|
footnote: The persecutions of the Jews by Christians lasted until the nineteenth century and continued in Russia until the twentieth century. Equality of rights in the state came into being only under the influence of the Enlightenment. The Christian anti-semitism of the Middle Ages which had its root in Christian theology was followed in the nineteenth century by the racially-founded philosophy that, in the recent past, with the annihilation of six million Jews, has demonstrated that it is an explosive force which has outlived centuries. (162:3) footnote: Even during the persecutions of the Jews under Hitler, Protestant Churches in Germany renounced their baptized Jewish members. On 17 December 1941 the bishops and presidents of the Synods of Saxony, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Anhalt, Thueringen and Luebeck published a declaration in which, with reference to Martin Luther, they defined the Jews as the "born enemies of the world and of the empire" and demanded the strictest measures to be taken against them: "Christian baptism will change nothing of the racial character, the national membership and biological nature of the Jew. A German Protestant church has the duty to look after and promote the religious life of fellow Germans. Christians of the Jewish race have no place and no right in it. This is why the undersigned Protestant churches and church leaders have cleared every community of Jewish Christians".
(162:4)
|