Relevant ProMundis Blogposts

A double Standard: Driving Jews out of the Islamic World

Between 1948 and 1970 850,000 to 1,000,000 Jews were driven out of Arab countries, where until that time they had lived peacefully for hundreds of years. While Palestinians are mentioned daily in the media and the call is made for grandchildren and great grandchildren of once displaced Palestinians to be returned to their homeland, no one speaks about displaced Jews any more. The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, which was founded in 1976, is not taken seriously anywhere, although many of the people concerned live involuntarily in Israel or the USA. This is a double standard.

The displacement of the long-established Christian minority in the Islamic world is also proceeding at a rapid pace. These people have often been longer in the countries than Islam has even existed. The devastating results of George W. Bush’s Iraq war on the Christian community were predictable – as the Islamic terrorists cannot win against the Americans, they are looking for the only attainable goal as a small victory, the peaceful Christian untrained in defense – to that degree the terrorists and the Iraqi government, with the latter doing nothing to oppose the terrorists, continue what has been underway for 100 years.

A similar tragedy is often forgotten in this connection: the displacement of Jews from Islamic countries. All in all their number is smaller than the number of Christians, but their percentage is higher, mostly close to 100%. For centuries Northern Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq all had prospering Jewish populations, which have in the meantime practically disappeared.

In 1948 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq. Today that number is 10!

Fundamentalism is a militant Truth Claim

My German paperback Fundamentalism was published in the ‘compact’ series (Publisher: SCM Hänssler). In that book I allow myself, as a sociologist of religion, to throw my definition of fundamentalism into the ring. In my opinion one should only refer to fundamentalism if violence is involved or when a true danger for domestic safety exists.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks fundamentalism is mostly understood among the general public to be radical, violence prone, religiously motivated extremists or simply religious terrorists. What in the vernacular is meant by ‘fundamentalism’ is a militant claim to truth and precisely that is what I find to be the shortest definition.

In my opinion there are only two possibilities open to saving the term ‘fundamentalism’ for legitimate usage: either bring the term fundamentalism closer to how it is used in everyday language and relate it to truly near-violent movements. Alternatively, applying the term widely to all movements could be desirable, in which case the term is in desperate need of being de-emotionalized so that it achieves a neutral, non-pejorative meaning. For this to be achieved there has to be large scale action requiring experts who oppose the mass media, which at the moment is an illusion.

In my opinion those who warn the public about fundamentalist movements should limit themselves to those groups who are dangerous due to the principal justification they offer for the use of violence, or who demonstrate an inclination towards violence, or who even use violence, and lastly those from whom the danger at least emanates that they might want to achieve political power over dissenters by the use of undemocratic means. For that reason my definition in the book which is soon to be released is as follows:

Fundamentalism is a militant truth claim which derives its claim to power from non-disputable, higher revelation, people, values, or ideologies. It is aimed against religious freedom and peace offers and justifies, urges, or uses non-state or state-based non-democratic force in order to accomplish its goals. In the process it often invokes opposition to certain achievements of modernity in favor of historical grandeur and bygone eras, and at the same time uses these modern achievements mostly in order to extend and produce a modern variation of older religions and world views. Fundamentalism is a transformation of a religion or world view conditioned by modernity.

Troops killed as martyrs for God? Something startling in Edinburgh

Even as a teenager and then later as a visitor at the Scottish National War Museum atop Edinburgh Castle (see photo), I found the combination of honoring soldiers and the Chris-tian faith, or at least belief in God, to be shocking. Yet this time, for the first time, I had the opportunity to make an official visit and look closely at the inscriptions and photos. Addi-tionally, in the meantime I have acquired a knowledge of the sociology of religion, and with it the opportunity to compare how heroes are honored in other countries, cultures, and religions.

Now I also know that the belief that soldiers have died for God, that they will be re-warded as martyrs for good works, and that they will go to be with him is not a typical Scottish or British affair. Rather, it is something that is found worldwide regardless of re-ligion. Furthermore, at one time it was something that was the order of the day in all European countries. In Germany, inscriptions on innumerable and in the meantime occa-sionally overgrown and seldom cared for memorials and memorial stones for soldiers who fell in World War I are witnesses to this fact.

At the highest point of the hill upon which Edinburgh Castle stands, this phenomenon is very much alive. For those fellow countrymen with a connection to the memorial, it incites religious feelings. And a number of the reminders and inscriptions date from more recent times. The huge complex was opened in 1927 (see photo), deals mostly with World War II, and has as its most recent extension a memorial (better said, a chapel) that was added in 2003.

