Amen!
Amen is a lucid movie, effectively exposing the simple-mindedness of that vast majority of churchgoers in Germany. This movie effectively exposes the natural inclination of organized religion to cave into the state or look the other way concerning the states’ atrocities, in trade for maintaining a belonging within society and security. This movie screams; BEWARE, at religious conservatives today who do not see that they think similarly to the confessing-church of Germany.
The movie is fairly authentic, maybe it’s because it’s not a Hollywood production. Amen! is loosely based on the true story of Dr. Kurt Gerstein (1905-1945), an atypical SS officer, see: (http://www.kino.com/amen/amen_gerst.html). This movie takes a few liberties with the actual chronology of real life events; fabricating dialog and depiction to aid the viewer in understanding what can be learned from this man’s life.
Germany’s religious community was divided and conquered by Hitler’s programs, which the movie does not depict. One such division took place in the organized church [see: Kingdom Citizenship’s book review on Hitler’s Cross].* Since Hitler took power in 1933 churchgoers found themselves being divided between nationalism and what was thought to be more biblical beliefs, only not really. The “biblical beliefs group” was also nationalistic, just not to the extreme of the Nazis. This deception Amen! illustrates very well. The “more biblical” church in Germany [a close relative of religious conservatives in America] was insignificant and impotent against what the state was doing. Their beliefs, as with ours leave the church without an ability to be an alternative. The church has no means of being set apart to do anything except go along with the state while pinching its nose and complaining from time to time.
Gerstein is a depiction of one of those who hold to the confessing-church** ideal, meaning those churches with allegedly a more biblical view. What is lost on many people even today is that the confessing-church was no badge of honor because it was significantly weakened by the duplicity of claiming a belonging within the state. This duplicity was sharply noted in the confessing-church, depicted by Gerstein and his pastor, constantly concerning themselves with an alleged relationship with the state. Thus their reaction or action was buffered because of having to serve two masters.
Religious Ignorance & Foolishness
Gerstein:
A conservative devoted man, with convictions consistent with any modern pro-lifer. He thought he should “serve his country” in a war: a country (political system) whose intellectual positions included eugenics, racial superiority… Wow! How does a “christian” end up in that mess?
He thought he should stay in “that hell” [the Waffen SS] to help and draw attention to the evil. He was most certainly overwhelmed by the evil and very much complicit with it; even while trying to find a ways to obstruct it and stop it. Many times his efforts to expose the evil were hampered by his belonging to the organization most know for evil in Germany during WWII.
Thought the religious community could be effective against the evil of the state while the organized church, at the same time, was trying to benefit from the state. It tried to be secure and safe within the states’ provisions.
Gerstein’s Pastor:
A devout man, who mistakenly thought the state’s evil can be stopped buy protests. This is like asking a fox to be decent and guard the hen house with the hens’ interests in mind. In the churches’ selfish affair with the state, the church is of no consequence to the state. If the state chooses not to comply with the churches protest, what is the church do? As in the movie, it’s sits on its hands or tries weakly tries to tread water on issues. The state already controls the church because of the church’s dependence on the State, so why should the state listen? Why should the church protest to the ones perpetrating the evil. Does this not defy logic or what?
Protestant Church:
Historically it generally goes along to get along. The Protestant church is just a compromised as the Catholic church because of looking to survive within the state, by the state’s provisions. German church-goers were first of all German’s and a distant second Lutheran’s or part of a confessing-church.
Catholic Church:
Rome was even more indifferent to the Nazi regime than the Protestant church. Rome was afraid of potential reprisals and perhaps being looted by the Nazi-regime. The Nazis posed a real threat of loss, in human materialistic and collateral terms, concerning art collections, buildings and cultural prestige. Look at what the Nazis did to France. Can you see where the churches’ real allegiances are? So complicit, and afraid, the Catholic Church was that it signed a concordant with Hitler to secure its perpetuity.
The Jesuit:
To think that if evil becomes so overwhelming, one must automatically give into the evil machine and experience the state’s atrocities by purposely encountering the same fate, is certainly more admirable than the confessing churches’ but it is a cop out. This approach totally removes any means of maintaining a presence in the world in order to provide, protection, hope and alternatives. This priest, though admirable in some senses, depicts a total abdication of resistance or alternative.
Religious people in general:
Their mindset is very temporal and does not recognize evil until they are overwhelmed by it. They tend to think things are ok in this world until they are besieged by its evil on a personal level. They do not take warnings of distant symptoms as being a sign to start plotting a different path. Religious people only plot when there is no time or ability to respond and after the evil machine has gained total efficiency. If religious people were intelligent they would keep the status quo changing so that the state could never dismiss the followers of Christ as being no consequence, as they have been able to do with the organized church.
Many believers will pay the ultimate price in stepping outside the place the States’ set for the organized church, but this does not mean that we should automatically surrender to the eventualities. Resistance and providing an alternative as long as we can, should be our goal. Be creative and astute, when there is no more opportunity to continue we can face the ultimate price with grace. It is then that we can fully identify with all those who have passed in a similar way.
Final Thoughts:
While there are many ways of looking at this movie, few reviewers will see it as I do. The religious see no problem with carrying an identity with the state they were born in or now live within. However, it is this very thing, which has become the Achilles tendon to the church since it married the state in Emperor Constantine’s time. The church is most effective when it is not looking to the state for anything, but rather to God for everything to including survival.
When there is nothing to be gained from the state there is nothing to loose from it as well. We become much more able to do what God wants since He is not married to the state either. We can become the Kingdom of God amongst the kingdoms of men, an independent force that the world cannot assimilate into its culture. It will not be able to duplicate who we are or what we do. We will not be ignored, nor can we be stifled for God is infinitely more capable and provisional than any state.
*Note: In Hitler’s Cross, Erwin Lutzer articulates how Hitler used nationalism with the organized church first, and then loyalty to national belong to make the first divisions amongst the religious. Then, Hitler used a reinterpretation of “Christians,” adding the adjective concept of “positive” to remove the old thoughts and whimsical convictions and instill warm fuzzy feeling of what it meant to belong to Hitler’s society: The 3rd Reich. The churches’ greatest weakness was that it considered itself to be German, the rest of the compromises and divisions were just natural progression of a manipulator, preying upon people who didn’t know who they really were, that wanted to belong to something.
**Note: Hitler’s Cross, coins the term “confessing church” to mean those of evangelical convictions and tendencies.
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The Diluted Church
This book is about the major diluting factors in the organized church in this country (USA). This dilution has to do with the church's - particularly the conservative religious right crowd's - dependency and focus on politics as the major means of changing culture in this country.
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