Lutzer, the longtime pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, has made an important contribution to our understanding of Nazi Germany.
Hitler’s Cross is a troubling account of how moral decay and timidity results in disaster. And the disaster, as was the case in Nazi Germany, is usually far more reaching than we could ever imagine.
I appreciated this book very much except for the author’s desire to tie Nazi ideology to a certain view of end times. For those who don’t hold to dispensational theology, they might be tempted to write the author off, and thus would sadly miss an important book.
Luther’s thesis seems to be that, if the Germans had all been evangelicals, the evil of Nazism wouldn’t have occurred.
But what about the lynching era in the American South? It was presided over and justified by conservative evangelical Protestants whose theological beliefs were none too different from Lutzer’s.
Liberal Christianity is no more responsible for Nazism than evangelicalism is for lynchings in the South.
Hi Bobby,
You bring up a valid point. Being an evangelical so-called is no magic guard against timidity. I think we can say that more genuine and vibrant faith among the Germans would have had a more salutatory effect. The Confessing church were wonderful, but they were in the minority.