God, grant me the kind of faith that grieves as much for Iranian school girls crushed at their desks as for brave American soldiers. The kind of faith that weeps as much for Palestinian children buried in rubble as for Israeli worshippers killed at worship. The kind of faith that pleads as much for wisdom […]

It is far too easy, when life is dark, to turn to facts and non-facts, arguments and counterarguments, all the words and torrents of opinion. We look to these things to help us make sense of the nonsensical, the absurd, the impossible to believe. But I find, when life is dark, poetry often helps more […]

Psalm 72 says - "Give insight of justice to the king, wisdom to distinguish right from wrong to his son -- that he might judge your people fairly, the poverty-stricken with vision of the just. Let mountains lift up peace for the people and the valleys flower with virtue. May he bring justice to the […]

A quick disclaimer to start this post: I am a beginner in my effort to understand the Confessing Church in Hitler's Germany. I am simply writing as I am learning. I may occasionally get my facts wrong, or simplify a topic that really shouldn't be simplified. I need to say that aloud. And, at the […]

Nazism and Christianity had a fraught and tangled relationship in Hitler's Germany. Though we would be hard-pressed to call Hitler a Christian, he sprinkled his speeches with all kinds of references to both God and faith. He pressed for something his government called "Positive Christianity," which was grounded almost totally in Germany's National Socialism, and […]

I have been fascinated by the German "Confessing Church" (1934-1948) for years. The Confessing Church was the movement within German Protestantism during Hitler's reign that withstood intense pressure by the Nazi government to take over the German church in order to create a united national church obedient and submissive to pro-Nazi authority. The Confessing Church […]