Preaching in Hitler's Shadow Quotes

“Gideon conquers, the church conquers, we conquer, because faith conquers. But the victory belongs not to Gideon, the church, or ourselves, but to God. And God's victory means our defeat, our humiliation; it means God's derision and wrath at all human pretensions of might, at humans puffing themselves up and thinking they are somebodies themselves. It means the world and its shouting is silenced, that all our ideas and plans are frustrated; it means the cross. The cross over the world -- that means that human beings, even the most noble, go down to dust whether it suits them or not, and with them all the gods and idols and lords of this world. The cross of Jesus Christ --that means God's bitter mockery of all human grandeur and God's bitter suffering in all human misery, God's lordship over all the world.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“Basically, the Christian community failed to be any more of an opposition to Nazism than any other institution in German society, be it the university, the courts, or the military.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“Klemperer’s insight that Nazi speech dealt in superlatives. Hence, Hitler was the “smartest” leader of the “bravest” people of the “purest” blood, and Germany was the “greatest country” and “most glorious” of nations in the most “heroic” of wars and struggles against the “worst” of enemies in the “most dangerous” of times.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“While many at the time found themselves in conflict over their loyalty as Germans and their identity as Christians, Lackmann insisted that for Christians there was no conflict; they must side with Christ and against the Nazi state.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“On one occasion Barth invited a student to contribute an essay to the journal. The student was Max Lackmann, who was only twenty-four years old at the time. The essay, “Lord, Where Shall We Go?” appeared in the summer of 1934 and clearly drew a line between faithfulness to God’s word and faithfulness to the Nazi state.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“In this belief system Nazism had replaced hallmarks of Christianity with the qualities of a good Nazi: strength rather than weakness; domination rather than humility; hatred rather than love; dependence on Hitler rather than dependence on Christ, not to mention the importance of blood, race, and soil rather than the sacraments, and a sense of eternity.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“although Hitler peppered speeches with references to God, neither he nor Nazism had a single thing in common with traditional Christianity. Nazi religion was pagan, containing a pagan savior and creed. The creed knew nothing of sin, and its faith glorified violence. Nazism had no meekness or humility, no love of neighbor, and no thought of forgiveness.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“The new führer ended his address with a prayer, “May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany.”3 We should notice his wedding of a militant and nationalistic faith to a militant and nationalistic political program: “we are fighting.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“If we think only of the great needs, then we are less likely to notice the individual small needs requiring our help. And all the great needs grow really out of little ones, or better, from the fact that in our blindness we in the beginning failed to see the little needs.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich

“We have Gideon because we don't want always to be speaking of our faith in abstract, otherworldly, irrreal, or general terms, to which people may be glad to listen but don't really take note of; because it is good once in a while actually to see faith in action, not just hear what it should be like, but see how it just happens in the midst of someone's life, in the story of a human being. Only here does faith become, for everyone, not just a children's game, but rather something highly dangerous, even terrifying. Here a person is being treated without considerations or conditions or allowances; he has to bow to what is being asked, or he will be broken. This is why the image of a person of faith is so often that of someone who is not beautiful in human terms, not a harmonious picture, but rather that of someone who has been torn to shreds. The picture of someone who has learned to have faith has the peculiar quality of always pointing away from the person's own self, toward the One in whose power, in whose captivity and bondage he or she is. So we have Gideon, because his story is a story of God glorified, of the human being humbled.”
― Dean G. Stroud, Preaching in Hitler's Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich