Positive Christianity (German: Positives Christentum) was a movement within Nazi Germany which blended ideas of racial purity with Christian doctrine. It was adopted as part of the official party doctrine at the NSDAP congress in 1920 to express a worldview which was Christian, non-confessional, vigorously opposed to the spirit of "Jewish Materialism", and oriented to the principle of voluntary association of those with a common racial-ethnic background.[1]
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Adherents of Positive Christianity argued that traditional Christianity emphasized the passive rather than the active aspects of Christ's life, stressing his miraculous birth, his suffering, his sacrifice on the cross and other-worldly redemption. They wanted to replace this with a "positive" emphasis on Christ as an active preacher, organizer and fighter who opposed the institutionalized Judaism of his day. At various points in the Nazi regime, attempts were made to replace conventional Christianity with its "positive" alternative.
Theological and doctrinal differences included:
Positive Christianity grew out of the Higher Criticism of the nineteenth century, with its emphasis on the distinction between the historical Jesus, and the divine Jesus of theology.[3] According to some schools of thought, the saviour-figure of orthodox Christianity was very different from the historical Galilean preacher. While many such scholars sought to place Jesus in the context of ancient Judaism, some writers reconstructed a historical Jesus who corresponded to anti-Semitic ideology. In the writings of such anti-Semites as Emile Burnouf, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Paul de Lagarde, Jesus was redefined as an Aryan hero who struggled against Judaism. Consistent with their origins in Higher Criticism, such writers often either rejected or minimized the miraculous aspects of Gospel narratives, reducing the crucifixion to a tragic coda to Jesus's life rather than its prefigured culmination. Both Burnouf and Chamberlain argued that the population of Galilee was racially distinct from that of Judea. Lagarde insisted that German Christianity must become "national" in character.
Positive Christianity was readily supported by the Nazi movement, which promoted its ideals in its journals Der Stürmer and Völkischer Beobachter, both of which stressed the "Nordic" character of Jesus. However, the party was careful to stress that positive Christianity was not intended to be a third confession, nor contradict the traditional theologies of established churches. As early as 1920 the Nazis proclaimed in their 25-point program that the "Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us".[4] Despite this, a number of Nazis openly challenged the established churches. Alfred Rosenberg, editor of Völkischer Beobachter, wrote The Myth of the Twentieth Century, in which he argued that the Catholic and Protestant churches had distorted Christianity in such a way that the "heroic" and "Germanic" aspects of Jesus's life had been ignored. For Rosenberg, positive Christianity was a transitional ideology that would pave the way to build a new fully racialist faith.[5] Its symbol was the orb of the sun in the form of a sun cross.
Hitler distanced himself from Rosenberg's more radical ideas, wishing to retain the support of the conservative Christian electorate and social elite, but he emphasized the desirability of positive Christianity. As an aspect of Gleichschaltung, the regime planned to nazify the Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelical Church) by unifying the separate 28 state churches under a single national church that was controlled by the German Christian faction. After some initial setbacks, the Nazis' candidate Ludwig Müller was elected the first Reichsbischof of the new Reichskirche (so-called German Evangelical Church) in September 1933. However, the German Christians' theological initiatives[6] met with resistance from some pastors, most notably Martin Niemöller, who organized the Pastors' Emergency League.[7][8] Following this failure, Hitler backtracked on attempts to directly nazify the churches.
The German Faith Movement founded by Jakob Wilhelm Hauer adopted a more thoroughly Aryanized form of the ideology, claiming to represent the essence of the "Protestant" spirit by mixing aspects of Christianity with ideas derived from "Aryan" religions such as Vedic Hinduism and "Aryo"-Persian religiosity (Manicheanism, etc.). They attempted to separate Nazi officials from church affiliations, banning nativity plays and calling for an end to daily prayers in schools.
With the fall of the Nazi regime in 1945, positive Christianity as a movement fell into obscurity. However it continues to be espoused by some Christian Identity groups.[9]