Mothering the Fatherland
A Protestant Sisterhood Repents for the Holocaust
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:29th May '14
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
How should one respond, personally or theologically, to genocide committed on one's behalf? After the Allied bombing of Darmstadt, Germany, in 1944, some Lutheran young women perceived their citys destruction as an expression of God's wratha punishment for Hitlers murder of six million Jews, purportedly on behalf of the German people. George Faithful tells the story of a number of these young women, who formed the Ecumenical Sisterhood of Mary in 1947 in order to embrace lives of radical repentance for the sins of the German people against God and against the Jews. Under Mother Basilea Schlink, the sisters embraced an ideology of collective national guilt. According to Schlink, a handful of true Christians were called to lead their nation in repentance, interceding and making spiritual sacrifices as priests on its behalf and saving it from looming destruction. Schlink explained that these ideas were rooted in her reading of the Hebrew Bible; in fact, Faithful discovers, they also bore the influence of German nationalism. Schlinks vision resulted in penitential practices that dominated the life of her community. While the women of the sisterhood were subject to each other, they elevated themselves and their spiritual authority above that of any male leaders. They offered female and gender-neutral paradigms of self-sacrifice as normative for all Christians. Mothering the Fatherland shows how the sisters overturned German Protestant norms for gender roles, communal life, and nationalism in their pursuit of redemption.
A significant study of an unconventional group of women. In 1947, in war-torn Germany, these Protestants took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to do penance for Christian anti-Judaism and lived in strict monastic discipline to atone for German guilt for the Holocaust. Faithful's sympathetic analysis of Basilea Schlink's vision and community provides a startling counterpoint to prevailing narratives of post-war Germany's inability to mourn, repent, or admit the Holocaust. * Katharina von Kellenback, author of The Mark of Cain: Guilt and Denial in the Lives of Nazi Perpetrators *
Telling the fascinating story of a German Protestant sisterhood who engaged in acts of repentance in Israel, George Faithful masterfully explores the group's mixture of German national theology and faith in the special historical mission of the Jews. This is a welcome book that sheds light on little known corners of German theology and Christian-Jewish relations. I highly recommend it. * Yaakov Ariel, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill *
Mothering the Fatherland presents a carefully documented look into a small but significant movement within German popular Christianity. In the process, George Faithful has offered a clear set of data for re-theorizing the field of Christian Zionism studies. This work is essential for understanding dynamics within twentieth-century theopolitical history both in Germany and in the Holy Land * Robert O. Smith, author of More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism *
In Mothering the Fatherland: A Protestant Sisterhood Repents for the Holocaust, George Faithful provides us with an insightful study of the Ecumenical Sisterhood of Mary (now the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary). * Danae M. Faulk, Religion *
ISBN: 9780199363469
Dimensions: 163mm x 239mm x 31mm
Weight: 530g
304 pages