This course explores the roles, both good and bad, that Christianity played in one of the most horrific chapters of human history, the Shoah. Tracing the history of Christian anti-Semitism through two thousand years of history, this course shows how a majority of the church in Germany was prepared to support Hitler and embrace his call for racial purity. Drawing specifically on the German Church struggle between the “Deutsche Christen” and the Confessing Church, we explore why the church failed in the face of such a political onslaught, even though there were individuals, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who paid a high price for their resistance.

Course Resources

• Dr. Pugh’s Bibliography
• A Life Among the Fragments
• Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times, by Jeffrey C. Pugh
• The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to the End Times: Theology After You’ve Been Left Behind
• Letters and Papers From Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 
• Discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• A timeline for Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church

• Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, David Nirenberg