Catechism Of The Germanic Religion: Part Two

Thesis 2.

“The German religion is the form of faith appropriate to our age, which we Germans would have today if it had been granted to us to have our native German religion develop undisturbed to the present time.”

Comments:

The new religion must be appropriate to the requirements of our age as well as of German derivation. The Wotan cult, for example, belongs to a past age, although it possesses noble and heroic qualities and was the religion of our forefathers. In its way it is just as inappropriate to introduce today as it ought to be impossible to continue the Babylonian-Semitic Jahweh cult in the German churches today.

“We who belong to the German religion are often called ‘heathens.’ We reject this attribute if it refers to a religion belonging to a past age. We do not, however, reject it if thereby it is understood a religion free of Christianity. In this case the word of insult ‘German Heathen’ takes on the aspect of a word of honor. All the more as today there is in Germany again a persecution of the Germans.”

“Every creative people and every vital age create their own religion, in which the eternal values are reflected in form appropriate to the time and race. If this right was conceded in Luther’s time, why not to those of the German Faith today?”

The strength of an age can be measured by the power of its creative religious movement.

“The eternal will of life of the German people breaks through in this mighty, growing religious movement of the people. If in its course it breaks the religious forms of a past age, this is only a proof of its hunger for a pure and living religion suitable for the present time.”

Thesis 3.

“The German of today requires a healthy and natural religion which makes him brave, pious and strong in the struggle for People and Fatherland. Such a religion is the German religion.”

Comments:

What is a Healthy and Natural Religion?

“It is a religion without the phenomena of disease and degeneration. To this Christianity does not belong. Christianity is indeed an unhealthy and unnatural religion which is at an end. For it arose 2,000 years ago among sick, exhausted and despairing men who had lost their belief in life, who despised the world and who waited for the return of Christ and the destruction of the world.”

Such a religion can never serve the German, who, like all predominately Nordic race, stand manfully and heroically before the problems of this world, look them boldly in the face and seek to master them.

“Hence the German religion, by contrast with the ascetic Christian religion of flight from this world, is a religion of nature and of life, of deed and will, of effort and perfection…An age which flies to blood and soil, home and hearth, which cares for and trains the body and yields itself up to air, wind and sun, so that it may recuperate from the disease of culture which threaten its vital, such an age is a Christian age no more.”

Thesis 4.

“The German religion recognizes no dogmas, for it is a religion.”

Comments: What are Dogmas?

“Dogmas are articles of belief of religious teachings which make statements about God and divine things, in conflict with truth and reason and which just because they conflict with the understanding can and should only be believed.”

Man with a sense of responsibility wants a religion in harmony with truth and reason. Otherwise it is a dead religion. And a dead religion is worse than none at all. Such a dogmatic religion leads to the exhaustion of spiritual energy in theological quibbles, instead of being used in the religious experience. 

The religious German does not say knowledge is religion. But he will not tolerate a belief in conflict with knowledge. He resents the condemnation of human reason as though it were something sinful.

“What distinguishes man from other beings is his understanding and his reason.”

“The way of the German religion to the Divine is through illuminating knowledge (Schauende Erkenntnis). Belief in the sense of something unprovable to be accepted, is not to be found in the German religion. There is belief in the sense of confidence in the victorious power of the divine in the world and in man.”

“Like all Indo-Germanic religions, the German religion is one of knowledge rather than one of faith or of a dogmatic religion. Odin, one of the noblest God figures, was a God of knowledge. He sacrificed an eye for knowledge, but not for an article of faith or a dogma. A dogma is not worth a finger, not to speak of an eye.”

-excerpted from “The 25 Theses of the German Religion: A Catechism” by Ernst Bergmann (1936)