"It's not appropriate to conflate nationalism, our national identity, with our faith in Jesus Christ," Metaxas said. The Church must always be "the conscience of the state," but the Church cannot do this if its identity is aligned with the state. National identity, he said, is not the same as being a follower of Jesus, and believing they are the same can lead to some serious consequences, such as what happened in Germany. You can only be born-again as a Christian. Similarly, Germans believed that being German meant being Lutheran, which meant that you are a Christian. He compared it to his own experience of growing up in a Greek family where he was led to believe that being Greek meant that you belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, which meant that you are a Christian. The evil acts of Nazi Germany were partly enabled by the conflation of national identity with the Church, Metaxas said. Eric Metaxas speaking at the In Defense of Christians Inaugural Summit, Washington, D.C, Sept. Metaxas is the author of a biography of Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who spoke up about the persecution of the Jews and was put to death by the Third Reich. "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil," Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, Metaxas reminded the audience at the In Defense of Christians Inaugural Summit on Sept. WASHINGTON - Eric Metaxas compared the silence of Christians about persecution in the Middle East and religious freedom restrictions domestically to the silence of Christians in Nazi Germany.
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