Just so that no one misunderstands me: The war against National Socialist Germany was largely a just cause. Also, as a German I thank all those countries whose citizens died so that Germany could be freed from Nazi dictatorship and that I can live in a Germany that is now free. However, the elevation of a just war to a type of religious war in the name of God, and the assertion that those who died would automatically find themselves in God’s presence – by the way, regardless of the faith to which they adhered – has to be rejected by Christian ethics.

Now to some details:

The large inscription in the west wing “Whether their fame centuries long should ring, They cared not overmuch, But they cared greatly to serve God and the King” (Henry Newbolt) or the Celtic inscription in the east chapel for the Scottish Corps: “My country, my honour, my God” (and under it a Celtic cross) may be dismissed as harmless and “God and king” looked at as an empty phrase. The shrines, angels, and religious symbols can also be booked under a rather general and diffuse religiosity; experts would tend to speak of a ‘civil religion.‘

Still, in the large chapel around the so-called ‘shrine’ there are angels who are wearing the coat of arms. The very large writing on the inner circumference of the chapel quotes from Wisdom 3:1+3 in the so-called Apocrypha: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. There shall no evil happen to them. They are in peace” (see photo).

Unknown soldiers are honored with an allusion to the book of life referred to in the New Testament (Revelation 20:12, and often): “Others also there are who perished un-known; their sacrifice is not forgotten, and their names, though lost to us, are written in the Books of God (see photo). Four kneeling and praying angels (see photo) and the arch-angel Michael hanging from the ceiling (see Revelation 12:7-8) complete the religious ori-entation toward Christianity.

God is directly exploited when God in the first person says the following for the benefit of the Royal Air Force in the Hall of Honour: “I bare you on eagles’ wings and brought you unto myself,“ which is taken from Exodus 19:4 (see photo).

Still one more example is the comment in the guide which appeared in 2004 regarding a statue in the east chapel: “A statue in bronze, partly overlaid with gold and silver, with a background of carved and painted stone showing the rising sun, the land and the sea (Earth, Air, Fire and Water). The symbolic figure represents the Soul rising purified from the Flames of Sacrifice, the left hand grasps the broken blade – the end of war – and the right hand raises the hilt – now the Cross Triumphant – while the eyes seem to gaze be-yond the range of mortal vision and to find there ‚A new Heaven and a new Earth‘ (Reve-lation, xxi 1)“ Scottish National War Memorial: Official Guide. Norwich: Jarrold Publ., 2004. p. 26) (see photo).

Oh man, oh man, as if nothing had happened, the sword is made into a triumphant cross and secures the new heavens and the new earth for the army. Soldiers who have died can reckon with the fact that they will be rewarded by God for their sacrifice?! Have we learned nothing from history?

Helping like Joseph

Church history in general, and the history of pietistic, Evangelical, and pious streams of faith have been deeply characterized by ever new Christian movements bringing hope for all layers of society and acting as particular advocates for victims of sin, regardless of whether it was their own sin, the sin of others, or collective sins. One can think, for instance, of the Evangelical anti-slavery movement, Methodism, the Salvation Army, diaconate mother abbies, the Blue Cross or the Black Cross and prison and rehabilitation ministries.  Christians have for instance become engaged around the world in the fight against alcoholism and drug addiction and have not shirked the painstaking work of offering the victims – whether they are themselves guilty or not or somewhere in between – opportunities for rehabilitation that might take years. It would appear clear that for the cause of global development there are opportunities to be like Jesus and offer hope to each individual wherever they are in the world, regardless of how many other people have written them off.

I recently published a German book together with Kurt Bangert of World Vision entitled HIV/AIDS as a Christian Challenge (HIV/AIS als christliche Herausforderung). Efforts against HIV and AIDS, for those who have contracted AIDS as well as for those who are AIDS victims in the broadest sense, is nothing other than action against other social and medical catastrophes encountered in the past, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, blindness, and incarceration.

The German book The Fight against Poverty (Der Kampf gegen Armut), which has just been released, is an endeavor of the Evangelical Alliance that I have published with Andreas Kusch. It is a type of theological justification and reflection on the Micah Initiative  and in the process takes up a matter similar to the aforementioned book.

