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Why do most RELIGIONS not tell their members not to fight and kill in wars ??


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Old 07-12-2016, 03:05
noodkleopatra
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BIB to start with..... Are you sure about that?

I thought Hitler was a sceptic when it came to religion. For political appearance-sake wasn't he more neutral, but secretly quite set against organised Christian religion? He had Goering (sp) and Bormann actively persecute the various religious organisations. Something to do with the way Christian values ran contrary to Hitler's ideas of the genetic superiority of the Aryan race. So Christians were persecuted for their beliefs.
Well, look at the demographics of Nazi Germany. Regardless of Hitler's own scepticism, Nazi Germany was an overwhelmingly Christian country, and Hitler moulded his ideologies (that is, of how to make them appealable) around Christianity (e.g. "Positive Christianity", Reich churches, etc). He also appealed to the "traditional" (for want of a better word) trends of anti-Semitism long associated with the Church, and from it being "contradictory" to Christianity (it certainly, at least one would hope, these days be seen as contradictory - at least in the enlightened West) he did what many religious folk have done in power and that was to find convenient ways of appealing to religious beliefs as well as justifying such actions by popular faith (let's face it, when it comes to Jewish people, Hitler wasn't alone in doing that - Christianity and anti-Semitism are not strange bedfellows).

Now: religious organisations. Indeed. But of course any organisation under Nazi Germany that was seen to hold too much power (e.g. Church, other political parties/organisations). But to equate this to persecution of the Christian populous, especially in comparison to the Jewish, is really quite false (with exception of course to Jehovah's Witnesses and other Christians [and non-Christians] who opposed his regime); I'm not saying Christian freedoms weren't curtailed, but Christianity was seen as the norm for the Aryan race at the time.

Now, long-term indeed Hitler most likely had a plan to replace Christianity with his neo-pagan, Nazi religion, but in the short term, his actions obviously weren't too out of step with the Christian populous at the time. I'm not saying Christianity is responsible, or that Christianity was what made people vote for Hitler - but it certainly wasn't something that presented a direct clash of ideologies.
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Old 07-12-2016, 08:19
Chris Frost
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Ah right. So after doing a bit more reading on this it looks like what he did was to persecute non-protestant religious organisations and their followers. So in a sense what I said was right; Christians were persecuted, but not protestants. It's a question of definitions then. Christian is too broad a term of reference in relation to this discussion.

While we're at it, let's just define persecution. At one extreme end of the scale is the sort of persecution that the Jewish race suffered. (BTW, I don't think I ever Christian persecution was on the same level as that which the Jews suffered; that's a leap you suggested, not me.) At the other end of the scale is the interference with how Christian organisations (including the protestant church) ran themselves. That's still persecution because it's an attempt to curtail freedoms. So again, it's true to say that Christian churches of all faiths were persecuted, just not to the extreme way that the Jews were.
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