Race/War/Genocide, U.S and Germany: The Role of Religion?
Paul Harvey
A mid-day "thinking out loud" post. I've just been talking with a colleague that I'll be team-teaching with next semester, an undergraduate course on Race, War, and Genocide in the U.S. South and Germany, 1865ish - 1965ish (dates are flexible on either end). This sort of started out as a "comparative genocide" kind of course (how's that for a cheerful semester for you), but we've narrowed it down somewhat, in part to our two specialties (the colleague is a German historian).
This is all exciting to think about, but now we're getting down to themes and readings for the course, which is always where a lot of good readings/ideas to pursue have to be jettisoned, given the constraints of the semester, how much one can ask students to read, etc.
We came at the course with a paradox and question. An observer looking at the U.S. South in the 1890s and Jews in Germany during this period might well have predicted that, if a genocide (I know the word would not have been invented yet -- just play with me here) were to come, it would surely be in the U.S. Lynching was a gruesome practice to a larger pogrom, of course, while in Germany laws liberalizing social strictures on Jews gave reasonable hope that German Jews would eventually be incorporated into German society in a way that must have appeared impossible for African Americans. In short, things were getting worse for blacks in the U.S. and better for Jews in Germany.
Fast forward 50 years -- what happened? That's a central question of the course.
One part of that question might involve religion -- obviously the case with German Jews, but clearly the case for black and whites in the U.S. as well. What might make a good reading exploring the influence of religion in the U.S. on the move from the proto-genocide of the lynching era (with all the religious imagery that went into lynching as a sacrificial act, as Donald Mathews has argued) to the stirrings of civil rights in the 1930s/1940s? Or what might be some good ways to frame the discussion for students? Just asking.
Comments
Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes to mind as a possibility--I know he spent some time in the U.S. in the 1930s (I think), and attended black churches in Harlem (Abyssinian Baptist Church I believe it was). I once heard or read somewhere that he sent recordings of black spirituals to his family in Germany. He wrote of being spiritually moved by them.
Also, if memory serves me correctly he wrote about black churches and segregation in a piece titled "Protestantism without Reformation."
Perhaps there are others who can add to the subject of Bonhoeffer here?
Best of luck.