Episode notes
Chapter Twenty One
Martin was a priest of the old school, which meant that for him – as for millions of men, women and children across Germany – that God was alive.
God was alive, and God was everywhere. Hell was as real as a car crash; heaven as possible as a good night’s sleep. And not just God in the abstract, but God as a vital Christian. God was not a crutch for times of crisis. God was not vaguely present at marriages and funerals. God was not something you dressed up and gossiped on the church steps for. God was not ‘what all religions basically worshipped.’ The Muslims and Jews might share the Old Testament, but anyone who denied the divinity of Christ was wrong – sinfully wrong. Against God. A heathen. Going to hell.
Now, this kind of faith had its last holdout in certain coun ...
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