In July 1933, during Hitler’s first summer in power, a young German pastor named Joachim Hossenfelder preached a sermon in the towering Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin’s most important church. He used the words of Romans 13 to remind worshippers of the importance of

obedience to those in authority. The church was festooned with Nazi banners and Stormtrooper flags, its pews packed with the Nazi Party faithful – including men in the brown shirts of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazis’ paramilitary movement.

This is one of the most explicit examples in which the German Protestant Church invoked Romans 13.
Romans 13 is important because it was used by the Trump administration too.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ reference to Paul’s letter to the Romans to defend the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their undocumented immigrant families. “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the

laws of the government, because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful,” Sessions stated. The same argument Nazi’s used over Germans and promoted by German Christian nationalists.

Woven into the very fabric of the German Christian belief was the idea that state rule was supreme and not to be questioned, however Hitler knew that the whole Nazi system rested on approval of the Christian population, which was 98 percent of the population.”

Most Christians were Nazis and Nazis were Christians, and that’s just the way it was. Although there were some division between the Protestant factions in Nazi Germany, they all remained inside the official Protestant Church, which was tied of the state. And Hitler and other

Nazis had a complicated relationship with religion, but knew it served their purpose for maintaining public support for the regime. Another German sermon that alluded to Romans 13 took place on March 21, 1933, when Friedrich Karl Otto Dibelius, a German bishop and one of the

highest Protestant officials in the country – spoke to new members of the German Reichstag about the paramount powers of state authority in neighboring Potsdam.
Here, the principles of Romans 13 were invoked by the Protestant Church explicitly in front of the nation and newly

elected members of parliament, in order to justify the Nazi seizure of power and all the policies the Nazis had implemented following the seizing of power. It was also in anticipation of the ‘Enabling Law’ that took place just three days later, “in which the German parliament

dissolved itself and passed all legislative powers to the executive, Adolf Hitler. Dibelius referenced Protestant theologian Martin Luther when he said in his sermon, “From Rev. Martin Luther we learned that the church should not be allowed to interfere with legitimate state

power if it does what it is called to do. Even if it turns hard and ruthless.” Dibelius let the genie out of the bottle.

This photo was used to convince German Christians that Hitler was Christian.

Do not be fooled for one second that the American fundamentalist evangelical movement isn’t using Nazi Germany tactics. It has been a political ploy since 1981. The cooptation of Christianity for state power.