The Aryan Jesus

The Aryan Jesus
Author: Susannah Heschel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2010-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691148058

Was Jesus a Nazi? During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939, these theologians established the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life. In The Aryan Jesus, Susannah Heschel shows that during the Third Reich, the Institute became the most important propaganda organ of German Protestantism, exerting a widespread influence and producing a nazified Christianity that placed anti-Semitism at its theological center. Based on years of archival research, The Aryan Jesus examines the membership and activities of this controversial theological organization. With headquarters in Eisenach, the Institute sponsored propaganda conferences throughout the Nazi Reich and published books defaming Judaism, including a dejudaized version of the New Testament and a catechism proclaiming Jesus as the savior of the Aryans. Institute members--professors of theology, bishops, and pastors--viewed their efforts as a vital support for Hitler's war against the Jews. Heschel looks in particular at Walter Grundmann, the Institute's director and a professor of the New Testament at the University of Jena. Grundmann and his colleagues formed a community of like-minded Nazi Christians who remained active and continued to support each other in Germany's postwar years. The Aryan Jesus raises vital questions about Christianity's recent past and the ambivalent place of Judaism in Christian thought.

Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus

Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus
Author: Susannah Heschel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1998-04-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0226329593

Was Jesus the founder of Christianity or a teacher of Judaism? When 19th-century German religious reformer Abraham Geiger argued the latter, he began a debate that continues to this day. Here Susannah Heschel traces the genesis of Geiger's contention and examines the reaction to it within Christian theology. 3 photos.

Hitler's Religion

Hitler's Religion
Author: Richard Weikart
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2016-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1621575519

A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!

Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus

Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus
Author: REGGIE L. WILLIAMS
Publisher:
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2021-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781481315852

Dietrich Bonhoeffer publicly confronted Nazism and anti-Semitic racism in Hitler's Germany. The Reich's political ideology, when mixed with theology of the German Christian movement, turned Jesus into a divine representation of the ideal, racially pure Aryan and allowed race-hate to become part of Germany's religious life. Bonhoeffer provided a Christian response to Nazi atrocities. In this book author Reggie L. Williams follows Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he encounters Harlem's black Jesus. The Christology Bonhoeffer learned in Harlem's churches featured a black Christ who suffered with African Americans in their struggle against systemic injustice and racial violence--and then resisted. In the pews of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, under the leadership of Adam Clayton Powell Sr., Bonhoeffer was captivated by Christianity in the Harlem Renaissance. This Christianity included a Jesus who stands with the oppressed, against oppressors, and a theology that challenges the way God is often used to underwrite harmful unions of race and religion. Now featuring a foreword from world-renowned Bonhoeffer scholar Ferdinand Schlingensiepen as well as multiple updates and additions, Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's immersion within the black American narrative was a turning point for him, causing him to see anew the meaning of his claim that obedience to Jesus requires concrete historical action. This ethic of resistance not only indicted the church of the German Volk, but also continues to shape the nature of Christian discipleship today.

The Aryan Christ

The Aryan Christ
Author: Richard Noll
Publisher: Random House (NY)
Total Pages: 376
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

st Richard Noll reveals the all-too human man for what he really was--a genius who, believing he was a god, founded a neopagan religious movement that offered mysteries for a new age. In "The Aryan Christ", Noll draws on never-before-published material to create the first full account of Jung's private and public lives. Photos.

Fragile Finitude

Fragile Finitude
Author: Michael Fishbane
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022676429X

The world we engage with is a vibrant collage brought to consciousness by language and our creative imagination. It is through the symbolic forms of language that the human world of value is revealed—this is where religious scholar Michael Fishbane dwells in his latest contribution to Jewish thought. In Fragile Finitude, Fishbane clears new ground for a theological life through a novel reinterpretation of the Book of Job. On this basis, he offers a contemporary engagement with the four classical types of Jewish Scriptural exegesis. The first focuses on worldly experience, the second on communal forms of practice and thought in the rabbinical tradition, the third on personal development, and the fourth on transcendent, cosmic orientations. Through these four modes, Fishbane manages to transform Jewish theology from within, at once reinvigorating a long tradition and moving beyond it. What he offers is nothing short of a way to reorient our lives in relation to the divine and our fellow humans. Written from within the Jewish tradition, Fragile Finitude is intended for readers across the religious spectrum.

Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity

Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity
Author: Abraham Joshua Heschel
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1997-05-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780374524951

Gathers essays by the Jewish scholar, activist, and theologian about Judaism, Jewish heritage, social justice, ecumenism, faith, and prayer.

The Color of Christ

The Color of Christ
Author: Edward J. Blum
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2012-09-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0807837377

How is it that in America the image of Jesus Christ has been used both to justify the atrocities of white supremacy and to inspire the righteousness of civil rights crusades? In The Color of Christ, Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey weave a tapestry of American dreams and visions--from witch hunts to web pages, Harlem to Hollywood, slave cabins to South Park, Mormon revelations to Indian reservations--to show how Americans remade the Son of God visually time and again into a sacred symbol of their greatest aspirations, deepest terrors, and mightiest strivings for racial power and justice. The Color of Christ uncovers how, in a country founded by Puritans who destroyed depictions of Jesus, Americans came to believe in the whiteness of Christ. Some envisioned a white Christ who would sanctify the exploitation of Native Americans and African Americans and bless imperial expansion. Many others gazed at a messiah, not necessarily white, who was willing and able to confront white supremacy. The color of Christ still symbolizes America's most combustible divisions, revealing the power and malleability of race and religion from colonial times to the presidency of Barack Obama.

Twisted Cross

Twisted Cross
Author: Doris L. Bergen
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807860344

How did Germany's Christians respond to Nazism? In Twisted Cross, Doris Bergen addresses one important element of this response by focusing on the 600,000 self-described 'German Christians,' who sought to expunge all Jewish elements from the Christian church. In a process that became more daring as Nazi plans for genocide unfolded, this group of Protestant lay people and clergy rejected the Old Testament, ousted people defined as non-Aryans from their congregations, denied the Jewish ancestry of Jesus, and removed Hebrew words like 'Hallelujah' from hymns. Bergen refutes the notion that the German Christians were a marginal group and demonstrates that members occupied key positions within the Protestant church even after their agenda was rejected by the Nazi leadership. Extending her analysis into the postwar period, Bergen shows how the German Christians were relatively easily reincorporated into mainstream church life after 1945. Throughout Twisted Cross, Bergen reveals the important role played by women and by the ideology of spiritual motherhood amid the German Christians' glorification of a 'manly' church.