American ‘pro-life’ religious leaders same as 1930s Nazi Germany religious leaders
The decades-long battle against the abortion holocaust realized a victory with the recent Supreme Court ruling “overturning” Roe v. Wade, but instead of seeing it as an opportunity to motivate and equip the church for the abortion battles yet to come, American “pro-life” religious leaders embraced the same cheap grace theology of 1930s Nazi Germany that gave rise to Adolf Hitler.
In June 2016, I wrote an article about the similarities that existed between the American religious leaders and the Nazi Germany religious leaders responsible for the rise of Adolf Hitler, and I revisited the idea again in June 2020 ahead of that year’s election.
In both posts, it was my contention that the spiritual condition of the 21st century American church closely resembled that of 1930s Germany, and as a result, we were likely to see our great nation fall into the hands of a Hitler-like leader. Signs of this reality began with Obama, but it became glaringly clear with the undying and unconditional worship of Donald Trump by the cheap grace evangelical community and the rise of his inner circle of spiritual advisors I refer to as the Fellowship of the Pharisees.
I began to better understand the parallels between today’s spiritual leaders in America with 1930s Nazi Germany eight years ago after reading the Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography written by Eric Metaxas, a man who, ironically, joined the Trump cult to support overturning the 2020 election.
In the forward written by Timothy J. Keller, we read:
It’s impossible to understand . . . without becoming acquainted with the shocking capitulation of the German church to Hitler in the 1930s. How could the “church of Luther” . . . ever come to such a place? The answer is that the true gospel, summed up by Bonhoeffer as “costly grace,” had been lost. On the one hand, the church had become marked by formalism. That meant going to church and hearing that God just loves and forgives everyone, so it doesn’t really matter much how you live. Bonhoeffer called this “cheap grace.” On the other hand, there was legalism, or salvation by law and good works. Legalism meant that God loves you because you have pulled yourself together and are trying to live a good, disciplined life.
Both of these impulses made it possible for Hitler to come to power. (Emphasis mine)
The church in 1930s Germany was a house divided, with one side preaching an “anything goes” abuse of God’s grace, and the other side preaching that salvation was based on the law and good works. The leaders in each camp saw things in Hitler that bothered them, but not enough to risk their comfortable existence.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court abortion decision (Dobbs v. Jackson) — which didn’t end murdering babies — American “pro-life” religious leaders who should have celebrated the modest victory, chose to embrace the cheap grace theology that gave rise to Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany (via Grayson Quay and Patheos.com):
David French briefly acknowledged that we should “rejoice” at Roe’s demise before spending the bulk of his column tackling the real problem: pro-life Christians were insufficiently enthusiastic about the COVID-19 vaccines. Andrea Tornielli of Vatican News shamed pro-lifers for not caring enough about maternal mortality, paid family leave, and gun control. Megachurch Pastor Andy Stanley said he had strong personal feelings about abortion but wouldn’t tell his congregation what those feelings were.
Pastor Darryl Ford of Atlanta’s Ikon Community Church — which was planted by the pro-life Presbyterian Church in America — had the audacity to say, choking up as he did so, that image-bearing people “are going to die” if Christians fail to appreciate how multifaceted the abortion issue is. No comment on whether the sixty-three million babies killed since 1973 qualify as image-bearers. Ford also claimed that pro-life Americans were not “under persecution — we are the persecutors!”
Any clergyman who felt the need to respond to the decision by being what the kids call a “nuance bro,” or by refusing to acknowledge it altogether, did a grave disservice to his flock. Preachers are often told to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Instead, these leaders refused to rejoice with those who spent nearly fifty years laboring and suffering for Christ in order to spare the feelings of those who sided with Moloch.
Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. (Emphasis mine)
The cheap grace treatment of abortion by American “pro-life” religious leaders has another similarity to Nazi Germany and the rise of Adolf Hitler in the form of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.
Sanger was a birth control, population control, and eugenics activist, and her embrace of “negative eugenics” served as the basis for creating Planned Parenthood. In her rejection of “positive eugenics,” Sanger stressed the connection between birth control and eugenics when she wrote:
“Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit. Both are seeking a single end, but they lay emphasis upon different methods. Eugenics without Birth Control seems to us a house builded upon the sands. It is at the mercy of the rising stream of the unfit.” (Emphasis mine)
In the 1930’s, Sanger created the “Negro Project” — a plan designed to “kill off the black race” — and it was her ideas on eugenics that inspired Adolf Hitler to slaughter over six million Jews.
Under the banner of cheap grace, American “pro-life” religious leaders are promoting the lie that abortion is too nuanced to understand, and even that Christians are following God’s call by supporting a woman’s “right” to murder her baby before or after birth.
These Pharisaical leaders often mention that they are bothered about abortion, but like the religious leaders in 1930s Nazi Germany, apparently not bothered enough to risk the comfy, cozy existence of their “ministries.”
Jesus wept.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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