Yesterday I posted the link to a McClatchy news article that speculated that Barack Obama’s sudden openness to discussing his faith comes as a reaction to a poll which showed that an increasing number of people are unsure about what he believes in or suspect he is not a follower of the Christian faith. Drake University political scientist Dennis Goldford suggested in the article that Obama’s sudden openness is a tactic to show people he’s not out of the mainstream.
What I want to do today is to alert people that it’s not unprecedented for a political leader to lie about their religious beliefs for political reasons (I'm not trying to imply that Obama is lying or not). The political leader I highlight today was a fairly well-known man (okay, that’s an understatement) named Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler publicly was portrayed as a loyal follower of the Catholic faith while in power in Nazi Germany. Hitler was often photographed conversing with Catholic Church officials and often referenced Christianity and God in his political speeches.
- The following quote from 1933 is an example when Hitler referenced Christianity in one of his speeches: “The Government of the Reich, which regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation, attaches the greatest value to friendly relations with the Holy See, and is endeavoring to develop them”.[1]
- Here is a widely-circulated photo of Hitler leaving a church service: Link and a photo of Hitler welcoming a Roman Catholic cardinal at a public event: Link
The typical 1930s German who saw the above photos and listened to Hitler’s words probably thought that Hitler was a devout Catholic. However, the reality was that Hitler was just a Catholic in name only…
Behind the scenes Hitler spoke of his so-called Catholic faith in this manner:
“I’m a Catholic. Certainly that was fated from the beginning, for only a Catholic knows the weakness of the Church…I promise you…that if I wished to, I could destroy the Church in a few years; it is hollow and rotten and false”.[2]
As for Christianity in general, Hitler privately told aides that he wanted to destroy the faith he publicly claimed to be a follower of:
“The peasant will be told what the Church has destroyed for him: the whole of the secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, of the daemonic. The peasant shall learn to hate the Church on that basis…We shall wash off the Christian veneer and bring a religion peculiar to our race”.[3]
Hitler was not a true follower of the Christian faith. Hitler was actuality a major practitioner of the occult (there are dozens of books and several television documentaries that cover the Hitler’s occult background, so there is plenty of material available if you want to learn more about that). However, Hitler could not tell the German public that he truly was not a Christian or was actually a practitioner of the occult because Germany was a predominantly Christian nation at that time (I doubt that any predominantly Christian country would tolerate having a leader who openly told people that he practices the occult back then or today). As a consequence, Hitler had to give the public the illusion that he was a follower of the Catholic faith to prevent Germans from turning against his him for religious reasons.
I am not trying to compare Obama to Adolf Hitler or trying to imply that Obama is lying about his religious beliefs in this article. I even acknowledge that Hitler might have been a fairly extreme example to use in this article because few political leaders in history were like him. However, what I’m trying to show is that it’s not unprecedented for political leaders to mislead people about their religious beliefs when political capital is at stake.
- Some people argue that a political leader’s religious beliefs are irrelevant. For the most part I would agree, but a political leader’s religious beliefs can sometimes influence what social policies they support and oppose. As an example, a staunch Catholic is probably going to oppose legislation that would expand government funding of abortion. Religion sometimes impacts politics whether people like it or not...
No matter how you feel about Obama‘s faith, you’ll probably agree that is fair to critique him as long as he flaunts it to the public. You'll probably even agree that it is fair to critique any political leader who flaunts his or her faith to the public.
References
[1] Hitler, Adolf. “Hitler’s Speech to the Reichstag”. Berlin. 23 Mar. 1933. http://humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/speeches/1933-03-23.html .
[2] Rauschning, Hermann. The Voice of Destruction. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940 52-53
[3] Ibid. 55
