Tag: Jehovah’s Witnesses

More Fractured History Lessons in Glenn Beck's Sermon to Liberty University: The Bible, Cake and Witches

In two prior posts (here and here), I addressed Glenn Beck’s faulty reference to the purple triangle worn by Jehovah’s Witnesses while imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during WWII.  Beck said Bible scholars were made to wear the triangle without telling the audience that Jehovah’s Witnesses were known as Bible students in Germany at the time. Very few  people (some say less than one percent) from other religions wore the purple triangle.
After he held up the purple triangle, Beck then held up a Bible he said belonged to Louis the 15th and a prayer book he said belonged to British King George III. He remarked that the books were hardly used and proposed the lack of Bible usage led to various problems for the French and British.  He then held up a Bible he said stopped the Salem witch trials. Finally, he told a story about the death of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint church. Because I anticipate the Joseph Smith story will raise different issues than the Bible stories, I will take it in a separate post. For now, I want to examine Beck’s claims line by line. Prepare for whiplash.
Here again is the sermon:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYNjZ55nctE[/youtube]
At about 10 minutes into the video, after identifying several colored triangles the Nazis used to identify prisoners, Beck said:

…what got you sent to the concentration camps for the purple triangle? You were a Bible scholar. The Bible is the enemy to fascists.
Why?
When we went to war as a country there were two other great powers on earth one of them was England and the other was France. At the time King Louis was the King of France. This is King Louis the 15th’s Scriptures. If you look at the gilding, it’s perfect, it’s perfect. It’s never been read! How could you live in that society and say let them eat cake? What led to the revolution where the guillotines were the answer? He never read his Scriptures. The other great power that we broke away from was King George. This is King George his book of morning prayer. If you look through this, it is absolutely perfect. I don’t think the pages were ever turned.
What do your Scriptures look like? Will someday somebody say this is my mom, this is my dad, this is my brother, this is my sister’s Scriptures. Look at they’re in perfect condition, or will they have been poured over, dog-eared, written in that tells the story of your life and your path. This [holding up a Bible] is what freed the world and this came at a great price. This is an original William Tyndale Bible, and if you see, it was owned by a Puritan because every time there’s the face of price it’s been blotted out. This was smuggled page by page in bags of rice smuggled in. When they tied him to the stake, he said my only crime is that I believe that you should be able to read God’s Word in your own tongue. Now we have God’s Word in our pocket. We can access it anywhere, in any language. Does it mean anything to us anymore? Is it just a series of words put together?
This is the Bible that’s stopped the Salem witch trials. People will say that the Salem witch trials were caused by Christians, but how come the witch trials happened for decades in Europe but lasted very short period of time here? Why? Because of preachers, preachers that knew their Scriptures and took this Bible and said your misreading the Scriptures, and that Sunday the governor got up and stood in front of the congregation weeping, “I am sorry, I misread.”

There are several problems here. Let’s start with:

When we went to war as a country there were two other great powers on Earth one of them was England and the other was France.

Not so. Another possibly greater power on Earth at the time was China. According to the British Museum, the Chinese empire of Qianlong “was the wealthiest and most populous country in the world. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were 200 million Chinese.” This is an important point because Beck wants to make a case that the Bible is somehow involved in a nation’s political fortunes. Obviously, the Chinese did not seek to base their culture on the Bible.
Beck continued:

This is King Louis the 15th’s Scriptures. If you look at the gilding, it’s perfect, it’s perfect. It’s never been read! How could you live in that society and say let them eat cake? What led to the revolution where the guillotines were the answer? He never read his Scriptures.

