the Protestant Churches of Nauen District, Brandenburg PROTECTING THE CHURCH At the time Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, the parishes of the Nauen District were led by Superintendent Grasshof, who had been in post for less than a year. But two years later ill health forced his retirement, and he was…
Category: Features
Faith and Politics (2)
the Protestant Churches of Nauen District, Brandenburg OPPOSITION TO THE GERMAN-CHRISTIANS In the first part of this series we looked at the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power that came from many members and pastors of the Protestant churches of the Nauen District near Berlin, an enthusiasm which persisted with some pastors,…
Faith and Politics in 1930s Germany
the Protestant Churches of Nauen District, Brandenburg WELCOMING HITLER Twenty-five miles west of the centre of Berlin, and eleven miles outside its city limits, is the municipality of Nauen, in the Havelland district of Brandenburg, with eighteen thousand people living in the town and its surrounding villages. Havelland is a mainly farming and not densely…
Britain and Europe
“How often do you go to the mainland?” asked the Christian Aid Partner from India, on a visit to the UK. It took a moment to realise what he meant. After all, we rarely think of Britain as a small offshore island. More common is the (alleged) 1940s newspaper headline: “Fog in Channel- Continent cut…
Brexit Debate
Wednesday 21st October: Notes on “The Future of Brexit Britain” With Jonathan Chaplain and Andrew Bradstock, the joint editors. The initiative for the book was the strange silence from the Church of England about the Brexit Referendum- any personal statements made (eg from Bishops) were for Remain, but it was clear that many Anglicans were…
Black Lives Matter (2)
From “BLACK AND BRITISH: A FORGOTTEN HISTORY” BY DAVID OLUSOGA, (pages 491-6) In June 1946 the British Cabinet Manpower Working Party determined that in order to meet her post war target, Britain would need 940,000 additional workers. By the end of the year they had raised their estimate to 1,346,000. To help fill this enormous…
Black Lives Matter
…. “and so do white lives”, someone will instantly reply. Of course they do, but the point is that when some lives have been valued less, justice demands action to redress that inequality. We may applaud the present government’s intention to “level up” the North (even if we question its analysis and proposals), and no-one…
Piketty’s proposals
The last mailing summarised Thomas Piketty’s account of how we got into our present position. This looks at his final chapter, where he puts forward proposals for a better economy and society in the future. He says: “New forms of social ownership will need to be developed, along with new ways of apportioning voting rights…
Thomas Piketty: Capital and Ideology
My Lent reading this year has been nothing explicitly “religious”: it was Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capitalism and Ideology”, published in French last Autumn and translated into English earlier this year. Though not religious or “spiritual” I would argue that it is at least as theological as some other books I was urged to read….
21st Century Endless War
Wilf Wilde at Wymington, January 18th, 2020 YEMEN, ARABIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST: A POST CHRISTMAS REFLECTION ON EMPIRE AND OIL YEMEN’S SAUDI PROPAGANDA STORY I have been working on Oil, Empire and the Middle East for the last decade, especially since the so called Arab Spring of 2011. I have wanted to talk on…