One of our close ecumenical partners in the New York Conference of the United Church of Christ is the Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau (EKHN), a Protestant denomination that, like us, combines Reform and Lutheran traditions. For 16 years after the Second World War, the president of that movement was the Rev. Martin Niemöller. If you don't know the name, you'll know words attributed to him:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a communist.
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 for me.
(This is a poetic adaptation in English based on a speech Niemöller gave on January 6, 1946.)
What you may not know is that Niemöller was a conservative nationalist who praised Hitler and the Nazi Party when they seized power. He opposed Nazi persecution of ethnic Jews who had converted to Christianity, but was otherwise an antisemite.
He did eventually repent and resist, and as the poem suggests, they did come for him. He spent seven years in concentration camps, and was among a group of high-value inmates the Schutzstaffel (SS) was transporting near the end of the war when the Wehrmacht took them into protective custody.
After the war, he was denied victim status. He organized a confession by the German Protestant churches of their complicity in the crimes against humanity committed by the Third Reich, and issued his own confession in that 1946 speech. He became an ardent pacifist and an advocate for nuclear disarmament, leading the EKHN until 1961, when he was elected President of the World Council of Churches. He died in 1984.
Niemöller's story is one of realization, repentance, and redemption. Ironically, it was precisely his perverted Christianity that he needed to abandon.
During this time when so many of our sisters and brothers have embraced an un-Christlike nationalism, have fallen for the hateful cult of the billionaires, do we have a heart for redemption? What will we do when those who have said hateful things and supported hateful people repent and turn to us? They whine about "cancel culture" when predators are held accountable, but will we be just as guilty if we close our community, refusing reconciliation?
It is easy to welcome and embrace the victims. It is harder to welcome and embrace the repentant. Will we?
+Gary