In 1935, U.S. Ambassador To Germany William Dodd warned the State Department of the “virtually dictatorial powers over Protestant Church matters” the new Nazi Minister of Church Affairs possessed. Describing the ecclesiastical resistance to Adolf Hitler’s desperate grasp for the keys to the kingdom, Dodd added that “the brunt of battle has been borne chiefly by the Reformed, or Calvinist, wing of the Church whose members find National Socialist totalitarian claims incompatible with their belief in sole responsibility to individual conscience.”
Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich” and its heretical Deutsche Christen movement were defeated, of course, in a victory for Christians who believe in a future for all nations.
But eight decades later, a new National Christianity is being debated right here in our own country and in the Reformed Protestant tradition that Dodd once praised for holding the line against the Nazis. Ominously, some of those involved in establishing this new movement aren’t even certain the score was settled correctly last time.
The latest real-world skirmish over the ever-amorphous Christian nationalism erupted this June at a conference in Ogden, Utah, titled “The War for Normal” and organized by fledgling religious publisher New Christendom Press.
The world quickly learned from various posts on X what exactly passes for “normal” in these circles when a self-described Nazi employee of Antelope Hill, a small publishing house infamous as the preeminent North American publisher of fascist texts, was caught hawking pro-Hitler materials, including books published by the Nazi Party’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, better known as the SS.
…As Christians, we find that Callens’s warning speaks to us directly. One of the presenters at the conference, Zachary Garris, is a minister in our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, and we feel a pressing duty to speak out about this malignant ideology. Because if the Nazi materials on the Antelope Hill table can teach us anything about history, it’s the danger of what a fringe movement can do if reasonable people remain silent. Read more»
Philip D. Bunn, Eli McGowan, Emily McGowan | “Why We Won’t Stay Silent About Christian Nationalists in Our Own Churches: The Nazi Books Didn’t Appear Out Of The Blue. They Were The Predictable Destination Of Ideas That Have Been Growing For Years.” | The Bulwark (July 6, 2026)
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