Did you know that in Nazi Germany, from 1939 to 1945, a special academy existed, the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life? It resulted from an effort, begun in the 1920s, to Nazify Christianity. It was established with the backing of eleven regional Protestant churches.
According to Prof. Susannah Heschel's research article, among other activities, a committee of the Institute produced a de-Judaized version of the New Testament, which was published by the Institute in 1940 with the title, Die Botschaft Gottes - God's Message.
As Heschel notes:
"In it, all references to Jesus' Jewishness were eradicated, including his descent from Old Testament figures, mention of Jerusalem and the Temple, and any positive references to Jews. For example, John 4:22, "Salvation comes from the Jews," was changed to the famous antisemitic slogan, "The Jews are our misfortune." Bethlehem was shifted to Galilee, reflecting Grundmann's claim, discussed below, that Jesus could not have been a racial Jew because the Galilee was populated by non-Jews."
There's an online exhibit informing about the Institute.
It was not a minor episode. Bishop Weidemann of Bremen issued a de-Judaized New Testament. and Reich Bishop Ludwig Miiller issued a "germanized" version of the Sermon on the Mount in 1936 to eliminate what he considered inappropriate Jewish moral teachings. The Die Botschaft Gottes was printed, in its first edition, in 100,000 copies as the demands of pre-publication from parish churches throughout the Reich was significant.
Richard Steigmann-Gall, reviewing the book, "The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945", realizes
"Christianity was part of the cultural framework of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, the interesting point is that some people saw it as grounds to support participation in Nazism, whereas others saw it as grounds to resist. Conformity or resistance; intolerance or tolerance; Inquisition or charity? The religious texts stay the same, but what people have done with them always has varied greatly."
Listening to Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes and others and especially their attacks on Israel, on Christian Zionists and, in cases, on Jews and Judaism, should alert us to previous irregularities of Christians using their form of Christiantiy as a banner to wield politically.
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