during this betrothal came when the woman pastor placed a consecrated host on the tongue of a seeing-eye dog; it is worth remembering in this context that according to Lutheran sacramental theology communicants receive Christ’s true body and blood “in with and under” the bread and the wine.

Taken by itself, the emergence of Gnostic sects is of course insufficient evidence for the imminence of Judgment Day. Gnosticism, a set of diverse syncretistic religious movements, has been around since antiquity and a huge threat to the early Church; yet the Church prevailed. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was a Gnostic before his conversion to Christianity in 386 A.D.; be became one of the most important Fathers of the Church.

Spurious end-time prophecies also have a long track record. As Anglican theologian and philosophy professor Gerald R. McDermott points out, Christians in the days of Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the sixth century thought that Judgment Day was nigh when the Lombards, a northern Germanic tribe, invaded present-day Italy. In the 16^th century, Martin Luther was certain that the Apocalypse would occur in his lifetime or shortly thereafter. Later less formidable characters obtained their 15 minutes of glory, to paraphrase Andy Warhol, by prophesying precise dates for Christ’s return (parousia), never mind that Jesus said in Matthew 24:25 that nobody could know the time and day.

In 1856, the prophetess of the Seventh-Day Adventists, Ellen G. White, reported that an angel had announced to her the nearness of Christ’s return. The angel, she said, told her what would happen to most people: “Some (will become) food for worms, some subjects for the seven last plagues.” Also in the mid-19^th century, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, predicted that Jesus would be back within 56 years.

Then in the 1970s and 1980s, Hal Lindsay achieved notoriety by informing his millions of readers that 1988 would be the year of the parousia; well, it turned out it wasn’t. This list can be continued ad infinitum and include the fear-mongering forecasters of the impending Rapture.

The craze to hypothesize about the end of time or even advance this event by human means, which according to Martin Luther is the ultimate form of utopianism, spills over to other religions as well. In Japan in the 1980s, a semi-blind charlatan by the name of Shoko Asahara founded a “neo-Buddhist” sect called Aum Shinri-Kyo. It recruited primarily graduates of leading universities and gained worldwide infamy by producing huge amounts of Kalashnikov rifles and developing chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. In 1995, they set off a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system killing 12, injuring 54 and affecting thousands of others, a misdeed for which Asahara was sentenced to the gallows; he is now awaiting his execution.

What was that all about? In an interview one of his top lieutenants told me that it was the purpose of this crime to trigger World War III between Japan and the United States, which would result in the destruction of the universe. Why would a bunch of young scientists wish to do that? “Well,” he said, “the Lord Shiva has commanded us to give him a helping hand;” Shiva is the destroyer in the Hindu trinity. When he’s done, Brahma, the Creator, would be able to begin a new cycle of creation.

So here we had a “Buddhist” sectarians killing in behalf of a Hindu god, and to top the syncretistic madness, they explained this in Christian terminology. With his hands on a Bible, Asahara’s white-robed henchman informed me that he and his co-religionists were Christ’s soldiers in the Battle of Armageddon. But who was Christ to them? “An incarnation of Shiva, the god of destruction,” he said.

All this would be hilarious if it weren’t so deadly and in total contradiction of what Scripture is saying. It is possible, suggests Gerald McDermott, that calamities such as the current disaster in Japan, are a warning or even temporal punishment from God. In fact, a prominent devotee of the Shinto religion suggested the same thing. “The character of the Japanese people is selfish. The Japanese people must take advantage of this tsunami to wash away their selfish greed. I really do think this is divine punishment,” Shintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo, told a press conference.

As for the ultimate Day of Judgment, the Christ’s message is clear: repent and be watchful! “If you are not watchful, I will come like a thief, and you will never know at what hour I will come upon you” (Revelation 3:3).

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 54 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.

Faith Matters (II): Muslim migration, a chance for the Church

By Uwe Siemon-Netto
Second of two parts

Occasionally when I am in Paris I chance upon taxis driven by women of dark complexion. They often speak a remarkably educated French and turn out to be university students or young professionals of North African descent. It has also happened to me that one of these cabbies admitted to being bi-religious: Muslim on Friday so as not to upset her family living in one of the grim housing estates at the rim of the French capital, and Christian on Sunday because she has secretly converted to either Roman Catholicism or evangelical Protestantism.

