Focusing on the 1980s-90s, examines how Protestants in Germany interpret their self-understanding as part of the community which is defined by its connection to the Nazi past. Analyzes representations of the Holocaust and of the Christian-Jewish relationship in three German Protestant theological texts: the 1980 statement of the Rhineland synod of the Evangelical Church "Zur Erneuerung des Verhältnisses von Christen und Juden"; Marquardt's theological text "Von Elend und Heimsuchung der Theologie: Prolegomena zur Dogmatik" (1992); and Britta Jüngst's dissertation "Auf der Seite des Todes das Leben" (1996). The analysis of these texts is informed by the development of narratives of collective memory of the Holocaust in German society in the 1980s-90s, from the miniseries "Holocaust" to the Goldhagen controversy. All three texts admit the responsibility of Christianity and Christians for the Holocaust and build theologies that do not reject Jews. Contends that, contrary to their stated intentions, most Holocaust theologians do not truly listen to the Jewish perspective. Calls on practitioners of "theology after Auschwitz" to embrace Jews and Judaism in order to restore the credibility of Christian Churches which abandoned the Jews in Auschwitz.

Important and insightful essays provide a penetrating assessment of Christian responses in the Nazi era.

"Richard Lukas presents the eyewitness accounts of these and other Polish Christians who suffered at the hands of the Germans. They bear witness to unspeakable horrors endured by those who were tortured, forced into slavery, shipped off to concentration camps, and even subjected to medical experiments. Their stories provide a somber reminder that non-Jewish Poles were just as likely as Jews to suffer at the hands of the Nazis, who viewed them with nearly equal contempt.".

This book closely examines the turmoil in the German Protestant churches in the immediate postwar years as they attempted to come to terms with the recent past. Reeling from the impact of war, the churches addressed the consequences of cooperation with the regime and the treatment of Jews. In Germany, the Protestant Church consisted of 28 autonomous regional churches. During the Nazi years, these churches formed into various alliances. One group, the German Christian Church, openly aligned itself with the Nazis. The rest were cautiously opposed to the regime or tried to remain noncommittal. The internal debates, however, involved every group and centered on issues of belief that were important to all. Important theologians such as Karl Barth were instrumental in pressing these issues forward. While not an exhaustive study of Protestantism during the Nazi years, A Church Divided breaks new ground in the discussion of responsibility, guilt, and the Nazi past.

How should one respond, personally or theologically, to genocide committed on one's behalf? After the Allied bombing of Darmstadt, Germany, in 1944, some Lutheran young women perceived their city's destruction as an expression of God's wrath-a punishment for Hitler's murder of six million Jews, purportedly on behalf of the German people. George Faithful tells the story of a number of these young women, who formed the Ecumenical Sisterhood of Mary in 1947 in order to embrace lives of radical repentance for the sins of the German people against God and against the Jews. Under Mother Basilea Schlink, the sisters embraced an ideology of collective national guilt. According to Schlink, a handful of true Christians were called to lead their nation in repentance, interceding and making spiritual sacrifices as priests on its behalf and saving it from looming destruction. Schlink explained that these ideas were rooted in her reading of the Hebrew Bible; in fact, Faithful discovers, they also bore the influence of German nationalism. Schlink's vision resulted in penitential practices that dominated the life of her community. While the women of the sisterhood were subject to each other, they elevated themselves and their spiritual authority above that of any male leaders. They offered female and gender-neutral paradigms of self-sacrifice as normative for all Christians. Mothering the Fatherland shows how the sisters overturned German Protestant norms for gender roles, communal life, and nationalism in their pursuit of redemption.

The attitude of Karl Barth to Israel and the Jews has long been the subject of heated controversy amongst historians and theologians. The question that has so far predominated in the debate has been Barth's attitude, both theologically and practically, towards the Jews during the period of the Third Reich and the Holocaust itself. How, if at all, did Barth's attitudes change in the post-war years? Did Barth's own theologising in the aftermath of the Holocaust take that horrendous event into account in his later writings on Israel and the Jews? Mark Lindsay explores such questions through a deep consideration of volume four of Barth's Church Dogmatics, the 'Doctrine of Reconciliation'.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a uniquely reluctant and distinctly German Lutheran revolutionary. In this volume, the author, an Anglican priest and historian, argues that Bonhoeffer's powerful critique of Germany's moral derailment needs to be understood as the expression of a devout Lutheran Protestant. Bonhoeffer gradually recognized the ways in which the intellectual and religious traditions of his own class - the Bildungsbürgertum - were enabling Nazi evil. In response, he offered a religiously inspired call to political opposition and Christian witness-which cost him his life. The author investigates Bonhoeffer's stance in terms of his confrontation with the legacy of Hegelianism and Neo-Rankeanism, and by highlighting Bonhoeffer's intellectual and spiritual journey, shows how his endeavor to politicially reeducate the German people must be examined in theological terms.