5 ms·

>Given these swerves, gaps, and evasions, it starts to look as if it was actually the Inklings, and especially Lewis, who got under Bloom’s skin. A freudian tw

by arkj 8y ago

>Given these swerves, gaps, and evasions, it starts to look as if it was actually the Inklings, and especially Lewis, who got under Bloom’s skin. A freudian twist

rjkennedy98 8y ago
Plainly not true. Bloom just particularly despised them for their neo-Christianity, which makes sense as he was a jew, most of whose family was massacred in the holocaust.
- yters 8y ago
  He also seemed to despise Jews, at least according to the article. Perhaps he just didn't like theists.
- JasonFruit 8y ago
  I don't think it's as plain as you do. That he despised their religious views doesn't mean they didn't influence him and his work, even against his will and preference — in fact, in a way that accords with (my understanding of) Bloom's own views on how influence operates. I'm also not sure how his family's death in the Holocaust is related to Bloom's view of the Inklings' Christianity; Christianity was at most peripherally involved in that particular instance of persecution, as I understand it.
  - steve19 8y ago
    I think it's unfair to even say "at most peripherally involved". There should have been greater opposition to hitlers rise to power (such as the Catholic Church treaty with hitlers Germany), but that's about it. If Bloom had religious objections it was probably more to religion in general. Maybe, at a stretch, he didn't like that Lewis' wife converted to Christianity before she married him. Lewis' stepsons were (are) Jewish. Lewis kept a Kosher house for at least some period of time for his stepsons. His Jewish stepsons inherited his estate after his brother passed away.
    - JasonFruit 8y ago
      "At most peripherally involved" was mostly to avoid having a conversation about minor religious considerations like exactly these.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - leephillips 8y ago
      “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity [...] in fact our movement is Christian.” -- Adolf Hitler
      - steve19 8y ago
        @dang, please can you consider doing something about this thread. It seems to have dissolved into trolling. Lee claims on his website to be waging a war on religious privilege, whatever that is. I assume that means trolling anyone he believes to be a thiest. Hitlers version of Christianity did not even require the belief in Christ. It was twisted evil propoganda designed to combat the Christian Church which he deemed "negative Christiananity". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity
      - JasonFruit 8y ago
        I don't agree that Lee is trolling. I think he is mistaken in putting any trust in Hitler's religious propaganda — it was certainly to his benefit to curry favor with Christians — but there's no trolling in quoting the man himself. If you look at the changes Adolf Hitler made in the churches of Germany, it becomes clear that his idea of good religion, or at least useful religion, was far removed from any previously-practiced Christianity, his opinion notwithstanding.
        leephillips 8y ago
        Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I assumed that steve19 probably doesn't understand what "trolling" means, but didn't think it would be useful to debate it. I think we need to make a distinction between Hitler's personal religion, which although he was raised a Christian, was some crazy amalgam that he mixed up himself, and the faith of essentially every SS member and ordinary German citizen who closed their eyes to the brutality visited upon the Jewish minority: they were all Christians. Hitler may not have remained, personally, a Christian, but the Holocaust was only possible because of the way that Christians were trained to think about Jews. In my own lifetime, in the United States, I've heard Christians seethe with hatred against the "Christ killers"; imagine 1930s Germany. Martin Luther, the founder of German protestantism, wrote obsessively about how vile and filthy the Jews were, that their synagogues should be burned, their property seized, and even that they should be slaughtered. The Holocaust was a systematic, literal prosecution of Luther's program for the Jews. Hitler and the top Nazi officials frequently quoted Luther, and Hitler admired him in his autobiography. If the Nazi movement and the Holocaust were not Christian, why were the Jews, then, in particular, the targets?

by arkj 8y ago

>Given these swerves, gaps, and evasions, it starts to look as if it was actually the Inklings, and especially Lewis, who got under Bloom’s skin. A freudian twist

rjkennedy98 8y ago

Plainly not true. Bloom just particularly despised them for their neo-Christianity, which makes sense as he was a jew, most of whose family was massacred in the holocaust.

yters 8y ago
He also seemed to despise Jews, at least according to the article. Perhaps he just didn't like theists.
JasonFruit 8y ago
I don't think it's as plain as you do. That he despised their religious views doesn't mean they didn't influence him and his work, even against his will and preference — in fact, in a way that accords with (my understanding of) Bloom's own views on how influence operates. I'm also not sure how his family's death in the Holocaust is related to Bloom's view of the Inklings' Christianity; Christianity was at most peripherally involved in that particular instance of persecution, as I understand it.
- steve19 8y ago
  I think it's unfair to even say "at most peripherally involved". There should have been greater opposition to hitlers rise to power (such as the Catholic Church treaty with hitlers Germany), but that's about it. If Bloom had religious objections it was probably more to religion in general. Maybe, at a stretch, he didn't like that Lewis' wife converted to Christianity before she married him. Lewis' stepsons were (are) Jewish. Lewis kept a Kosher house for at least some period of time for his stepsons. His Jewish stepsons inherited his estate after his brother passed away.
  - JasonFruit 8y ago
    "At most peripherally involved" was mostly to avoid having a conversation about minor religious considerations like exactly these.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - leephillips 8y ago
    “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity [...] in fact our movement is Christian.” -- Adolf Hitler
    - steve19 8y ago
      @dang, please can you consider doing something about this thread. It seems to have dissolved into trolling. Lee claims on his website to be waging a war on religious privilege, whatever that is. I assume that means trolling anyone he believes to be a thiest. Hitlers version of Christianity did not even require the belief in Christ. It was twisted evil propoganda designed to combat the Christian Church which he deemed "negative Christiananity". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity
    - JasonFruit 8y ago
      I don't agree that Lee is trolling. I think he is mistaken in putting any trust in Hitler's religious propaganda — it was certainly to his benefit to curry favor with Christians — but there's no trolling in quoting the man himself. If you look at the changes Adolf Hitler made in the churches of Germany, it becomes clear that his idea of good religion, or at least useful religion, was far removed from any previously-practiced Christianity, his opinion notwithstanding.
      - leephillips 8y ago
        Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I assumed that steve19 probably doesn't understand what "trolling" means, but didn't think it would be useful to debate it. I think we need to make a distinction between Hitler's personal religion, which although he was raised a Christian, was some crazy amalgam that he mixed up himself, and the faith of essentially every SS member and ordinary German citizen who closed their eyes to the brutality visited upon the Jewish minority: they were all Christians. Hitler may not have remained, personally, a Christian, but the Holocaust was only possible because of the way that Christians were trained to think about Jews. In my own lifetime, in the United States, I've heard Christians seethe with hatred against the "Christ killers"; imagine 1930s Germany. Martin Luther, the founder of German protestantism, wrote obsessively about how vile and filthy the Jews were, that their synagogues should be burned, their property seized, and even that they should be slaughtered. The Holocaust was a systematic, literal prosecution of Luther's program for the Jews. Hitler and the top Nazi officials frequently quoted Luther, and Hitler admired him in his autobiography. If the Nazi movement and the Holocaust were not Christian, why were the Jews, then, in particular, the targets?