Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI210499A
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00:26 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:27 This is your program 00:29 to bring you information and ideas 00:32 on religious liberty in the US and around the world. 00:35 My name is Lincoln Steed, 00:37 editor of Liberty Magazine for 22 years. 00:41 And my guest on this program is Ed Cooke, 00:43 a long time author of articles in Liberty Magazine, 00:47 a holder of a doctorate and church state studies 00:49 from Baylor University, 00:51 and a resident of Texas. 00:54 The eyes of Texas are upon you, if not none other. 00:58 Sure. I'm glad to be here. 01:00 An author, a researcher, a book reviewer, 01:04 and a pastor. 01:05 So let's talk about some heavy stuff. 01:09 You and I love history, 01:10 and I think in many contemporary issues, 01:15 you can't understand them fully without history. 01:17 And I think on religious liberty, 01:19 you have to understand history. 01:22 We're going through a difficult time in the West. 01:25 I think particularly starting with 9/11 01:28 when those in control 01:31 started rethinking basic civil liberties 01:34 and infamously a few people, 01:36 I remember hearing them on TV, 01:39 say, I don't care if the president knows, 01:40 you know, what I'm doing 01:42 in my bathroom or bedroom, whatever, 01:44 if it helps security, great. 01:46 So they were willing to give away liberties, 01:49 but that didn't happen yesterday. 01:52 And in many ways in our modern era, 01:56 the darkest possibilities of totalitarianism 02:01 can be seen in what happened in Germany 02:04 after World War I 02:07 and a whole series of catastrophes 02:09 that failed Germany, political, social, and some religious 02:14 ending up with the national socialists 02:16 or the Nazis. 02:18 And I know some people just go bananas 02:21 if there's any illusion made or worse comparison 02:25 between anything happening now 02:27 and in the Nazi era. 02:29 But unfortunately, 02:30 there's lessons to be learned and there are often parallels 02:34 that I think need to become an add-on. 02:36 And we can't just dodge it because it offends someone. 02:39 This was a horrible period, just a lifetime before us, 02:43 you know, I was born, maybe I'm dinosaur, 02:47 but, you know, I was born only a few years after the war. 02:50 I knew nothing of it, 02:51 but, you know, that's, that's a lifespan 02:54 and in the sweep of human history, 02:55 that's yesterday. 02:57 True. 02:58 You know, the atomic bomb was developed, 03:01 you know, right at the end of that war 03:04 and that shapes our world big time today, 03:07 or it should. 03:08 Yeah. 03:09 There's still discussions, you know, 03:11 about nuclear armaments and trying to reduce those 03:13 and the countries that still have weapons, 03:15 there's monitoring that goes on. 03:18 And, so, you know, we can't ignore Hiroshima 03:21 when you're talking about modern day disarmament 03:23 and no more when you're talking about 03:25 a loss of civil liberties 03:27 and religious restriction in different places, 03:29 or worse than religious restriction, 03:33 religious hijacking by a given order. 03:36 This is what happened in Germany, isn't it? 03:38 Yeah. 03:40 I was going to even going to say that 03:41 one may say that, okay, this happened way back 03:43 in what the 1940s over what, 70, 80 years ago. 03:47 And yet it's something 03:49 that still impacts the modern day, 03:51 because Germany has a law 03:53 against the displaying of the Nazi symbol. 03:56 It's against the law to do that. 03:58 However, in contrast, like here in America, 04:00 we have freedom of expression. 04:02 There's people that wear the symbol of Nazism, 04:05 you know, in America. 04:06 So... 04:07 I thought the parallel we get to make is 04:09 they display the rebel flag, 04:12 which I think is rude. 04:17 Whether it's illegal, that's another question. 04:19 Lot of discussion and debate about that 04:20 in our country, right? 04:22 I mean, tying back to the civil war 04:24 and the outcomes of that and so forth. 