The author and journalist Frederick Clarkson has taken the conversation about Eric Metaxas and the HHS
Mandate in a different direction by interpreting a speech by Metaxas
differently than I did. Here is the paragraph from Metaxas’ speech at the
Catholic Information Center in DC:
“This HHS mandate” situation
he said “is so oddly similar to where Bonhoeffer found himself” early in the
Nazi era. “If we don’t fight now,” Metaxas warned,
“if we don’t really use all our bullets now, we will have no
fight five years from now. It’ll be over. This it. We’ve got to die on this
hill. Most people say, oh no, this isn’t serious enough. Its just this little
issue. But it’s the millimeter... its that line that we cross. I’m sorry to say
that I see these parallels. I really wish I didn’t.”
Fred ties this revolutionary
language into a broader context of conservative rhetoric that invites violence. I am not sure that I
agree with him. I interpreted Metaxas to be speaking metaphorically in the
paragraph sited. However, I wonder if I have viewed the quote that way because
I was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. It would certainly fit
with Metaxas’ focus on Bonhoeffer, the man who attempted to assassinate Hitler,
to view his call to bullets and “die on this hill” literally, but I don’t think
that was his intent. I still think I was right to interpret his language as a call to skip nuance, fight verbally with every last extreme language possible, and leave the careful language for after the "crisis". What I can say is that Metaxas’ lack of clarity in using
this kind of language is troubling.
The focus of my writing on
Eric Metaxas has been on his refusal to substantiate extraordinary charges
against the Obama Administration in general and the Health and Human Services
in particular. But of course the reason Metaxas has a platform for these
opinions, indeed the seeming reason why he is not even forced to make an actual
argument for his view that the HHS Mandate is comparable to early Nazi
legislation, is because of the mantle of authority that his biography of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has provided him. In that light, it is interesting to see
two of Metaxas’ fellow Christian intellectuals, Tony Jones and Scot McKnight,
raising important questions about the veracity of that scholarship. Both Jones
and McKnight reference with approval a significant review by the Bonhoeffer
scholar Victoria Barnett. McKnight calls her essay “one of the best” and says
she has “the same sort of problems I had with Metaxas, not
the least of which is his failure to mention that Bonhoeffer was on Bultmann’s
side when it came to the historicity of the Gospels — both when Bonhoeffer was
in Spain and then later when the conservative Lutheran pastors disputed
Bultmann.”
Jones points to Barnett’s
review as well, noting it is an example of a trend that should cause Metaxas’
loyal followers some pause:
The problem? Metaxas’s account of Bonhoeffer’s life has been
almost universally derided by Bonhoeffer scholars. They say that he
simply took bits and pieces of Bonhoeffer’s biography — all cribbed from
earlier books — and pasted them together to make his point that Bonhoeffer was
actually a conservative cultural warrior who repudiated liberal Christianity
and considered fundamentalists in America to be in the same plight as German
Jews.
I
trust that Metaxas is my brother in Christ, but unfortunately he simply does
not have sufficient grounding in history, theology, and philosophy to properly
interpret Bonhoeffer. This is not just my opinion. Victoria Barnett, the editor
of the English-language edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, wrote a
scathing review of Metaxas's biography. In her opinion, Metaxas "has a
very shaky grasp of the political, theological, and ecumenical history of the
period." She then calls Metaxas's portrayal of Bonhoeffer's theology
"a terrible simplification and at times misrepresentation."
What Barnett says of Metaxas’ biography of
Bonhoeffer is what I say about his claim to have discerned some sort of link
between early Nazi laws and the HHS Mandate, namely that it is “a terrible
simplification and at times misrepresentation."
The memory of the Shoah is
holy and its implications for Christian moral reflection profound. Among the
many ideas that flow from meditation on the Holocaust, two appear in seeming
tension. On the one hand is the determination that any consideration of Nazi
crimes produces to see that it never happens again. On the other, comes a
reverence for the memory of those who died—as individuals and as members of
communities targeted for elimination. The moral imperative compels us to be
ever vigilant in rooting out the structures of evil that give rise to such
terror, while the reverence imperative cautions us to never cheapen or profane
the memory of those who were lost.
