Ecumenism and the Dialectics of Protestant Nationalism in Postwar Germany

The history of the Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD), a federation of regional Lutheran, Reformed, and United denominations, provides a counterpoint to the recent resurgence of Christian nationalism across the U.S. and Europe. Following widespread Protestant support for the Nazi dictatorship, the EKD became a locus for post-1945 movements to restrain state power and pursue reconciliation with Germany’s wartime enemies. My presentation argues that initiatives toward ecumenical dialogue during the years around 1960, both among Protestants across the Iron Curtain and between Protestants and Jews in West Germany, became key drivers of this transformation. Rather than a simple story of deradicalization, however, I propose that ecumenism and Christian nationalism remained entangled. Even as postwar ecumenical initiatives challenged exclusionary doctrines of national salvation, they reinscribed a longstanding tenet of German Protestant nationalism: the conviction that the Protestant confession served as the source of Germans' shared political values.