Meet Christian speaker Shane Claiborne:
“With tears and laughter, Shane Claiborne unveils the tragic messes we’ve made of our world and the tangible hope that another world is possible.”
Claiborne is scheduled to speak at the Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 conference, which Stephen Sizer is organising, and where Ben White is also speaking. The conference will take place next month (March 5-9, 2012).
Here is Claiborne speaking about theology and war. Watch from 02:13, when Claiborne begins speaking about German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s role in the attempt to assassinate Hitler:
“I think even Bonhoeffer was wrong. There’s an interview with Hitler’s secretary in a movie called Blind Spot, and she tells about when the assassination attempt failed, and Hitler was very interestingly protected from the bomb, he was convinced at that point, more than ever before, that God was protecting him and his mission, and he went forward with renewed vigilence like ever before. So I would say on the day that Bonhoeffer did that, the cross lost, and that violence just perpetuated.”
According to Claiborne, when Bonhoeffer tried to assassinate Hitler “the cross lost”.
For many Christians, the cross cannot lose, because there Jesus finally defeated death on the cross. Christ’s sacrifice was the once-and-for-all victory over sin.
But surely, if the cross could lose, it would have “lost” when Hitler began to exterminate Jews and Gypsies, and many other innocent people. If Claiborne is correct, then the cross was winning throughout Hitler’s reign, until someone tried to kill Hitler, when the cross “lost”.
This, combined with Claiborne’s language about Hitler being “very interestingly protected” from the attempt on his life, appears to be very disturbing theology. Claiborne later denounces Hitler’s genocide of Jews as “really really terrible theology” and a “skewed theology” – however, he does not claim that “the cross lost” when Hitler killed Jews, in the way that he claims “the cross lost” when Bonhoeffer tried to put an end to Hitler.
Recently, Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 has been courting the support of Dr. Jim West, an American theologian who admires the Nazi theologian Kittel.
There are many other reasons to be concerned about antisemitism at Christ at the Checkpoint 2012.
Also attending this conference, are American megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, the President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference Samuel Rodriguez, popular US preacher (and former “spiritual adviser” to Bill Clinton) Tony Campolo, and President of the World Evangelical Alliance, Sang-Bok David Kim.
The conference recently awarded its blogging prize to a man named Keith Giles, who has previously stated:
Finally, I would like to ask what the fundamental difference is between today’s secular Jewish nation of Israel and the Pharisees of Jesus’ day? Both reject Christ as the Messiah and persecute Christians in Palestine. Should we support a government, any government, who persecutes our brothers and sisters in Christ?
At the last Christ at the Checkpoint conference in 2010, Lutheran pastor Mitri Raheb argued in a speech that Jews are not native to Palestine:
I’m sure if we were to do a DNA test between David, who was a Bethlehemite, and Jesus, born in Bethlehem, and Mitri, born just across the street from where Jesus was born, I’m sure the DNA will show that there is a trace. While, if you put King David, Jesus and Netanyahu, you will get nothing, because Netanyahu comes from an East European tribe who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages.
Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 is doing what it can to bring antisemitic theology back into the lifeblood of mainstream Christian theology.