I looked for information regarding King Louis’ Bible and have not yet found anything. However, I assume King Louis had more than one Bible and it seems presumptuous to make much out of the condition of this item unless one has additional primary source confirmation that the King never read any Bible.
Beck then leaps wildly through French history to link Louis’ purported lack of Bible reading with the phrase, “let them eat cake” and the French Revolution. The phrase “let them eat cake” is widely attributed to Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI, the grandson of Louis XV. However, historians believe she never said the phrase. Instead, the phrase has been attributed to a Spanish princess before Louis the 15th was born. The phrase was also used by Rousseau in the book, Les Confessions, who said an unnamed princess uttered the words. Regarding the French Revolution, Louis XV died in 1774, 15 years before the revolution started. In short, Beck links Louis XV’s alleged lack of Bible reading to events that happened before he was born and after he died.
About King George, Beck said:

This is King George his book of morning prayer. If you look through this, it is absolutely perfect. I don’t think the pages were ever turned.

Again, I have found little on this. Was this King George’s only copy? According to this British Royal Collection website, a Bible, psalter and prayer book used by King George is safely in the Royal Collection. A rare book house has a description of one of King George’s prayer books. In fact, the description says that “George III was deeply devout and spent hours in prayer, making this volume emblematic of his rule at that time.” We do know that King George called for prayer against the colonists and issued a book of prayers beseeching God to turn back the rebellion. King George also may have suffered from an illness which caused mental instability. In any case, without examining the evidence for this item, and given Beck’s other misleading statements, it is possible that the condition of the book he has means nothing about King George’s beliefs and practices.
Beck then claimed he has the Bible that stopped the Salem witch trials:

This is the Bible that’s stopped the Salem witch trials.

I have asked several historians about this with no one knowing what he means. I can’t tell if he means the actual Bible or if he is referring to the version of the Bible which was in common use at the time. Beck continued:

People will say that the Salem witch trials were caused by Christians, but how come the witch trials happened for decades in Europe but lasted very short period of time here? Why? Because of preachers, preachers that knew their Scriptures and took this Bible and said your misreading the Scriptures, and that Sunday the governor got up and stood in front of the congregation weeping, “I am sorry, I misread.”

There is no dispute that the witch trials were conducted by people who claimed to be Christian. Indeed, there were periods of hysteria in Europe, just as there was here. Salem was not the only town in the colonies to experience witchcraft hysteria. Connecticut did as well on at least two occasions. Both were related to Christians who believed witches were responsible for various problems in the community and should be handled in the manner taught by Old Testament law. Marc Carlson has compiled a comprehensive list of nearly 300 people tried as witches in trials in America from 1622 through 1878. There were more incidents in Europe but there were more people in Europe and the duration of the count was over a longer period of time.
The religious leaders in MA initially believed they were in the right. It was when allegations of witchcraft were directed toward prominent members of the community that caution came into play. An appeal to the Bible may have helped support that caution but there can be no mistake that an appeal to the Bible was the foundation for the hysteria in the first place.
All in all, the significant historical problems in this sermon raise questions about the accuracy of the rest of it, including his story of Joseph Smith’s last days. I will take that up in a future post.

Mormons and the Nazis: More about Glenn Beck's Purple Triangle Story at Liberty University

Last week I wrote about Glenn Beck’s recent sermon at Liberty University. In that post, I pointed out that Beck referred to the colored cloth triangles that the Nazis made concentration camp inmates wear to identify the reason for imprisonment. The last triangle he displayed to his audience was a purple triangle (Watch the entire video here, for the purple triangle segment start at 10 minutes into the video).

Here is what Beck said about the prisoners wearing the purple triangles:

what got you sent to the concentration camps for the purple triangle? You were a Bible scholar. The Bible is the enemy to fascists.

