In the environment that spawned World War II, Gertrude Stein said that the most important thing for
Germans to learn was disobedience. In 1973 an American sociologist, Gerda Lederer, did a large-scale
comparative study of authoritarianism in West German and American adolescents. Authoritarianism—the
willingness to submit to authority and the need to dominate others—had been a pre-war hallmark of
Nazi Germany. Prepared by Bismarck’s military regime and nourished by Hitler through the Nazi Youth
Corps, this disposition to blind obedience to official command was later pointed to by social
psychologists to explain the compliance of German Christians in the Jewish holocaust.
The astonishing conclusion of Lerderer’s study was that by 1973 German teenagers had become even
less authoritarian than their American counterparts even though they had much further to come in
their development of anti-authoritarian principles.
What may be even more telling are the findings of Stanley Milgram’s eight-year study. Nearly two-thirds
of the participants in a study to determine the degree to which subjects were willing to inflict pain on
another individual simply because they had been directed to do so by an authority figure complied
completely. They never questioned either the reasons or the results of their action. They simply
followed orders on the assumption that if they had been told by an official that their cooperation in
this violence was necessary, then indeed it must be.
To make matters worse, D.C. Brock researched the relationship between religious beliefs and
obedience to destructive commands and concluded: “Religious beliefs and behaviors are related to
obedience. A clear trend of refusal to yield to authority was noted in non-believers. Moderate
believers were consistently high in the delivery of shock, but believers were the most obedient,
delivering more shock than any other group.”
Every day people that the churches have educated go quietly and serenely to factories where they
assemble warheads, to laboratories where they increase the megaton capacity of our arsenals, to
boardrooms where they vote to increase our “defense” capabilities.
The role of the religious community in such a culture is surely a clear one. It is of course to pray for
peace, not to cajole God to save us from our own insane sinfulness but to make ourselves receptive to
God’s in-breaking in our lives and culture. It is as well to be centers of peace where strangers can
become sisters or brothers in Christ. It is, finally, to become models of disobedience.
Erich Fromm describes the “revolutionary personality” as a person who is independent, who has the
capacity to identify deeply with humanity and who has the ability to disobey in the interest of more
fundamental values. The prophets, Christ, the early Christians would understand the role completely. It
is up to the religious of this day, who take a public vow of obedience to God, to reclaim and recall a
conforming world to the burning burden of that promise
Germans to learn was disobedience. In 1973 an American sociologist, Gerda Lederer, did a large-scale
comparative study of authoritarianism in West German and American adolescents. Authoritarianism—the
willingness to submit to authority and the need to dominate others—had been a pre-war hallmark of
Nazi Germany. Prepared by Bismarck’s military regime and nourished by Hitler through the Nazi Youth
Corps, this disposition to blind obedience to official command was later pointed to by social
psychologists to explain the compliance of German Christians in the Jewish holocaust.
The astonishing conclusion of Lerderer’s study was that by 1973 German teenagers had become even
less authoritarian than their American counterparts even though they had much further to come in
their development of anti-authoritarian principles.
What may be even more telling are the findings of Stanley Milgram’s eight-year study. Nearly two-thirds
of the participants in a study to determine the degree to which subjects were willing to inflict pain on
another individual simply because they had been directed to do so by an authority figure complied
completely. They never questioned either the reasons or the results of their action. They simply
followed orders on the assumption that if they had been told by an official that their cooperation in
this violence was necessary, then indeed it must be.
To make matters worse, D.C. Brock researched the relationship between religious beliefs and
obedience to destructive commands and concluded: “Religious beliefs and behaviors are related to
obedience. A clear trend of refusal to yield to authority was noted in non-believers. Moderate
believers were consistently high in the delivery of shock, but believers were the most obedient,
delivering more shock than any other group.”
Every day people that the churches have educated go quietly and serenely to factories where they
assemble warheads, to laboratories where they increase the megaton capacity of our arsenals, to
boardrooms where they vote to increase our “defense” capabilities.
The role of the religious community in such a culture is surely a clear one. It is of course to pray for
peace, not to cajole God to save us from our own insane sinfulness but to make ourselves receptive to
God’s in-breaking in our lives and culture. It is as well to be centers of peace where strangers can
become sisters or brothers in Christ. It is, finally, to become models of disobedience.
Erich Fromm describes the “revolutionary personality” as a person who is independent, who has the
capacity to identify deeply with humanity and who has the ability to disobey in the interest of more
fundamental values. The prophets, Christ, the early Christians would understand the role completely. It
is up to the religious of this day, who take a public vow of obedience to God, to reclaim and recall a
conforming world to the burning burden of that promise
Needed: Models of Disobedience
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