04:26 And yet people that should know better 04:27 would might defend that. 04:29 And yet they don't see the analogy 04:31 between flag desecration. 04:33 And I've mentioned on this program before, 04:35 it's a good time to repeat here. 04:36 I remember hearing Antonin Scalia once in person 04:39 talking about many things and he was quite provocative. 04:42 And he then said 04:44 how he found it personally distasteful 04:47 that some of the hippies 04:49 back in my youth were burning the flag. 04:51 But when he and his fellow justices got together, 04:54 they felt that it was within people's rights 04:56 to burn that flag. 04:58 And he said, he went home and his own wife attacked him. 05:00 How dare you make that decision order? 05:03 So we allowed flag desecration in the US 05:07 and I don't know all the laws on it, 05:10 but it seems to me it's not a jailable offense 05:12 to waive the flag of the Confederacy, 05:15 but yet that's a very inflammatory act. 05:19 And you're right, in Germany 05:21 they've decided it was such a horrible period, 05:24 legally exclude those things. 05:26 And why? 05:27 Because Germany went off the rails in every area 05:30 and on religion, most of all, I think. 05:33 True. 05:34 You know, Germany is when Martin Luther 05:37 arose the Reformation. 05:39 They were lightened by an illumination 05:42 of God's Word 05:45 and an understanding of righteous by faith, 05:48 not through works, you know, the Catholic Church 05:50 and all of the mechanisms of the Medieval Church. 05:53 So when one asks, or may ask you a question. 05:56 How did they go off trail? 05:59 Not only go off trail. 06:00 Religion led the way 06:02 in supporting this murderous regime, didn't they? 06:05 True. 06:07 Yeah, so when one looks at the history, 06:09 one would say kind of leading up 06:10 to the development of Nazism, 06:13 there were a variety of factors. 06:15 One, of course, I think we've talked, 06:17 you and I have talked about 06:18 a little bit before personally 06:20 dealing with the carryover from World War I. 06:24 One you may say 06:26 the unfairness or the injustice, 06:27 at least from the German perspective 06:30 of getting the short end of that deal, 06:32 financial aspects, 06:33 and then also the turmoil within the country, 06:37 because you had the presence of the Jewish faith, 06:40 Jewish believers there that individuals that were. 06:43 Here's another interesting point 06:45 from a philosophical perspective. 06:48 Nietzsche in back in the century prior 06:50 in the 1880s, 06:52 in some of his writings had written 06:54 what some people today interpret 06:56 and look at is being maybe anti-Semitic. 06:59 Whereas other people 07:00 that would defend Nietzsche as an author 07:02 would say that was not his intent. 07:03 I won't go into that debate, but nonetheless, 07:06 it's part of history that was there. 07:08 That one could say, maybe precipitated 07:10 some of the things that developed. 07:12 The history of anti-Semitism in Europe is very plain. 07:17 From the very beginning of Christianity, 07:20 the Jews were the other, 07:21 and their own words are not there. 07:24 I shouldn't say they, 07:25 Jewish words by the priests 07:27 and their supporters were used where they said, 07:29 you know, his blood be upon our head, 07:31 but I don't see 07:32 how that creates a corporate guilt. 07:34 And the Bible says those that pierced Him will be... 07:37 Will see. Will see Him in His glory. 07:39 It doesn't say the whole Jewish nation. 07:41 In fact, Paul says that they haven't been rejected. 07:44 He says, lest you be wise in your own conceits, 07:46 but it took root in medieval Christianity... 07:51 Through the pogroms, the Catholic Church pogrom. 07:54 Well, the Catholic Church created this idea. 07:57 These are the people rejected. 07:59 We are now the favored ones. 08:00 And then with Martin Luther, 08:02 that's when I think the modern troubles began. 08:06 He had his own cultural, personal biases 08:09 and he played those out big. 08:10 Some of the stuff that Martin Luther 08:12 wrote against the Jews, 08:14 you can't reconcile it with any Christian sensibility. 