As I pointed out in the post last week, Beck misled his audience. Bible scholars were not imprisoned unless they challenged the Nazi party. While all felt the scrutiny of the government, Bible scholars were not imprisoned simply for studying or believing the Bible. In fact, the overwhelming number of purple triangle wearers were Jehovah’s Witnesses. They refused to salute Hitler and paid a heavy price for it.
A little additional reading makes Beck’s misinformation particularly troubling. Beck’s religious group, the Mormons, was tolerated by the Nazis, mainly suffering local intimidation but little, if any, national persecution.  Based on the Twelfth Article of Faith, the Mormons’ policy toward the Nazis was to accommodate them. The LDS church in Germany disbanded their youth group without resistance at the order of the Nazis. The Mormon basketball ministry team helped the German team during the 1936 Olympics. Although later vindicated, the church even excommunicated one Mormon youth who was executed for carrying out anti-Nazi activities.
In early 1933, the activities and literature of the Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned by the Nazis. Some JWs were sent to the early concentration camps that year.  On the other hand, in December 1933, The Deseret News, a Mormon paper, published an article (scroll across to pp. 19 & 22; also here) lauding Hitler and the Nazis.

Note the reference to banned sects in the paragraph above:

Since the National Socialist party have come to power a few sects have been prohibited or restricted, but activities in the “Mormon” church have been carried on about the same as before. As a matter of fact, a number of interesting parallels can be seen between the church and some of the ideas and policies of the National Socialists.

At least one of the banned sects was the JWs. While the Witnesses were getting a purple triangle, the Mormons were finding common ground with the Nazis.
The Nazis eventually became suspicious of the Mormons, but along the way, the church and the National Socialists worked together. For instance, members of the Mormon basketball team, formed to proselytize, found favor in the eyes of the Nazis who called upon them to help with the German national team.
 

Mormon basketball team giving the Nazi Sieg Heil salute.
LDS Scholars Alan Keele and Douglas Tobler documented the Mormon tolerance of the Nazis in a 1980 article titled The Fuhrer’s New Clothes. In it, the scholars note that the Mormon leadership as well as individual Mormons tolerated and in some cases embraced the Nazis. In 1939, a LDS official penned another article in praise of the Nazis. According to Keele and Tobler:

In their eagerness to coexist with the [Nazi] government, American officials of the German Church resorted to public relation efforts . . . Probably the clearest example of this tendency is an article by West German Mission President Alfred C. Rees entitled ‘In the Land of the Mormons.’ The article appeared in a special issue of the Nazi Party organ Der Volkische Beobachter dated April 14 1937. In the Editor’s Preface to the article, President Rees is called ‘the representative of the Church in Germany,’ who ‘paints for our readers a portrait of Mormonism today, a church which views the New Germany with sympathy and friendship.’ (p. 27, Fuhrer’s New Clothes).

Keele and Tobler also describe the fate of a young Mormon boy, Helmuth Hubener, who was executed by the Nazis for anti-government activities. The Branch President of the local Mormon church excommunicated him after his martyrdom arrest. Even though the excommunication was not ratified by Mormon leaders in the United States, no one in Germany addressed the matter until after the war was over (Additional note: My original post said Hubener was excommunicated after his death. Instead the German LDS church action was taken after his arrest. After the war, in actions taken between 1946 and 1948, the local and then U.S. church reversed the excommunication. I am sorry for the original error.)
Glenn Beck told Liberty University that the Bible was the enemy of fascists. However, his own church put up little resistance to Nazi fascists. They did not wear the purple triangle. Without the whole story, it is unseemly for Beck to hold it up as a badge now.
UPDATE: In response to reader comments, let me add that Baptists (Liberty University is a Baptist school) were about the same as the Mormons. Baptists lauded Hitler in the 1930s because Hitler didn’t drink or smoke and because the Nazis campaigned for family values.  Beck’s grandstanding about resistance to fascism is pathetic when one considers the historical record of his religion and the religion of his audience.
Let me add that I am not saying I would have done any better than the Mormons or the Baptists. I would have wanted to protect my family and so I would have wanted to leave the country or do what I had to do to keep my family safe. In the face of evil, humans often wither with or without the Bible.
Additional sources:
The Rise of the Nazi Dictatorship and its Relationship with the Mormon Church in Germany, 1933–1939 – Steve Carter
Ernst C. Helmreich. The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle and Epilogue. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979. (see especially pp. 404-406)
(H/t to commenter DukeCanuck)
More on the historical errors in Beck sermon.