GOSPEL DELTA

Hirsch on Auschwitz and Christo-Paganism

// March 10th, 2010 // Life

Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Christo-Paganism of Europe

by Alan Hirsch

I am still trying to process the visit to the world’s worst death camp. Needless to say it is an overwhelming experience. Let me be upfront and say that part of my struggle arises from my European Jewish heritage. I tend to see Europe, particularly religious Europe, through the distinct lens of my Jewish identity.

Anyone visiting such places leaves there with the perplexing questions of ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ I know that greater minds and hearts have tried to probe the mystery of human evil and failed, so I won’t even pretend to try. But the the question that just won’t leave me, is simply this: ‘how the heck did this absolute evil horror emerge from so-called Christian Europe??’ I simply cannot understand how, after having the light of God’s Word for at least 17 Centuries, European ‘Christian civilization’ could produce the unprecedented horror of the holocaust? Most Christians dodge this question by simply saying that “well, it was not real Christianity that did this”, or ” we can’t judge other eras”. But that dodges the issue that it was the very Europe that claimed to represent the Christian story that produced violence, antisemitism, and xenophobic bullying for as long as the Christian story has been in that context. Some of our spiritual heroes…Chrysostom and Luther for instance (and they are the tip of the iceberg) were given to bouts of vitriolic antisemitism. It was out of this sordid history that Nazism drew some legitimacy.

The only way I can possibly get to an answer of this disturbing question is to say that what has passed as Christianity in Europe is for the most part only really a thinly veiled, thoroughly syncretistic, religion called Christo-paganism, but it is paganism nonetheless. Any visit to the high Catholic cathedrals does leave a disinterested observer with the distinct impression that idolatry, nature worship, and the worship of the female divine lies under the surface of the overt Christian symbols.

No less than Newbigin reflected this same insight when he suggested that European Christianity was like a stone that had been immersed into a river for thousands of years: Take it out of the water and it is wet all around, crack it open and it is completely dry on the inside. I suggest that one can easily come to the conclusion that the religion of Europe is actually a veneer of Christianity but the deepest mythos, its cultural heart so to speak, is largely pre-Christian. At the very least it is highly syncretistic.

This is exactly why the Nazis could use Wagner’s operas to conjure up/reinvoke the violent Teutonic gods of pre-Christian Germany. We can only conclude that they were always there–they were never effectively exorcised from the German mythic imagination! Certainly they were not displaced by the cultural Christianity imposed during the Christendom period. So, after 1600 years they rose up to inform the 20th Century national narrative…as amazing as it is horrifying!

Many are going to be completely offended by this, but I don’t think we can seriously come to any other conclusion. And to be honest, I don’t particularly feel inclined to be particularly generous at this point. And these are not thoughts that have only emerged from a visit to Birkenau. Whenever I visit Europe I am haunted by its past…I see shadows everywhere…lots of blood, superstition, and hatred…and yes, evil amidst all the beauty, culture, and history. And this is not to say that there are not real saints in the midst and that Europe has not produced some marvelous Christian movements. My Debs always reminds me when I get dark like this that God always preserves a remnant for himself, and clearly this is true (e.g. the Celts, Francis, Wesley, etc.) What I am saying is that the prevailing religion of Europe, and the accompanying Christian civilization built on it, cannot claim to be authentically Christian–not in the Biblical sense of the word at least. Either this is true or my capacity to discern Biblical truth manifested in human experience is seriously marred. I have to concede that this might be true but I have to trust my perception on this. I am amazed, along with Anglican poet, T. S. Elliot, that “After two thousand years of Christian Mass // We have come as far as poison gas”. How the hell can this be so? How can we commune with Christ and produce horrors!

My response is to get on with evangelizing this continent and stop mourning the loss of so-called ‘Christian Europe’…I seriously doubt it was ever truly Christian in the first place. Besides any religion that creates holocausts (or passively stands by while they take place) is in my opinion not worth preserving and clearly needs to ‘hear’ the Gospel and repent like all non-believing pagans do. In the end, it appears that pagan is what pagan does.

Some of you are going to have to forgive me for the nature of this rant. I admit to feeling somewhat involved in all this…how can I not? But I don’t want you to dodge the probing question that lies behind it. How could anything approximating a Jesus-shaped Christianity produce the systematic evil and violence normally associated with Satan? Answer that and we will have come a long way to solving the enigma of European religion.