08:17 It was just him and his personal hatred. 08:20 And it's quite murderous. 08:22 It's not just like you say about Nietzsche, 08:24 perhaps you could say, well, 08:26 give me the benefit of the doubt. 08:28 You can't say that with Martin Luther, 08:29 it's very open. 08:32 So I think in the modern Protestant Lutheran era, 08:36 Martin Luther laid that groundwork. 08:37 And part of what was continued from the papal days 08:41 through Lutheranism, 08:43 the Jews were excluded from a lot of activities. 08:45 They were herded together in ghettos very often. 08:51 They were restricted in trays that they could carry on. 08:54 They were labeled with... 08:55 And ironically 08:59 you can in the Bible make a case 09:01 that we shouldn't take usury 09:04 and we shouldn't take financial advantage 09:06 of other people, 09:07 like in the Old Testament, even buying land, 09:10 it was supposed to be repatriated 09:12 after 50 years. 09:14 So the Jews were forced into this money making realm 09:19 to carry on what a good Christian 09:21 wouldn't do at that time. 09:24 So that's sort of took root 09:25 and as they became successful financially, 09:27 there was jealousy and so on. 09:30 So it all played out that by the time 09:32 the Nazis came along, 09:33 there was a ready suspicion of them, 09:37 even though I've read articles 09:41 that in the 20s and early years of the 20th century, 09:45 Germany was described as the most friendly 09:49 and suitable place 09:51 for the Jewish population to live in 09:53 the whole Western world. 09:56 But, once the Nazis played on that, 09:58 there was a ready field of distrust 10:01 of Jews and good Christians. 10:03 You know, another thing that one can say is 10:06 like we're talking about here, we're teasing out 10:09 different threads of not only religion, 10:11 philosophy, financial factors, 10:15 ethnic differences that culminated 10:18 one can say all of those threads came together 10:20 to make a final product, end product, right? 10:23 Being Nazi Germany and the final solution 10:26 as Hitler referred to it, the annihilation of the Jews. 10:30 But one of the other things that played into that 10:32 was along the scientific realm 10:34 where you looked at the aspect of Darwinism, 10:37 yes, correct social Darwinism, where... 10:40 I was hoping we would get to that. 10:42 Scientifically, where they said that there are differences 10:45 between races, and... 10:46 But we can't directly relate that to religion. 10:49 That was the social development, 10:50 which was most regrettable, 10:52 and pseudoscience was at play all around the world. 10:56 The US was lobotomizing, sterilizing. 10:59 It had its own miscegenation laws. 11:03 In fact, the Nazis modeled this after US 11:07 prohibitions on into marriage and so on. 11:09 So the prejudices of races around the world 11:13 had been encouraged by Darwinism 11:17 or Darwin's theory and eugenics. 11:21 I've got several eugenics books at home. 11:22 I was reading one the other day. 11:24 If you sort of suspend your critical faculties, 11:27 it all makes sense and sounds very harmless. 11:30 The idea which we know 11:31 is still a factor in any society, 11:34 and the US is seeing it, 11:35 this declining birth rates among the educated 11:38 and those less educated and less self-sufficient 11:44 have many more children. 11:45 They become a burden to society. 11:47 And then they're less likely to be educated. 11:49 So there's a social inversion. 11:52 I mean, that's true, 11:54 but the solution is not to eliminate people. 11:57 The solution should be to help. 11:59 And I used the word with the gentleman 12:01 with the other day in editorial purposely, 12:03 the untermensch, the under man. 12:06 You know, in a liberal society, animated by Christian impulses, 12:10 we should do subtle tweaks in society 12:14 to help those and elevate those people, 12:16 not to try to breed them out of existence 12:21 to make up for the fact that wealthy people 12:23 by definition have less children. 12:25 You know, in traditional societies, 12:26 they have more children to support themselves 12:28 and mote is a hedge against infant mortality. 