Darwin, Christians, and Hitler

As I was surfing the web the other day I came across an article on Salon.com on novelist James Carroll's book Constantine's Sword and the new documentary made from it. It is a book about anti-Semitism and the Catholic Church's complicity in it for centuries (or even millennia.) The article by Andrew O'Hehir in his "Beyond the Multiplex" column said at one point:

Carroll believes that Christians, and especially his fellow Catholics, must come to grips with the past. They can't claim to be a force of morality and integrity until they face the church's painful history of anti-Jewish libel and persecution -- and face it in what he terms a spirit of "repentant change."

As one who has been a student of this issue for nigh unto 40 years now (and a Christian who was born Jewish and more than painfully aware that in the anti-Semitic world even my daughter, 1/4 Jewish, would be singled out for hatred. That in spite of my 44 years as a Christian and her lifetime as one.)

Then came the next paragraph:

The culmination of Christian anti-Semitism, of course, arrived under the Nazis, ...

That line made me want to break my silence on the recent anti-evolution film with Ben Stein, Expelled. What makes the film controversial, as I understand it, is linking evolution with the Nazis. Without Darwin and evolution the Holocaust would never have happened.

Wrong! Sadly and greatly wrong. It makes it sound like the genocidal mania of the Final Solution is based on some liberal, secular idea. Hitler may have been the ultimate secular, and he was anything but liberal but his whole approach was based on an idea that has been around almost as long as the church.

Anti-Semitism of the same virulent and homicidal approach was around long, long, long before Darwin. It was around long before Newtonian science. Long before Copernicus took the earth (and us) out of the center of the universe. To make such a silly and reductionist claim about evolution is nothing short of bad history and a gret big form of denial.

The article goes on:

Carroll's objects of contemplation are various and his approach is always sober and reflective. He finds the roots of anti-Semitic violence in the Emperor Constantine's sudden conversion to Christianity, which came in a vision as he was crossing a bridge over the Tiber.

Ben Stein couldn't say that without getting into trouble. James Carroll, a Catholic and former seminarian can say it.

I am not getting into any argument about creationism vs evolution. I find it a silly, reductionist waste of good energy. But when the argument seeks to change or worse ignore history it is in danger of losing the war to win the battle. Yes, I know that Hitler would have used anything and anyone to justify what he was doing. But he knew what he was doing when he is reported to have said that he was about the finish what the church had been trying to do for centuries- get rid of the Jews.

And much of the church was found wanting when it came to standing up and saying "No!" After all, the government is for our protection. Those Jews must have been doing something wrong or the government wouldn't have taken them away.

Oh how scary!

I hope that Carroll's documentary gets a far wider showing than it will. Anti-Semitism is one of those powerful core sins of western civilization, just as racism is our American core sin. Anti-Semitism is not dead and gone. It is not based on Darwinian evolution. Yes, the Nazis utilized evolutionary thought to justify what they were going to do. But that isn't what drove them. Historically, for six times the length of time since Darwin, the world that the Nazis built on has been driven by anti-Semitism.