Of late, I haven’t blogged much about the Current Unpleasantness in The Episcopal Church ™. There is a reason: I am tired of it. But I read a post today on the Bishops / Deputies Listserv that seems to confirm my worst fears for the future of my church. In short, if the type of thinking I read is representative, the current leadership of The Episcopal Church ™ is utterly out of touch with reality.
Right now, there is a debate going on at the Bishops / Deputies Listserv over Islamic extremism and how the Church should respond. OK, fine. We need to have that debate. (Actually we should have had it years ago - Christians are murdered every day in the name of Allah just for, well, being Christian. See Darfur, Palestine, Thailand, the Phillipines...etc.) But here is what floored me: One poster - a priest, I believe - actually defended as a positive thing Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement of Adolph Hitler in the late 1930’s. He basically said Chamberlain’s appeasement got a bum rap, because any other choice at the time would have lead to war, violence, and innocents dying. (He was also able to work in a "Bush-is-as-bad-as-Bin-Laden" swipe, and loop in homosexuality, too.)
So appeasement worked? Oh, really?
This is why I get so frustrated with Boomers. Poor kids, they truly believe history began with the Viet Nam War. So let's recap a bit, shall we? (It gets complicated, Boomers, so pop an Ensure, put on some Peter, Paul & Mary, and try and keep up.) In March 1936, an ambitious German fellow named Adolph Hitler (remember him?), in violation of all treaty agreements, re-militarized the Rhineland area of Germany after the French occupiers pulled out. The French at the time had the largest army in the world. Germany’s forces were less than half their size, and with little modern equipment yet. But Hitler gambled that the pacifist streak in France and the UK would block any belligerent move by France if Germany moved in. He was right. But he was also well aware of his weak position both militarily and politically – he even told his commanders to pull back if French troops moved in to oppose them. But the French did nothing. Herr Hitler became wildly popular at home and was emboldened by his success. So in the spring of 1938 Herr Hitler annexed Austria into a “Greater Germany”, and then began demanding the ethnic German areas of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland. France and the UK, thinking they could avoid a war, wanted to could cut a deal with Herr Hitler. So in September 1938, Neville Chamberlain agreed to give him what he wanted (the Sudetenland) if he would promise no more expansions. Hitler, astonished, agreed. This was the famous Munich Agreement. (“Peace in our time” and all that. Note that no one from the Czech government was there to agree to their land being given away. Appeasement is easy when what you are giving away isn’t even yours….). Herr Hitler occupied the Sudetenland immediately, and (oops!) all of Czechoslovakia a few months later. In less than a year after the signing the Munich Agreement, Germany invaded Poland. And 40 million died in the next five years after that. So much for avoiding all that war, violence, and innocents dying.
So let's think this through – if France had moved a couple of divisions back into the Rhineland in 1936 and forced Herr Hitler to pull back, where would we be? Would some fighting have broken out? Perhaps. Would hundreds, or maybe a few thousand, have died? Perhaps. But Hitler would have been shown early on as militarily weak and not invincible. He may well have been overthrown by his generals. And a few thousand lost would have been far better than the 40 million that were lost, don’t you think? That difference is the cost of Appeasement.
Appeasement gave Germany two things: It gave her time to build up her military, and it confirmed their sense that the Western Powers believed more in “peace” than in their principals and sovereignty; and would quickly trade the latter in order to get the former. Even after Britain and France did declare war on Germany, they did little to actually prosecute hostilities until the Germans invaded France in the spring of 1940.
So what does this have to do with the thread that originally set my teeth on edge? First, how easy it is to forget. And we forget the lessons of history at our peril. Second, there are truly evil people in the world. And right now we are at war with a whole lot of ‘em. These people will not be as equally reasonable as you are, no matter how much you want them to be. They hate you. They hate me. They hate our very way of life. If it benefits them (as it did Herr Hitler), they may play along with you for a time, but they are not really interested in “dialogue,” or “understanding,” or “compassion,” or “relationships.” (And they don’t give a damn about the Millennium Development Goals!) They see such things as a sign of weakness, not strength. The only relationship they want is for us to be either under their spell, under their thumb, or under the ground. Sometimes, the only way to deal with such folks is harshly. It is unfortunate, but true. As Christians, I believe we have to wrestle with this reality, and decide where the line is between turning the other cheek and turning into sheep.
As for me, my Christian faith is not a suicide pact, and I believe the time for defending our freedom and our faith is now. We were attacked. Again and again. I would far rather have this fight at the gates of Baghdad now, than at the gates of Vienna in 20 years.