12:31 There's just so many things going on. 12:34 But yes, that was all effective. 12:36 But what I want to get at, 12:37 let's just go back for a minute. 12:39 The fact that when the Nazis with the clearly stated 12:43 murderous policies might count published 12:48 about a decade or so before Hitler actually came to power, 12:50 it was no secret. 12:52 I mean, perhaps people were willfully ignorant, 12:54 but it wasn't the secret. 12:56 How easily the Lutheran Church, the Roman Catholic Church, 13:01 not every Catholic, but the Catholic Church 13:03 with its alliance and concord it with Rome 13:07 and even Seventh-day Adventist made alliances with the state 13:12 because Hitler like many political leaders 13:17 and more than most was willing 13:18 to perjure himself to get support. 13:21 And I've read the same thing, he says, 13:22 national socialism is based on Christianity. 13:26 I mean, yes, only a gullible fool 13:29 would believe that, 13:30 but there were plenty of gullible fools at the time. 13:32 They suspended their judgment. 13:34 And I think that's a salutary listen anywhere, 13:38 even in the US 13:39 when people are now 13:41 so, so determined to mix religion with politics, 13:44 this sort of inversion and perversion will take place. 13:48 Certainly. 13:49 And, you know, we see in history 13:52 similar situations that the closer that religion 13:56 and government intertwine, 13:59 the more danger 14:00 it presents to society in general, right? 14:03 And in particular, you know, going back to Nazi, Germany, 14:07 I think that one of the things that 14:09 when we look at the history there, we do see, 14:11 yes, there were a majority of the churches 14:14 across the board, different denominations 14:16 that lined up with that, the party line, so to speak. 14:19 There were also some individuals 14:21 like Bonheoffer and some others that were resistant. 14:26 I'm not that particularly admirer of Bonheoffer, 14:29 but, you know, put myself in his shoes. 14:32 If any of us were there, what would we have done? 14:34 You know, your life was at threat 14:35 to speak out against the Fuhrer. 14:37 But Bonheoffer, 14:39 I have trouble seeing him as a general model. 14:42 Remember he was an agent of the state. 14:46 He was in the secret police. 14:48 Why did he sign up there to start with? 14:50 I don't see that as admirable. 14:52 And then he got involved in a plot to kill the Fuhrer. 14:54 I don't feel as a Christian 14:56 that no matter what system I live in, 14:59 that I am justified in seeking the physical demise 15:03 of anyone in power. 15:05 And we ought to pray for our rulers, 15:07 we not to support them in every way. 15:10 Hitler clearly crossed the line 15:11 where he was asking things of Christians 15:13 that were accounted to what God demanded. 15:16 So there should have been civil disobedience there, 15:19 but to be an active part of a plan 15:21 to kill the leader, uh... 15:25 That part, I... 15:27 And I see Bonheoffer as well-intentioned, 15:31 and I mean, at least in, toward the end, 15:33 and you have to admire someone who gave his life 15:37 trying to stand for principle, but I just don't see him 15:39 as a good model for behavior at all points. 15:41 Sure. 15:43 But there were a number of Catholics 15:47 and Lutherans, 15:49 I don't know too many Adventists. 15:50 I mean, they might be, 15:52 but I know of Catholics and Lutherans 15:54 that wouldn't go into the military 15:56 when they were asked. 15:58 And, you know, now, I mean, when I was young, 16:00 you could go to Canada. 16:02 You know, I don't know 16:04 if too many of them went to jail 16:05 for refusing to go into the military. 16:07 I mean, that was the penalty, but back in the Hitler's era, 16:11 if you refused, you would likely be shot. 16:14 That was a capital offense. 16:15 I've read some of the trials. 16:17 So you have to admire the integrity they had. 16:21 Let's take a break and continue this 16:25 very sensitive discussion, but very relevant discussion 16:28 of some parallels to a lifetime ago in Europe. |
Revised 2021-07-19