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Nazism and Religion: The Problem of “Positive Christianity”
Author(s) -
Koehne Samuel
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
australian journal of politics and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-8497
pISSN - 0004-9522
DOI - 10.1111/ajph.12043
Subject(s) - christianity , nazism , faith , german , religious studies , interpretation (philosophy) , meaning (existential) , philosophy , variety (cybernetics) , theology , epistemology , linguistics , artificial intelligence , computer science
Current debates on Nazism and religion are focused around the notion that the Nazis sought to promote a kind of Christian faith called “positive Christianity”. This article challenges such perspectives. It establishes that “positive Christianity” had an existing meaning in German society before the Nazi Party was formed — dogmatic Christian faith — and demonstrates that this was the same interpretation of religious faith that Hitler appeared to advocate in Mein Kampf . By contrast to recent revisionist accounts, the paper argues that “positive Christianity” had such a wide variety of interpretations that it cannot be considered as a cohesive construct.