It is my conviction that in
the debate over the HHS Mandate notable leaders in the Christian community have
failed to show reverence for the memory of the Holocaust and have in their zeal
to force a change by the Obama Administration manipulated the moral imperative
of the Holocaust in ways injurious to the common good. I have in mind in
particular the best-selling author Eric Metaxas, biographer of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer and William Wilberforce. Metaxas has been a very public ally of the
bishops, having coauthored an important essay in the Wall Street Journal with
Cardinal Wuerhl and a Jewish leader. In that essay no mention was made of
Germany and Nazism, but in a number of different venues Metaxas has been
pushing the idea that the religious freedom limitations of the HHS Mandate are
strikingly similar to some set of undefined early Nazi laws. In a talk at the
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception’s Catholic Information Center Metaxas said:
“This [the HHS Mandate debate] is so oddly similar to where
Bonhoeffer found himself [in the early stages of Nazi Germany]… If we don’t
fight now, if we don’t really use our bullets now, we will have no fight five
years from now…it’s the millimeter that is that line which we cross. I’m sorry
to say that I see these parallels, I really wish I didn’t…We are getting a
second chance…so we don’t make the same mistakes and go down the same road.”
In February, following an
address that President Obama attended and also spoke at for the National Prayer
Breakfast, Metaxas appeared on
MSNBC and filled in the historical record ever so minimally saying that
“In the early 30s little things was happening where the state was bullying the
churches. No one spoke up. In the beginning it always starts our really, really
small. We need to understand as Americans if we do not see this as a bright
line in the sand…eventually this kind of government overreach will reach you.”
While Metaxas has thrown out these serious charges he has never, to my
knowledge, and certainly not anywhere available on line or in print,
substantiated these charges with what would generally be considered a sustained
argument. He has never, for instance, cited an early Nazi law that he thinks is
comparable to the HHS Mandate in terms of religious freedom, nor has he ever
explained how the HHS Mandate will lead us “down the same road” that led to the
Holocaust.
Metaxas shows every
intention of continuing to use this unsubstantiated rhetoric. In a speech just weeks ago at Fr. Sirico’s Acton Institute
Metaxas again made the charge as part of an explanation for why the Fortnight
of Freedom is so important to America’s future. His many followers on twitter
have been reading constant reminders of the Fortnight of Freedom and about the “unprecedented abridgment of religious freedom” posed by the HHS Mandate, as a recent tweet put it.
And a recent commentary for the widely read and listened to Breakpoint program
of the late Charles Colson’s ministry featured Metaxas urging his largely
Protestant audience to give full support for the Fortnight, though without
reference to the German laws.
Metaxas’ cavalier use of the
memory of the Holocaust era is striking for someone whose biography has been so
widely read and praised. His standing as a commentator on religion and public
life owes itself to that reputation. In fact, it earned him an audience with
President Obama at the recent National Prayer Breakfast which Metaxas and the
president addressed. Metaxas owes it to the president, and to the memory of the
Shoah, to either explain and justify his charges or retract them as publicly as
he made them. Of course to say this does not in anyway imply agreement with the
HHS Mandate. One critic of Metaxas’ language, the noted Protestant ecumenist
John Armstrong, has said, “I
disagree with the President about how to solve the health care crisis, rather
profoundly if I am pushed, but I do not think his actions are remotely like
Hitler's in the 1920s and early 1930s…Christians cannot continue to violate
civility and expect to be heard when their voice is truly important.”
Among Eric Metaxas’ many virtues is his professed commitment to Christian civility. As Richard Mouw has argued for years, such civility,
rightly understood, does not preclude serious and sustained disagreement or
passionate and heartfelt denunciation, but it does demand thoughtful and
considerate explanation. Metaxas’ public stand on the HHS Mandate is that it is
comparable to unnamed laws passed in the early stages of Hitler’s rise to power,
that it is putting the United States on a similar course to the horrors of Nazi
Germany and that it is therefore incumbent upon Christians in America to view
the struggle against the HHS Mandate as Bonhoeffer viewed the struggle against
Nazism at its earliest stages. This way of thinking has not only influenced
Metaxas’ very robust media efforts to challenge the Mandate, but it also shaped
the discourse of his fellow Breakpoint colleague’s Charles Colson and Timothy
George. They wrote a memorable article for Christianity Today at the early
stages of this controversy comparing the duty of Christians in America to the
duty of Christians in Germany, even going so far as to title their column for
Christianity Today on the issue in identical language to that of the famous
Nazi resister Martin Niemoller.
