One of the most vexing and sobering historical questions is how, in the 1920’s and 30’s, a nation and culture that produced sublime poetry and music (Goethe and Bach), important philosophers (Hegel and Nietzsche), and elegant theology (Luther and Bultmann), evolved into a murderous, racist, militaristic dictatorship. Much has been written about the anomaly of Christian German culture morphing into nasty, brutal Naziism. National humiliation at Versailles at the end of WWI, punishing reparations leveled on Germany by the victorious Allies, runaway inflation which resulted in nation-wide fear, desperation and anger are part of the puzzle. The major, determining factor was the emergence of a movement that fed the feelings of humiliation and fear, promised to make the nation great again by rearming and greatly expanding the military, threatened real and imagined enemies and, finally, identified an ethnic scapegoat to blame for the nation’s suffering – the Jews. At the center of it all is the singular anomaly that the German people went to the polls and elected Adolf Hitler.

He was a master at fueling peoples’ fears and frustrations, whipping up nationalism and patriotism, promising to punish enemies with a newly empowered military. Somehow he managed to transform a beautiful culture into a total dictatorship that turned on a major segment of its own population.

As I have watched and listened to the rhetoric of the Republican Presidential campaign, mainly but not exclusively from the front runner, I found myself pondering the psychological, social, economic, political factors that gave rise to Naziism. And as I watched a small riot break out at a rally in Chicago, the passion of the mostly young protestors, the outbreaks of physical violence among Trump supporters, encouraged by Trump’s own words about protestors – “I’d like to punch him in the face”- I could not stop thinking about Brown Shirts, Nuremberg, anti-Semitism.

Christianity provides a framework for thinking about what is happening to us. Deep in our theological/philosophic understanding of humankind, our anthropology, is a doctrine that is often maligned and misunderstood and scorned – namely Sin with a capital “S”, Original Sin, to be precise. Old John Calvin, progenitor of Reformed Christianity and Presbyterianism, called it “total depravity” which strikes many people as draconian hyperbole – “total? nothing redeeming about us?” – but which, in fact, points to something very important about us. Human beings are capable not only of courage, self sacrifice, beauty and great good, but also of cruelty, greed, inhumanity and monumental evil. History itself is the textbook. In a recent essay Marilynne Robinson reflects on, “the dazzling world of contemporary science on the one hand and the impressive and moving and terrible record of the deep human past on the other.” Robinson calls herself a “church-going Calvinist.”

The Christian doctrine of Sin is not a popular idea and one reason is the way it has been trivialized by religion when it translates into a list of petty rules and taboos, mostly sexual – about which Jesus said virtually nothing. But it does say something important about us. The checks and balances built into our own republican democracy reflect the Calvinist idea that human beings are capable of both good and evil, beauty and ugliness.

There are moral, social and political implications. For one thing, public rhetoric from preacher to politician has enormous power and potential for both good and evil. Both preacher and politician should always carefully measure words for their dangerous potential. Making wild allegations about national and ethnic groups – “Mexicans are streaming over our borders and they are rapists and drug dealers”, threats against specific religious groups – “most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims hate us”, demagogic rants about nations -“China and Japan are ripping us off”, threats to obliterate enemies including their families, feeds into the least attractive traits of humankind and should stop.

It is why many Christians begin the act of public worship with a confession of corporate sin.