Before Auschwitz Quotes

“By this I mean the fact that Hitler regarded the Darwinian criticism of the West’s antecedent religious traditions as decisive for their refutation and searched for a new, naturalistic theology guided by the root principle of natural selection, the immanent struggle of life against life. Hitler’s new theology then would be firmly rational, based on science, with an articulate theological doctrine—not running around in the woods naked hugging trees and building bonfires, as he disdainfully mocked German neopagans.”
― Paul R. Hinlicky, Before Auschwitz: What Christian Theology Must Learn from the Rise of Nazism

“In so far as students have thought at all about the sources of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, however, almost all are unaware of Hitler’s modernism in matters of religion, nor of the fact, as we saw in Chapter 1, that the ranks of the Nazified German Christians were filled with theological modernists.139”
― Paul R. Hinlicky, Before Auschwitz: What Christian Theology Must Learn from the Rise of Nazism

“Hitler wrote: “Mind and soul ultimately return to the collective being of the world. If there is a God, then he gives us not only life but also consciousness and awareness. If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know that I have acted in good faith.”134 For many of my uncritically “tolerant” students, there would be nothing here with which theologically to disagree. For them too, the mere sincerity of being true to your inner self guarantees that you can’t go wrong when you act in good faith. My introductory exercise sometimes succeeds in shocking students out of the lazy complacency of uncritical tolerance of any and all theologies.135 Sincerity does not count for much.136”
― Paul R. Hinlicky, Before Auschwitz: What Christian Theology Must Learn from the Rise of Nazism