This is the potential flip side of the mass migration of Muslims into Western Europe, which so many pundits predict presages the imminent transformation of the Old World from a Christian into an Islamic culture. Adam Francisco, a young historian and Islamic affairs specialist teaching at Concordia University Irvine, Cal., warns against jumping to hasty conclusions.

“Politically some people might not like this influx of Turks and Arabs,” agrees Bonn-based sociologist of religion Thomas Schirrmacher, “but from a Christian point of view, this movement could also represent a great opportunity for the Church.” To mix gaming and religious metaphors, all bets are still open, theologically speaking.

Between five and six million Muslims live in France and some four million in Germany. “Ninety percent of all Muslims believe that Christianity in Europe has come to an end and will soon collapse,” says Schirrmacher’s wife, Christine, who directs the Islam Institute of the Evangelical Alliance in the German-speaking countries. When Muslims arrive in Germany, the Schirrmachers continue, their prejudices often seem confirmed. The churches don’t appear to take the Bible seriously as the living word of God. Few European Christians to read it at home. “We know that many Muslims would like to experience the use of Scripture and a good liturgy, which Islam does not offer, but find neither,” says Rev. Albrecht Immanuel Herzog, CEO of a conservative Lutheran publishing house in Neuendettelsau, Bavaria.

According to many students of the religious scene in Europe, Muslim women are especially open for a monotheistic alternative to the faith they were born into, a religion where so-called “honor murders” of members of their own sex occur at such a frightening level that a German-language website, www.ehrenmord.de, has been established to document the homicides committed by Muslim men against their female relatives for allegedly succumbing to Western culture. A stunning new German-Turkish movie titled “Die Fremde,” or “When We Leave,” focuses on this frightening phenomenon in Berlin so powerfully that the Christian Science Monitor considered it “too bad” that it did not make the Oscar nomination list for best foreign film.

A few years ago, Msgr. Aldo Giordano, now permanent observer of the Holy See at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, described the Muslim immigration into Western Europe as a “divine challenge;” he told me that Catholic and Protestant women’s groups discretely established contacts with Muslim women in Europe and Northern Africa. “These contacts are all the more important as in the Islamic world it’s the mothers who pass on their beliefs and values to their sons, who one day will head families,” said Giordano, then the secretary general of the European Catholic Bishops’ conference.

“Indeed, there are many groups of faithful Christians reaching out Muslim immigrants in Germany, visiting camps of asylum seekers, inviting refugees and immigrants to their congregations, and especially to Alpha courses, which are practical introductions to the Christian faith,” says Christine Schirrmacher.

Among the most stunning results of such forms of outreach I found in an independent Lutheran parish in a major eastern German city half of whose congregants are Iranian exiles; the church’s former pastor had led them to the Christian faith by using Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible as a textbook for teaching German as a second language.

It is difficult to quantify the overall success of such missionary efforts as no reliable statistics are available because much of these activities occur covertly but Christine Schirrmacher cautions against underestimating their significance. “True,” she says, “some ethnic Germans convert to Islam, young men often to ‘play being Muslim’ for a while, and young women when they marry immigrants. But at least as many Muslims become Christians.”

To this Rev. Herzog adds, “It would help if our churches did not make Christ look irrelevant by casting doubt on Scripture.” However, the Schirrmachers and Herzog confirm that many of the young generation of German pastors and theology professors are returning to a view of the Bible as the living word of God.

In France where huge Muslim ghettos that used to be Communist-run housing estates surround the major cities, between 400,000 and 500,000 are estimated to have converted to Christianity. According to Rev. Antoine Schluster of the French Protestant Federation, 10,000 Muslims join the Roman Catholic Church and 5,000 Protestant denominations.

These might not be huge numbers. Still, they are rarely reported, especially in the United States where the stereotypical definition of Europe as spiritually lost continent has become common currency. As Christine Schirrmacher reminds us, “Let’s remember who the Lord of history is: God, not man.”

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 54 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.

Faith Matters (I): Are Christians to blame for Muslim hate?

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

As Congress is considering the extent of Islamic extremism in America, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic wonder whether the liberal Protestant theology of the last two centuries must share some blame for the violence committed by Muslim radicals.