It seems to me that if citizens are going to accuse their
duly elected leaders of complicity in horrors comparable to those that launched
the Nazi regime then civility would demand that they explain their charges with
the care and scholarship that they warrant. Certainly this was Bonhoeffer’s
method of operation. He put teeth to his charges against the Nazi regime and
did not rely on hyperbole and media sloganeering alone in his resistance to
their laws. I have sought such rigor from Metaxas in vein. Unless I am missing
something, there is nowhere on the internet or in regular print an explanation
of how the HHS Mandate is comparable to any early laws of the Nazi regime, how
it will lead to a regime similar to that of Nazi Germany and how it will cause
reaction to Catholics similar to the tragedy of the Shoah for Europe’s Jews.
The struggle against the HHS Mandate has reached a new stage with the launch of the Catholic Bishops' Fortnight for Freedom and the prospect of massive civil disobedience in conjunction with it. Metaxas has made clear his intention to join in this campaign with his extensive level of media contacts, going so far as to say Christians should leave no rhetorical "bullet" in the holster. One can hope that in the course of his work he will find time to devote to either explaining substantively his serious charges against the Obama Administration or retract his more extreme statements.
Eric Metaxas is not alone on the Right in his invocation of extreme historical metaphors to define President Obama's actions on religious freedom. Commonweal has an excellent pair of articles on the manner in which the ideological manipulation of history is also present in the commentary around the new film For Greater Glory. This film, based roughly on the Mexican conflicts of the 1920s, is being read by many as a parable for our times and the devilish designs of President Obama. This is an interpretation explicitly embraced by one of the film's actors who has said "I don't see any difference between Henry VIII" and Obama, not to mention Obama and the Mexican dictator portrayed in the film. Here is some of Julia Young's fine response to such nonsense:
The “Calles laws,” as they were known, were so comprehensively oppressive that they would be completely unthinkable in contemporary America. They denied legal personality to the church, outlawed monastic and religious orders, secularized all religious education, and forbade the clergy from voting or making political statements in public. Priests and nuns were prohibited from wearing religious garb outside of churches and convents, and public worship was outlawed...When it comes to history, context is everything. The United States today is nothing like Mexico of the late 1920s. Our legal framework and political system are completely different. To equate Obama with a 1920s Mexican dictator, or to draw comparisons between the contraception mandate and anti-clerical regime of Calles, is ignorant at best, and demagogic at worst.
Some of my Catholic readers may not be familiar with Eric Metaxas, and some others who are may not know just how committed Metaxas is to defining the HHS Mandate as a monstrous attack on religious freedoms. Since I only have referenced a tweet he made last weekend I may have left the impression that I am overdoing his stance. Make no mistake--for Metaxas this is a singularly awful moment in American religious history and one on par with the beginnings of the Nazi Regime in Germany. He has shared these opinions widely and regularly, including the appearance on MSNBC pictured on this page. He is an activist with an unusually wide reach and his historiography is therefore of real significance to the ongoing debate, and we owe it to the quality of that debate to challenge Metaxas on statements like this given at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC: “This [the HHS Mandate debate] is so oddly similar to where Bonhoeffer found himself”
in the early stages of Nazi Germany. “If we don’t fight now, if we don’t really
use our bullets now, we will have no fight five years from now…it’s the
millimeter that is that line which we cross. I’m sorry to say that I see these
parallels, I really wish I didn’t…We are getting a second chance…so we don’t
make the same mistakes and go down the same road.”
This is the kind of urgency that Metaxas brings to this issue and it is the kind of historical framework he places it in. That framework justifies, as he puts it, "using our bullets now"--meaning engage in arguments with a tenacity and an aggressiveness and a sense of full campaign mode that skips over historical questions like these:
1) Which Nazi laws in particular do you compare the HHS Mandate to?
