Forget Bonhoeffer. This is the Niemöller Moment
Change your mind. Get others to change their minds. Stand up. Speak out.
Dear Cottage friends,
I could begin today’s note telling you just how bad things are. But you already know that. I don’t want to repeat the news.
It is my birthday this week. That’s got me in reflective mood. I’m thinking about what has changed in my life in recent years — especially the things that have surprised me.
My most succinct observation: everything has changed. Hey, I’m an historian. Historians know that everything changes all the time. That’s not a surprise.
But of those changes, few have been as startling as discovering intellectual and spiritual allies among those writers and public figures I once believed were my foes — mostly the neo-conservatives of the 1990s who stirred up Clinton-hatred and supported Reagan policies that were (even then) undermining the middle class and necessary social programs.
I was once part of their movement — and then was not — becoming a noisy theological critic of them along the way (especially during the decade in which the New York Times syndicated my religion column). I didn’t like them. And, when they paid attention to me (which wasn’t often), I suspect the feeling was mutual.
And then I found myself cheering them on. Those “never-Trump” former Republicans have emerged as some of the most vigorous defenders of democracy and honestly prophetic doomsayers of these days.
I’m grateful for these unlikely fellow travelers. Those who have changed their minds — who switched parties, who have been willing to speak out.
Like two days ago, after a number of dithering Democrats wondered publicly if they’d gone too far in supporting transgender citizens and immigrants, Bill Kristol, who has been associated with nearly every neo-conservative organization I’ve disagreed with over the course of my career, posted this on social media:
That’s right. Everything is so chaotic in Washington right now that we’ve got Democrats throwing marginalized people under political buses and Jewish conservative intellectuals standing up for silenced, fearful, and dispossessed people by quoting Lutheran theologians.
First, I need to apologize to Bill Kristol for all the bad things I’ve said or thought about him and his work over the years. His courage recently — and his leadership at The Bulwark — have been beyond admirable.
And watching him from afar, he’s reminded this Christian writer why it is important to follow Jesus’ dictum, “Love your enemies.” Lo and behold, one’s “enemies” can turn out to be one’s friends. I’m guessing that Jesus understood this when he preached those words.
Secondly, he didn’t need to apologize for appealing to Niemöller — and perhaps he needed to go even more Niemöller.
If you need reminding, Martin Niemöller was the German Lutheran pastor who wrote the famous words inscribed on the wall of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Pastor Niemöller wasn’t just being poetic. That’s his life story. He was a German nationalist who, in the 1920s and early 1930s, supported Hitler and the Nazis. He hated Communism and socialism and workers — he believed that they had betrayed Germany in the aftermath of WWI. He worked against the Weimar Republic, thinking it to be politically weak and corrupt. Indeed, Niemöller voted for the Nazis, even in the 1933 elections which handed Germany over to Hitler.
In short, Martin Niemöller not only did not speak out. He actively worked for a political movement to go after Communists, socialists, workers, and Jews … anyone whom he believed undermined the honor of the German nation.
But Niemöller began to change his mind when Hitler interfered with church policies and applied racial tests to both clergy and laity, even insisting that German churches refrain from teaching or reading from the Old Testament.
Niemöller’s resistance started when the Nazis applied their brutal and racist agenda to the church — Niemöller’s church, the community he most cared about, was vowed to serve, and led.
Then, he realized that they were coming for him, too. It took him a while. It was a process. But he spoke out. He preached against Hitler and Nazism. He was one of the founders of the Confessing Church. He was detained several times between 1934 and 1937. Then, in 1937, he was arrested for treason and spent the next seven years in various prisons and concentration camps, including Dachau.
Poetry, like most other writing, is often autobiography.
When many white Christians think about resisting Nazis, they think about Bonhoeffer, the martyr theologian who always stood up. Indeed, it has become popular in recent years to ask, “Is this the Bonhoeffer moment?,” when thinking about taking extreme action against authoritarianism.
But I’d like to suggest that is the wrong question. The right question should be:
Is this the Niemöller moment?
And the answer is simple: YES.
It is the Niemöller moment. For years now, it has been a Niemöller moment. It is always time — and always well past time — to stand and speak for the weak, the targeted, the fearful.
One can always change one’s mind.
We need more Niemöllers right now — we NEED those people who have been on the wrong side and didn’t know it until the evil started to come for them. We need them now. The comfortable, the go-along-to-get-alongs, those deceived by their own fears and manipulative politicians, the secret or not-so-secret nationalists who have wanted the state to go after their “enemies,” those who realize (even at the last moment) that the enemies list includes them.
Niemöller was MAGA. Until he wasn’t — when he did something really difficult. He changed his mind. According to Matthew Hockenos, a recent biographer:
It is tempting for admirers to rationalize Neimöller’s earlier years by speaking in terms of a clean break between a young, imprudent man, on the one hand, and a mature, wiser man, on the other. But Niemöller was a 41-year-old father of six with two decades of professional experience when he applauded Hitler’s ascension to power. He was a middle-aged man who had read Mein Kampf and knew very well what Hitler stood for. And even after he watched Hitler abolish the national parliament, ban political parties and trade unions, and persecute his opponents, Niemöller refused to distance himself from radical nationalism and anti-Semitism—even on occasion after 1945.
Once the legend is stripped away, Niemöller necessarily disappoints us. But the imperfection of his moral compass makes him all the more relevant today. This middle-class, conservative Protestant, who harbored ingrained prejudices against those not like him, did something excruciatingly difficult and uncommon for someone of his background: he changed his mind.
Maybe we need more Bonhoeffers.
But I know that we must have more Niemöllers. Because we all have imperfect moral compasses. Because change, although it always happens, can be slow and hard. It is messy, halting, surprising. It can turn enemies into friends.
Be open to the changes in your own life. Work to change minds. And change hearts. That’s the central calling of the gospel — to proclaim and practice metanoia — a change of mind and heart that draws us more deeply into the love of God.
That’s the business of the church.
Let’s go all Martin Niemöller.
Love relentlessly,
Diana
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I have been struggling with this too.
This fall, I was at a multi-faith gathering at the local university to introduce students to the different faith communities they have access to. I was representing a group that links many faith communities, and is primarily supported by the Unitarian Universalists, the Jewish community and the ELCA Lutherans. I had lots of info to pass out, including rainbow peace signs, and I was urging people to sign up for more info. A woman I knew from another organization, from Jordan/Palestine walked by. I knew her and wanted her to sign up, but she asked if we support LGBTQ, and I said "yes" and she said she wouldn't be able to support us, and walked on.
This was a moment when I had to choose who to throw under the bus. And I decided that we have to unflinchingly support the LGBTQ IA+ community regardless of what conservative tradition it offends. They have struggled long and hard, and their time for real victory will not come as long as people are willing to throw them under the bus for other advantages. They aren't asking a lot.
I appreciate your kind words about Bill Kristol and the work of the Bulwark. I have to admit, that crew has keep me sane over the last year, and you won't find a more committed group of pro-democracy folks anywhere online. Like you, I find it astonishing to be aligned with folks like Kristol (after the Bush II years, especially), but here we are. The old lines have been blown to bits, and we need to find our allies and friends in this moment.