The Old Testament role models of faith are found in Joseph and Daniel, who helped their countries and cultures and saved many lives. Joseph drafted a gigantic program that saved the lives of the Egyptians and others, although they believed in another god. Joseph and Daniel did not wait until the world around them corresponded to what they as god-fearing people desired to see. Rather, they won the respect of everyone, because they became involved for all people – though not in a way that led them to compromise their faith in the one true Creator and Savior.

Our task as Christians is not to wait for a world which pleases us more or to get the world into a manageable shape before we do something. Rather, we are to act in the world as we find it here and now, proclaim the love of our God, and concretely bear witness to it at that point.

My Great Grandfather’s Confession of Faith

My ancestors were Reformed Hugenots, who came from Salzburg to Prussia and finally settled in Danzig and Königsberg. My great grandfather Friedrich Schirrmacher (1790-1827), who was the director of the Petrischule (Petri School) in Danzig, left behind the following handwritten confession of faith, which is also my own conconfession:

My Confession of Faith
From the beginning the Evangelical church protested and must continue to protest, but first of all from a positive basis, namely that of unconditional belief in the free grace of God in Christ, and namely as it has been revealed in absolute form for all times in the writings of Paul, Peter, and John. And secondly, it protests on purely religious grounds and only against that which alters the basis for faith in some form.
Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher
born September 14, 1790
in Königsberg in Prussia

[Handwritten entry by Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher on the first blank page, or flyleaf, in a copy of Das Vater Unser: Ein Erbauungsbuch für jeden Christen (The Lord’s Prayer: A Devotional Book for Every Christian) by the vice president and senior court chaplain Christoph Friedrich von Ammon, D. Ch. G. Kayser’schen Buchhand lung F. Beyer: Leipzig, 1839 (in my possession)]

His son and my grandfather, Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher (1824-1904) left the following lines in the Danzig Reformed Songbook, which I also want to make my own:

Eins nur wünsch ich mir hienieden,
Jesu, Deinen Geist und Frieden,
Und von dem Ruhm an meinem Grabe,
daß ich Dich geliebet habe.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher

(There is only one thing I wish upon this earth,
Jesus, your Spirit and peace,
And from any luster at my grave,
that I loved you.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher)

[Handwritten entry in a songbook (Kirchen Gesang-Buch Der Evangelisch-Reformierten Gemeinde in Dantzig ( Church Songbook of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Danzig). Thom. Joh. Schreiber: Dantzig, 1745) in my possession. The first entry in the songbook is from September 14, 1777 by A. V. E. (presumably not a relative of the Schirrmacher family). On September 14, 1854 “Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher” dedicated the book to his son Friedrich Wilhelm, who wrote the quoted dedication without a date. The book in turn made its way via his son Leo Schirrmacher to his son Klaus Leo Schirrmacher, who on March 16, 1968 passed it on to “my loving brother Bernd Schirrmacher” upon the occasion of Bernd Schirrmacher’s birthday. Bernd Schirrmacher, my father, passed in on to me with the dedication “Christmas 1989.” (Compare to this Franz Kessler. Danzinger Gesangbücher 1586-1793. Einzelschriften der Historischen Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesforschung 15. Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk: Lüneburg, 1998. pp. 65-70 our songbook; also pp. 3-7 on the Reformation and pp. 6-7 on the Reformed in Danzig.)]

I have republished two of my grandfather’s books and provided introductions to both which carry the same wording. In a similar form the wording has appeared in the Biografisch-Bibliografischen Kirchenlexikon (Biographical-Bibliographical Church Encyclopedia) in German:

“Über den Verfasser.” pp. 5–28 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher. Briefe und Akten zum Marburger Religionsgespräch (1529) und zum Augsburger Reichstag (1530). Geschichte – Kirchengeschichte – Reformation 21. Bonn: VKW, 2003

“Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher”. pp. 5–23 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher. Die Entstehung des Kurfürstenkollegiums. Geschichte – Kirchengeschichte – Reformation 22. Bonn: VKW, 2003

“Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher (1825–1904)”. pp. 142–151 in: Thomas Schirrmacher, Klaus Schirrmacher, Ingrid von Torklus (eds.). Baumeister bleibt der Herr: Festgabe zum 80. Geburtstag von Prof. Bernd Schirrmacher. VKW: Bonn, 2001

“Schirrmacher, Friedrich Wilhelm”. 1226–1235 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, Traugott Bautz (eds.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon. Bautz: Herzberg beginning with vol. I, 1975, here vol. XIX, 2001

• www.bbkl.de
• See also Wikipedia: www.wikipedia.org