According to Thomas Schirrmacher, a German sociologist of religion, this debate is based on the following conjecture: Until the 18^th century, few Muslim theologians questioned the authenticity of Christian Scriptures, given that the Koran acknowledges the Old and New Testaments as “divine books descended from the heavens to guide mankind.” But since the Enlightenment period, Protestant scholars began casting doubt on the Bible’s reliability thus ceasing to accept it as the living word of God.

This in turn led prominent Islamic leaders to conclude that these texts were clearly not entirely true and therefore evidence of a false religion, and that false religion must be destroyed. In some theological circles, this is seen as a major cause of Muslim hostility against the Christian faith, an antagonism that has been increasing in virulence in the last decades.

Schirrmacher allows that this summary of the present quandary between these two monotheistic religions seems somewhat simplistic. Moreover, it risks leading to the false assumption that the entire Islamic community is seeking the destruction of Christianity, warned Rev. Albrecht Immanuel Herzog, a confessional Lutheran theologian in Neuendettelsau, Bavaria. “Nonetheless, it is undeniable that two centuries ago, liberal Christian theologians have handed Muslim apologists a powerful argument in their fight against missionaries in 19^th-century British India,” argues Christine Schirrmacher, director of the Islam Institute of the Evangelical Alliance in Bonn, and Thomas Schirrmacher’s wife.

The argument can be made that this laid the foundations of today’s assessment by Muslim radicals that Christianity must be squashed forcefully, and that it also contributed to the conviction of more moderate Islamic theorists that Christianity is so weak that it only requires a little patience to anticipate its implosion and replacement by Islam and the rule of Sharia law in Europe.

As one persuasive example of how Koran scholars have turned the critical study by Protestant theologians against Christianity, Christine Schirrmacher cites Maulana Rhmatullah Kairanawi navi (1818-91), an Indian Muslim sage. She points out that in his campaign against Christian missionary activities in British India, Kairanawi navi cited 18^th and 19^th century Protestant academics whose books had been translated into Arabic.

Among these were the German theologian and adventurer Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-92) who promoted an “anabionic” explanation for Jesus’ empty tomb; according to this theory Christ did not die on the Cross but faked his death and walked away from his grave.

Another 18^th-century German scholar Kairanawi navi quoted in his anti-Christian polemic was Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), a naturalistic Deist. Deism was a view widely held in England, North America and northern Europe. It saw God as a kind of clockmaker who wound up the chronometer (meaning creation in this context) but did not interfere with its progress. Raimarus denied that the Bible was God’s revealed word and that miracles ever happened. He opined that Christ’s disciples had stolen his body from the tomb to feign his resurrection.

Kairanawi navi stressed that both Bahrdt and Raimarus confirmed Islam’s rejection of the key Christian doctrine that Jesus had died, was buried and rose again for the salvation of all believers. Islam equally rejects Christianity’s teachings about Jesus’ divine nature, much like the German theologian David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) whom Kairanawi navi quoted as well.

Significantly, Kairanawi navi is once again en vogue among contemporary Muslim scholars arguing the superiority of their faith. Last year at a conference of the “Institute of Objective Studies” at Patna, India, Prof. A.R. Monin reminded his listeners that Kairanawi navi had offered the writings of European Biblical scholars as evidence of the “interpolation and corruption” of Christian scriptures. This prompted Karl Pfander, a 19th-century German missionary, to agree with Kairanawi navi and then “beat a hasty retreat,” Monin said.

In reality, though, it is now liberal Christian theology’s turn to be in retreat. Gone are the days when the most pressing topic at Princeton Theological Seminary was what to preach on Easter Sunday after the doctrine of Christ’s Resurrection had been disproven, Rev. Fred Anderson of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church once told me. It is no longer considered intellectually fashionable to question basic tenets of the Christian faith.

To some extent, this is even the case in Germany, cradle and most significant holdout of liberal Protestant thought. “Twenty or 30 years ago, theology professors at the divinity schools of our state universities even denied the existence of God,” Thomas Schirrmacher relates, “but this is no longer the case.”

Rev. Herzog, CEO of a conservative Lutheran publishing house, agrees that a confessional movement among young Lutheran theology professors and ministers is slowly evolving, “but they don’t yet dominate church chancelleries and academe.” Muslim immigrants in Europe are not yet aware of this development. “Most of these immigrants still believe that Christianity’s collapse in Europe is imminent,” says Adam Francisco, an Islamic studies specialist teaching history at Concordia University in Irvine, Cal.

