I grew up behind the Iron Curtain. American politics evokes the worst and best memories in me.

Letters to America #3: Don't gamble with your freedom, please.

A fall day at the river Oder, the border between Germany to the west and Poland to the east.

Dear fellow pilgrim,

I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. It just happened to be that way. The rest of my mother’s family ended up at the other side of the Berlin Wall, when it was begun in secrecy early on a Sunday morning in August 1961. It separated my family into an East and a West family, into the repressed and into the free world, and covers most of my early childhood in a dark cloud.

Living in the shade of the wall, dear friend, was not fun. Living under totalitarian rule, where one party is glorified and elections are fake, is no good place for a child to grow up. Well, that is not exactly true. It was ok for those who belonged to the side who got along with the ruling party.

For us, a Lutheran pastor’s family, that was not an option. Religion was systematically repressed by the East German regime, and thus the flock who came to our little house church in the rural countryside was small.

This week I am sleeping right above that very space where the small flock met back then, and where we kids had our shared sleeping quarters right above the gathering space. My aging parents, though long retired, still live in the parsonage in this rural part of Germany close to the Polish border, where I grew up.

I came for a brief visit after spending some days in Norway at a conference.

Rainy melancholic Fall days awaited me, clouds hanging low and fog wavering over the grassland.

A heavy feeling befalls me whenever I come home to this place of my childhood years. Not only because my mom is fading into Alzheimer’s, but because the village seems to be fading away too. Still, my memories hang draped from the trees and drifting over the fields like heavy fog.

Thinking of my American home from this secluded place of my home country brings me to this:

When American Christians complain about religious repression, I frankly do not know what they are talking about.

Religious freedom for me never meant every one needs to be religious, or share or live by exactly my faith values. It does not mean Christian nationalism either.

It just means I can live my faith without fear of repercussions, without fear of being put in jail or harassed by the state in any other way.

Frankly, seeing Christians today seduced by totalitarian ideas in order to make America more Christian again breaks my heart.

Because it was freedom I was longing for back in those childhood days. Freedom to just be who I am, and to not be harassed for my Christian heritage.

And here is where the American election triggers me. It too is about freedom. Freedom is on the line. Only that this time it seems that part of Christianity has bought into the idea that the freedom of other people needs to be sacrificed in order to force their values on every one.

My dear reader, I have not kept it a secret that American politics triggers my worst memories. But I have not really taken time nor courage to let you in on my reasoning.

A kind reader has recently unsubscribed from this newsletter, telling me that she was tired of politics. I do understand. Oh, I do.

What I think she was tired of is partisanship. And believe me, I am tired of that too. Politics should serve people, not parties.

So if you are tired of politics also at this time and place, then this letter might not be for you. Just skip it and wait for my next (mid)weekly blessing when the US election is over.

Otherwise, dear reader, forge ahead to read my perspective coming to you from the stories of my home country.

My heart aches for America at this dangerous point in its history. But I am also filled with hope of new beginnings.

I know America has been in bad places before. But this one is personal. It reminds me of 1933 and 1989 in Germany.

1933 is when Hitler came to power, and a dark age fell, first on Germany, but soon on the whole world.

1989 is when the Berlin Wall fell, after people took to the streets for months to risk their lives for a better world. When hope and non-violence and our shared humanness came together and made their voice heard.

The Soviet occupation of East Germany and the ensuing communist ruling party was a direct outcome of the Second World War. Putin had been stationed as a KGB spy in Berlin when I grew up and our joy about our new found freedom in 1989 was his disappointment.

I have been often asked if I am not afraid of the liberal left in the US. If it would not trigger my painful memories of growing up under the East German communist rule.

Make no mistake, my friend. What caused the pain has not been policy differences or political philosophies. What was unbearable was the autocrat leadership which took away the freedom of its people.

The problem, dear friend is not that people have different policies or philosophies or faith traditions. The problem is, when one group starts to abandon the democratic process and ventures into lies in order to gain power it would not otherwise have.

Every faith tradition, every philosophy, however well thought out, can be converted and perverted to serve totalitarian rulers in order to win over or suppress those who are not “true believers.”

And this is wrong, even disastrous, no matter if it comes from the left or the right.

Thus, my family history is also a history of two German traumas. First, Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the terrible war that killed so many and brought unspeakable suffering over the world. And then, the following forty years as a divided Germany, with me being born on the East side controlled by the East German regime which was controlled by the former Soviet Union.

I did not grow up in a free country with free elections, freedom of speech, or freedom of religion. Though always best in the class, I was not allowed to enroll in the college-preparatory track of high school because I was a church kid. So there were precious few career choices left for people like me, like us.

Still, we did not budge.

Thus, I can understand people who feel besieged in their faith and who long to take a stand. But how do we take a stand? With what heart, and with what intention? Here we might disagree.

It breaks my heart to see so many deeply religious people convinced that they need a strong man to protect their faith and to punish those who threaten them.

Particularly when that man himself has not only no faith but also no reverence, and no compassion. When that very same man has no recognition of the sacred and worships instead money and power. When that same man who speaks about family values has precious few family values, but prefers rather to stir up division and strife, pitting one people against each other.

When the man who declares himself to be God’s chosen instrument has never himself chosen God.

Instead, his God is mammon, power, revenge, riches, and might.

Don’t leave just yet, dear friend. Hear me out.

My heart is bleeding for America.

Can idolatry be the right answer to a world which lacks God?

As long as there has been religion, it has been used to mislead. Religion is a powerful tool, and lends itself to both good and evil. All religious scriptures recognize this. It can bring peace and consolation to many. And at the same time can be used to control and coerce large groups of people.

And so, churches have often been seduced by the way of power:

When the German Nazis brought their flags into the church it was the wake up call for my grand father.

He could see the idolatry and felt deep inside that the mix of church and ruling power was dangerous.

My grand father had been a teacher in Saxonia. When the Nazis came to power his colleagues quickly caved into the pressure to become members of the Nazi party. He did not budge.

I am a Christian not a Nazi, he said.

Even though teachers were exempt from war to continue teaching he was sent to the front. He survived and came back home to a broken country.

After the war Saxonia ended up in the East zone now ruled by the communist party and their Russian occupiers. Now every teacher was supposed to become a member of the communist party. My grandfather declined again. He said:

I am a Christian, not a communist.

So he was fired. And became a preacher man.