Religion: God-Controlled Dictatorship

When the followers of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman wish to emphasize the fact that the Oxford Groups include all sorts of people, they often speak of their “former Communist” colleague, Scotsman James Watt. The Oxford Groups lay no claim to having a “former Fascist” in their midst, and German Buchmanite baronesses hedge when asked how the movement works in the case of German Jews. Last week, to a stray interviewer from the New York World-Telegram, brisk Dr. Buchman readily declared himself on Fascism, now No. i bugaboo to practically all U. S. churchmen.

“I thank heaven,” exclaimed Grouper Buchman, “for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front-line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism. My barber in London told me Hitler saved all Europe from Communism. That’s how he felt. Of course, I don’t condone everything the Nazis do. Anti-Semitism? Bad, naturally. I suppose Hitler sees a Karl Marx in every Jew.

“But think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered to God. Or Mussolini. Or any dictator. Through such a man God could control a nation overnight and solve every last, bewildering problem. . . . Spain has taught us what godless Communism will bring. Human problems aren’t economic. They’re moral, and they can’t be solved by immoral measures. They could be solved within a God-controlled democracy, or perhaps I should say a theocracy, and they could be solved through a God-controlled Fascist dictatorship.”

First religious journal to plumb the implications of Dr. Buchman’s plea was Zion’s Herald, influential New England Methodist weekly which editorialized: “Just what would happen if Adolf Hitler, shorn of all his pagan power, were suddenly to become a St. Francis of Assisi? Would not such a conversion immediately mark the end of all bluster, swashbuckling, regimentation, coercion, intolerance, and persecution? Dictatorship would instantly fade away at the touch of Christ, whose whole method was teaching and persuasion.

“God-controlled Fascism! The terms are mutually exclusive. As well talk of a God-controlled hell! When God controls, Fascism is thereby ruled out.”