To paraphrase Thomas Mann, Germany, once in the intellectual avant-garde worldwide, always tends to be late these days. James W. Voelz, professor of exegetical theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, agrees, citing as an example the annual meetings of the illustrious Society for the Study of the New Testament (or SNTS for Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas), where English and French-speaking scholars have long stopped belaboring the historical-critical method of interpreting Scripture; this method aims not to discover the meaning of a Biblical passage as the original author would have intended, and what the original listeners would have understood, but, rather, speculates on the circumstances behind the text that led to its composition.

“Most SNTS members are beginning to return to a traditional way of studying the Bible seeking to discover what the text is actually saying,” Voelz continues. “This has been facilitated by various literary approaches, which do not seek to attempt a reconstruction of the factors leading to the composition of the text but take the text as the actual object of investigation.

“The object is to discover first and foremost what it intends to tell its original hearers and readers, and then to see how that meaning might impact hearers and readers in the years to follow, including today. But German Biblical scholars still stubbornly cling to historical criticism, thus missing what the books of the Bible actually say.” Voelz continues.

Seminaries of liberal Protestant denominations in the United States follow the German lead with disastrous theological consequences, such as chipping away at the traditional understanding of law and Gospel, the nature of original sin and of salvation by grace through faith in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross and his resurrection.

This does great harm to the thriving Christian communities in the southern hemisphere, especially in Africa. “You are literally killing us,” Archbishop Peter Akinola, the former primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, charged U.S. Episcopal leaders during the controversy over the consecration of an openly homosexual priest as bishop of Concord, New Hampshire.

During a meeting in Vienna, Austria, Akinola told me that the homosexual agenda was a “diabolical attack upon the Church,” providing Muslim extremists in Africa with a pretext for murdering Christians.

Next: Faith Matters (II): Muslim immigration – a great opportunity for the Church.

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 54 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.

Faith Matters (I): Are Christians to blame for Muslim hate?

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

As Congress is considering the extent of Islamic extremism in America, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic wonder whether the liberal Protestant theology of the last two centuries must share some blame for the violence committed by Muslim radicals.

According to Thomas Schirrmacher, a German sociologist of religion, this debate is based on the following conjecture: Until the 18^th century, few Muslim theologians questioned the authenticity of Christian Scriptures, given that the Koran acknowledges the Old and New Testaments as “divine books descended from the heavens to guide mankind.” But since the Enlightenment period, Protestant scholars began casting doubt on the Bible’s reliability thus ceasing to accept it as the living word of God.

This in turn led prominent Islamic leaders to conclude that these texts were clearly not entirely true and therefore evidence of a false religion, and that false religion must be destroyed. In some theological circles, this is seen as a major cause of Muslim hostility against the Christian faith, an antagonism that has been increasing in virulence in the last decades.

Schirrmacher allows that this summary of the present quandary between these two monotheistic religions seems somewhat simplistic. Moreover, it risks leading to the false assumption that the entire Islamic community is seeking the destruction of Christianity, warned Rev. Albrecht Immanuel Herzog, a confessional Lutheran theologian in Neuendettelsau, Bavaria. “Nonetheless, it is undeniable that two centuries ago, liberal Christian theologians have handed Muslim apologists a powerful argument in their fight against missionaries in 19^th-century British India,” argues Christine Schirrmacher, director of the Islam Institute of the Evangelical Alliance in Bonn, and Thomas Schirrmacher’s wife.

The argument can be made that this laid the foundations of today’s assessment by Muslim radicals that Christianity must be squashed forcefully, and that it also contributed to the conviction of more moderate Islamic theorists that Christianity is so weak that it only requires a little patience to anticipate its implosion and replacement by Islam and the rule of Sharia law in Europe.

As one persuasive example of how Koran scholars have turned the critical study by Protestant theologians against Christianity, Christine Schirrmacher cites Maulana Rhmatullah Kairanawi navi (1818-91), an Indian Muslim sage. She points out that in his campaign against Christian missionary activities in British India, Kairanawi navi cited 18^th and 19^th century Protestant academics whose books had been translated into Arabic.

Among these were the German theologian and adventurer Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-92) who promoted an “anabionic” explanation for Jesus’ empty tomb; according to this theory Christ did not die on the Cross but faked his death and walked away from his grave.

