I\u2019m currently in Washington, DC attending an educational workshop at the Holocaust Museum to foster healthier Christian-Jewish relationships, biblical teaching, and interfaith dialogue. My group has around seventeen members and consists of Jewish rabbis, pastors, priests, seminary students, lay people, and chaplains from around the United States. The first thing we are required to do is visit the museum by ourselves so we can sit with the complexity and heaviness of this event and reflect on it uninterpreted.<\/p>\n
Several themes and concepts in JR Woodward\u2019s book, The Scandal of Leadership<\/em>, illustrate quite nicely what happened in Germany during the Holocaust. Much of Woodward\u2019s book cautions Christian leaders to avoid the allure of crowds and the powers, ideologies, and systems of the predominant culture which he identifies as idolatry. One thing that stuck out to me during a workshop session was a graph that showed how Germany identified religiously at the time these events were taking place.<\/p>\n Protestant (63%)<\/p>\n Roman Catholic (32%)<\/p>\n No religion (2%)<\/p>\n Judaism (1%)<\/p>\n Other Christian groups (1%)<\/p>\n Other religions (1%)<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the \u201ccrowd\u201d in this case identified as Christian, at least in name, which causes me to pause and take seriously what Woodward argues in his book, \u201cthe more people, the less truth\u201d.[i]<\/a> \u00a0The crowd, Christian or not, is not always right. \u00a0However, although the majority of Germany did claim the Christian faith, there were many pastors, clergy, and Christians who embodied the gospel through action by hiding, feeding, transporting, protecting, and taking care of Jews, and other persecuted groups, at the risk of their lives. These people, as our book stresses, chose Christ as their model and entered into suffering on behalf of others at the expense of their own reputation, social status, finances, and lives.<\/p>\n I realize this is a heavy and complex topic to connect to Woodward\u2019s book, but that is where I am this week, and to be fair Woodward\u2019s book is heavy, complex, and dense. At the end of the Holocaust tour, there is a wall of names and some individuals are highlighted with a photo and a longer description. Most of the rescuers highlighted were Christian of some sort which reflects the stats mentioned earlier. There were Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Calvinists, Baptists, etc. Although there were multiple denominations some people \u201cgot it\u201d and some did not. Affiliation with the group did not guarantee catching the heart of Jesus. Some professing Christians desired<\/em> to follow and imitate Christ and some professing Christians followed the crowd and were taken by the propaganda and manipulation of the Nazi party. I would like to think I would be on the right side of history, but we are all susceptible to deception and self-preservation. This is me taking our reading, seeing a historical situation that supports much of its theories, and realizing how susceptible we all are to the crowd as humans. Woodward says, \u201cHumans are captive to imitation, especially through mimetic desire, and there can be no neutrality: not to imitate Christ is to imitate the Powers, and when this happens, it leads to bondage, idolatry, and injustice, manifested by domineering leadership.\u201d[ii]<\/a> What does this sound like?<\/p>\n Connection to my NPO<\/strong><\/p>\n This workshop is not the first time I\u2019ve studied the Holocaust. One realization that I had in graduate school years ago was the value of historical criticism. There is a section in Woodward\u2019s book concerning Wink\u2019s analysis of higher criticism that articulated and further unpacked some things I have noticed about this discipline which is helpful for my NPO. Walter Wink was denied tenure because he claimed \u201cHistorical biblical criticism is bankrupt\u201d.[iii]<\/a> Woodward goes on to clarify that Wink did not believe biblical criticism was \u201cvalueless\u201d, and he says \u201cHis hermeneutic was to address the strong disconnect between the academy and communities of faith.\u201d Critically analyzing the Bible detached from faith or a spiritual community can result in a lifeless, dry, and even cynical approach to the Bible. However, reading the Bible in a faith community without the aid of historical biblical criticism can be unwise and even dangerous in some situations.<\/p>\n Connecting back to the Holocaust, when I first engaged this topic I wondered, \u201cWhy were the Jews so hated and targeted in Germany?\u201d This is a long, complicated, and multilayered topic. Woodward talks about Rene Girard\u2019s mimesis theory and scapegoating, and this is an unfortunate case when Jews were blamed by Nazi Germany for many of its issues, but a factor that emerges was certain theologies and biblical interpretations that provided a seedbed for antisemitism to evolve.<\/p>\n Much of the propaganda against Jews depicted them as devils and part of this idea can be traced to certain interpretations of verses like John 8:44 where Jesus says to \u201cthe Jews\u201d, \u201cYou are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father\u2019s desires\u201d. \u00a0Context and historical biblical criticism matters. There is much to unpack here, but this was an intra-Jewish debate between two parties that were Jewish, however, later in history when non-Jewish Christians read and interpreted these verses on the surface it was easy to construct a lens of animosity and even hate toward this group. The later date John\u2019s Gospel was written also plays a major factor in making sense of what might be happening here.<\/p>\n In Rare Leadership<\/em>, Marcus Warner argues that intimacy with God or spiritual formation is key in forming who we are as leaders.[iv]<\/a> I agree. However, the image of Jesus we have in our heads and hearts is largely shaped through Scripture and how our faith communities interpret and read it. History has shown how various people groups have used the same book and passages to construct an image of God that brings both beauty and madness into our world. We must go beyond just simply reading the text at face value. Higher biblical criticism, within a faith community, not detached from it, allows for us to move beyond an \u201cancient worldview\u201d to an integral <\/em>one that Woodward models in this book.<\/p>\n Questions I\u2019m pondering<\/strong><\/p>\n What image of Jesus do I have in my mind and heart to imitate?<\/p>\n What denomination or interpretation has shaped it the most? What makes it accurate?<\/p>\n How does my and others spiritual experience feed into this?<\/p>\n Which image of Jesus would compel me to hide Jews in my home at my own expense and which one would allow me to remain detached?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [i]<\/a> JR Woodward,\u00a0The Scandal of Leadership: Unmasking the Powers of Domination in the Church<\/em>\u00a0(Cody, WY: 100 Movements Publishing, 2023),xxx.<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a> Woodward, The Scandal of Leadership, 289.<\/p>\n