2) How were the Nazis redefining the definition of religious organizations as the HHS Mandate does and which I and others disagree with? If the issue is one of religious freedom, as you regularly insist it is, then which religious freedom were the Nazis infringing on and how does that compare to the HHS Mandate?
3) When a person invokes Bonhoffer as a parallel it is bringing with it the fact that he ended up being killed in a concentration camp during the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews and millions of other people. Explain a scenario in which the HHS Mandate, in a time frame similar to the rise of Nazi Germany and the unleashing of the Holocaust, brings about a comparable historical event?
4) The HHS Mandate fails to expand religious freedom exemption beyond houses of worship and other narrowly defined religious organizations. At other times in American history the government has gone way beyond this type of restriction and actively repressed religious expression, most notably with the Slave Codes of the 1830s. How exactly is the HHS Mandate a more singular threat to religious liberty than those laws? Is there really even a comparison.
Eric Metaxas puts himself forward as an authority on religious freedom and religious history. He is regularly making statements putting the HHS Mandate on par with early Nazi German actions and worse than any other American historical example of restrictions on religious liberty. Why aren't more people calling him on this? At the very least, doesn't he owe the Obama Administration more of an explanation as to why he thinks what it is doing is like Nazi Germany and worse than the Slave Codes active persecution of African American Churches? Is this the kind of rhetoric we can expect more of as the Fortnight For Freedom takes shape?
{This post was updated to include the MSNBC video}
My earlier post on what I
see as the serious historical amnesia present in the comments of many
conservative evangelicals and Catholics with regard to the HHS Mandate has
received some very helpful comments in private correspondence and on my
facebook feed. I want to engage one particularly substantive response from a
friend:
“I think you rightly point out that there have been laws
restricting religious liberty in the African American church experience and
thus to argue that such restrictions today are unique is to ignore that
history. I agree. If one takes that same concern and applies it to the entirety
of the African American experience one learns that the restrictions on the
church were not really about religion but about race. Thus it makes me nervous
to apply the argument as you have since it defines these issues as religious
ones rather than racial ones. It is true that the racial issues in this case
ended up restricting religion, but it may overplay the religious perspective.
And since I think that religious issues are also being overplayed in the HHS
discussion it ties back to that for me.”
I agree with the basic
point and I don’t think it contradicts my post but rather fills it in with helpful
context. I agree that the reason for the Slave Codes after Nat Turner’s
rebellion was primarily fear of further rebellion that would upend the social
order deeply rooted in racism. To what extent that fear was rooted in religious
based discourse is debatable, and to what extent the religious arguments of Nat
Turner and others were primary factors in rebellion is also debatable. My point
was not to settle those important historical debates, but rather to make what I
think is an unquestionable point-- in order to affect the policy goal of
safeguarding the existing social order numerous states instituted laws that
trampled all over any kind of conception of the First Amendment’s religious
freedom protections. I am not saying they necessarily trampled on those rights
for religious reasons, and I am certainly not saying it was only the religious
rights of African Americans that were being denied them, but the many states
did trample on those religious rights. And the extent to which they trampled
on the religious rights of African American individuals and institutions was
far more severe and extensive than what the HSS Mandate does. In terms of the
Mandate itself, and the reasons for the narrow exemption, it might well be true
that the intent of Obama Administration is not specifically to restrict
religion but rather to fulfill a different policy goal—namely, free
contraception for all. Nonetheless, in order to achieve that goal they are, I
believe, violating the constitution’s protection of religious freedom. On that
I agree with Dolan, Metaxas and others. Where we part company is in what I see
as a disturbing ideological manipulation of history to pursue their “campaign”
for religious freedom. Proclaiming themselves as unique victims in the history
of religious freedom in America may be a good way to inflame their core
constituencies, but it comes at a real price of intellectual integrity and
respect for the deeper narratives of American history.
Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that in these United
States of America something of a controversy has arisen around the First
Amendment freedom of religion clause. I have heard your cries of injustice I
must say that I agree with your concerns with regard to the HHS Mandate. It
does seem that the current law would restrict religious freedom by narrowing
the definition of religious organizations in an overly narrow way. However, I
must say that I find your protestations about this injustice extraordinarily out
or proportion to the history of religious freedom in this country. I saw on
this newfangled thing called “twitter” that on June 16 Mr. Metaxas said he believes this mandate
is an “unprecedented abridgment of religious freedom itself"and I know that
Cardinal Dolan and many of his fellow Bishops have likewise portrayed this
Mandate and its narrow definition of religious organizations in a similarly
apocalyptic manner. It does make me wonder about the state of education in
America and whether my grave fears about the loss of memory concerning African
Americans in this land have come true. So allow me for just a moment to remind you
of the state of religious freedom in this land back in my times on this earth.
You would do well to recall that the HHS Mandate you so
rightly denounce has already made specific provisions for houses of worship and
other specifically religious institutions to gain exemption. In fact, it would
seem that your main gripe is that this exemption is too narrow. If that is your
main concern, then how in God’s good Name can you compare this situation with
the gravity of the situation that African American Churches faced in your land?
Surely you know that we were not even given the control over our own churches
and allowed to choose for ourselves our own religious traditions? Surely you
are aware of a wave of legislation that followed Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion?
Here is how one of your current day scholars describes what my people faced in
terms of restrictions on relgious freedom. Do you really think that what the
HHS Mandate proposes is worse than this?
So, instead of abolishing slavery, Virginia decided
to revise and severely strengthen its already existing slave codes so that the
potential for another slave uprising would be almost impossible. Virginia’s new
codes made patrols and militia stronger, eliminated
slave schools, slave religious meetings, and slave preachers.8
The idea of abolition did not appeal to the other
southern states, so they, like Virginia, passed new restrictive slave laws and
codes in hopes of preventing another slave rebellion. States like Georgia and
South Carolina heavily relied on slavery for their economic success and thus it
was a crucial element to their well being, they could not just get rid of it…Southerners
attempted to keep blacks enslaved and suppressed by making their already
existing slave codes much harsher and by enacting new laws.10
After Turner’s rebellion, the actions and movements
of slaves were severely monitored…Religious
meetings or gatherings of slaves were also closely monitored. All blacks were
forbidden to preach or hold religious meetings. In fact, in Georgia, a law was
passed that forbade blacks to congregate and preach. The Act of December 23,
1833, Sec. 5, 1833 Ga. Laws 226, stated that “no person of color, whether free
or slave, shall be allowed to preach to, exhort or join in any religious
exercise, with any persons of color, either free or slave.” And if a slave or a
free black was found preaching, he or she was “sentenced to be whipped and
imprisoned at the discretion of the court: provided, such imprisonment shall
not exceed six months, and no whipping shall exceed thirty-nine lashes.”12 If a black person wanted to attend a religious meeting, he
or she could only do so at night with his or her master. They could also only
receive religious instruction from their master as well.
“At the time of the old Prophet
Nat, the colored folks was afraid to pray loud, for the whites threatened to
punish ‘em dreadfully if the least noise was heard...if they heard any of the
colored folks praying or singing a hymn, they would fall upon ‘em and abuse ‘em
and sometimes kill ‘em. The brightest and best was killed in Nat’s time”.–Lydia
Maria Child, a slave during Nat Turner’s rebellion.13
Laws such as this were enforced because whites
feared that if blacks were given an opportunity to congregate and preach
together, as they had with Nat Turner, then another insurrection could possibly
occur. Many southern whites believed that the black preachers were filling the
minds of slaves with notions of freedom and equality. They believed that the
black preachers were teaching slaves that blacks should have just as much
rights as whites and that “the black man was as good as the white man...and
that all men were born free and equal.” The preachers were also accused of
preaching that “white people had rebelled against England to gain their freedom
and so had the blacks a right to do so”. The black preachers were also accused
of circulating abolitionists pamphlets, some of which had been written by the
great abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. A portion of the black population
was able to read these pamphlets because they had been taught how to read by
their masters and because they had attended school. Thus, several states,
including Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama, passed laws that forbade
slaves and free blacks form learning how to read and write.14