Another 18^th-century German scholar Kairanawi navi quoted in his anti-Christian polemic was Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), a naturalistic Deist. Deism was a view widely held in England, North America and northern Europe. It saw God as a kind of clockmaker who wound up the chronometer (meaning creation in this context) but did not interfere with its progress. Raimarus denied that the Bible was God’s revealed word and that miracles ever happened. He opined that Christ’s disciples had stolen his body from the tomb to feign his resurrection.

Kairanawi navi stressed that both Bahrdt and Raimarus confirmed Islam’s rejection of the key Christian doctrine that Jesus had died, was buried and rose again for the salvation of all believers. Islam equally rejects Christianity’s teachings about Jesus’ divine nature, much like the German theologian David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) whom Kairanawi navi quoted as well.

Significantly, Kairanawi navi is once again en vogue among contemporary Muslim scholars arguing the superiority of their faith. Last year at a conference of the “Institute of Objective Studies” at Patna, India, Prof. A.R. Monin reminded his listeners that Kairanawi navi had offered the writings of European Biblical scholars as evidence of the “interpolation and corruption” of Christian scriptures. This prompted Karl Pfander, a 19th-century German missionary, to agree with Kairanawi navi and then “beat a hasty retreat,” Monin said.

In reality, though, it is now liberal Christian theology’s turn to be in retreat. Gone are the days when the most pressing topic at Princeton Theological Seminary was what to preach on Easter Sunday after the doctrine of Christ’s Resurrection had been disproven, Rev. Fred Anderson of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church once told me. It is no longer considered intellectually fashionable to question basic tenets of the Christian faith.

To some extent, this is even the case in Germany, cradle and most significant holdout of liberal Protestant thought. “Twenty or 30 years ago, theology professors at the divinity schools of our state universities even denied the existence of God,” Thomas Schirrmacher relates, “but this is no longer the case.”

Rev. Herzog, CEO of a conservative Lutheran publishing house, agrees that a confessional movement among young Lutheran theology professors and ministers is slowly evolving, “but they don’t yet dominate church chancelleries and academe.” Muslim immigrants in Europe are not yet aware of this development. “Most of these immigrants still believe that Christianity’s collapse in Europe is imminent,” says Adam Francisco, an Islamic studies specialist teaching history at Concordia University in Irvine, Cal.

To paraphrase Thomas Mann, Germany, once in the intellectual avant-garde worldwide, always tends to be late these days. James W. Voelz, professor of exegetical theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, agrees, citing as an example the annual meetings of the illustrious Society for the Study of the New Testament (or SNTS for Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas), where English and French-speaking scholars have long stopped belaboring the historical-critical method of interpreting Scripture; this method aims not to discover the meaning of a Biblical passage as the original author would have intended, and what the original listeners would have understood, but, rather, speculates on the circumstances behind the text that led to its composition.

“Most SNTS members are beginning to return to a traditional way of studying the Bible seeking to discover what the text is actually saying,” Voelz continues. “This has been facilitated by various literary approaches, which do not seek to attempt a reconstruction of the factors leading to the composition of the text but take the text as the actual object of investigation.

“The object is to discover first and foremost what it intends to tell its original hearers and readers, and then to see how that meaning might impact hearers and readers in the years to follow, including today. But German Biblical scholars still stubbornly cling to historical criticism, thus missing what the books of the Bible actually say.” Voelz continues.

Seminaries of liberal Protestant denominations in the United States follow the German lead with disastrous theological consequences, such as chipping away at the traditional understanding of law and Gospel, the nature of original sin and of salvation by grace through faith in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross and his resurrection.

This does great harm to the thriving Christian communities in the southern hemisphere, especially in Africa. “You are literally killing us,” Archbishop Peter Akinola, the former primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, charged U.S. Episcopal leaders during the controversy over the consecration of an openly homosexual priest as bishop of Concord, New Hampshire.

During a meeting in Vienna, Austria, Akinola told me that the homosexual agenda was a “diabolical attack upon the Church,” providing Muslim extremists in Africa with a pretext for murdering Christians.

Next: Faith Matters (II): Muslim immigration – a great opportunity for the Church.

Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of United Press International, has been an international journalist for 54 years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in Irvine, California.