Nazianity

It is certainly understandable (and appreciated) that Christians wish to distance themselves from what happened in the heartland of the Protestant Reformation in the early decades of the 20th century. But there is a certain distortion of the historical record that is introduced by the strenuousness with which this distance is maintained. It is important to remember the ties that Hitler himself drew between his movement and Christianity. It is important to remember the cooperation he received from the majority of German Lutheran churchmen. Well educated and highly cultured Protestants herded Jews onto the trains bound for the camps and pulled the trigger when called upon to do so. And well educated and highly cultured Protestants who were not directly involved in the debacle obligingly looked the other way.

And they still look the other way when it comes to Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya--and that is just the short list.

As Santayana the Moor admonished us: Those who forget the past (or, in this case, selectively remember it) are doomed to repeat it.