William Stewart Skiles
Biographic Data
| ID | 951859 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William Stewart Skiles |
| GIVEN NAMES | William Stewart |
| FAMILY NAME | Skiles |
| SIGNATURE | SKILES W S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Regent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3093-2901 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Overcoming and The Ninth Day: The Sacramental Life and Resistance in Nazi Germany
Volker Schlöndorff’s film The Ninth Day (2004) presents for cultural remembrance a story loosely based on Father Jean Bernard’s short furlough from the Dachau concentration camp during the Second World War, as told in his memoir Priestblock 25487. The film functions as a distinctive site of memory that reveals the demands of faith from the National Socialist and the Christian perspectives. The filmmakers portray the faith and courage of Kremer as…
Defiance (2008) and the Cultural Memory of Resistance in the Holocaust
The film Defiance (2008) explores the true story of the Bielski Partisans in the Second World War, led by the brothers Tuvia and Zus Bielski. While the film is in many ways a conventional action-packed war story of resistance to Nazi domination during the war, the filmmakers conscientiously depicted the myriad and sundry ways Jews resisted Nazi racial hatred and the attempted extermination of European Jewry. The Bielski partisans are portrayed as…
Imagining Friends and Foes: The (Re)Education of Jojo Rabbit
The film Jojo Rabbit is a coming-of-age story that explores the power of the imagination in constructing and deconstructing Nazi ideals. Ten-year-old Johannes (Jojo) Betzler was educated by Nazi society to imagine Hitler, the Nazis, and the “Aryans” as his friends and the Jews as his diabolical foes. Only when he meets and befriends Else, a Jewish girl hidden in his attic, is he able to break free and begin to recognize and deconstruct these imag…
Broadcasting Law and Gospel: Paul Tillich's Wartime Ministry to Nazi Germany
During World War II, the German theologian Paul Tillich, then a professor at Union Theological Seminary, partnered with the United States' organization Voice of America to deliver over 100 religious addresses in the German language into his homeland. In these broadcasts, Tillich utilized the Lutheran categories of Law and Gospel to identify and discuss the sins of the Nazis (and Hitler in particular) and to remind the German population that there…
A New Voice of German Nationalism: An Analysis of Friedrich Schleiermacher's Nationalist Expression, 1799-1813
Friedrich Schleiermacher emerged as a prominent advocate for German nationalism in the Wars of Liberation from Napoleonic domination in the early nineteenth century. Alongside his work as a pastor and theologian in Berlin, and also as the co-founder of the University of Berlin, Schleiermacher developed German nationalism from a distinctly Protestant perspective, one that sought the preservation of Protestantism in the German lands under Napoleoni…
In Defense of a Just Society: Buber Contra Gandhi on Jewish Migration to Palestine
Much has been written on Martin Buber's public response to Mahatma Gandhi's article "The Jews", which had been published in the newspaper Harijan in 1938, just after the Nazi pogrom against the Jews known as "Kristallnacht". I wish to examine more closely Buber's conception of God's command to the Jewish people to settle the land of Palestine in a manner that expresses love for their Arab neighbors, seeks harmony and peace in the land, and serves…
Franz Hildebrandt on the BBC: Wartime Broadcasting to Nazi Germany
Franz Hildebrandt, a German pastor of Jewish descent, fled Nazi persecution in 1937, making his way to England, where he served as a minister in Cambridge. During the Second World War Hildebrandt worked with the British Broadcasting Corporation as one of a cadre of pastors, mostly refugees of Jewish descent, to preach German-language sermons over the airwaves. This article analyses Hildebrandt's sermons, delivered between 1942 and 1945, to an aud…
Karl Barth, Memory, and the Nazi Past: Confronting the Question of German Guilt
This article examines Karl Barth's confrontation with the Nazi past in his post-war occasional writings and speeches from 1945 to 1950. My thesis is that as early as January 1945, months before the end of the war in Europe, Barth publicly argued the collective guilt of the German people yet sought not to examine this guilt or demand a "collective punishment"-for the crimes were so great and far-reaching into German society, the responsibility too…
Franz Jägerstätter and the Way of the Cross: Conscientious Objection in the Greater German Reich
While Jägerstätter's life and courageous stand against Hitler and National Socialism are well known and documented, the connections between his reading of scripture, his understanding of the way of the cross, and his conscientious objection have not been sufficiently explored by scholars. In his letters and writings, Jägerstätter repeatedly appealed to scripture's call for the Christian to bear his or her cross and endure suffering, which he then…
Gisela Kriebel: A History of a German War Bride
Among the tens of thousands of GI war brides after the Second World War, a small fraction of them were German women who left their defeated and devastated homeland behind. The war story of Gisela Kriebel explores how her circuitous move from Berlin to Los Angeles, half a world away, meant the virtual severing of family ties and cultural connections that would leave her descendants with scant information about her genealogy and the fate of her fam…
Spying in God’s House
This article examines the reports of the Gestapo and SD regarding pastors’ criticisms of the Nazi state and its ideology from the authority of the pulpit. My research reveals a degree of public opposition to the regime within the walls of the German churches, especially in terms of Nazi racial ideology and the persecution of Jews. While pastors did not incite resistance to the Nazi regime or conspire to overthrow its leadership, they at times sou…
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Spying in God’s House
This article examines the reports of the Gestapo and SD regarding pastors’ criticisms of the Nazi state and its ideology from the authority of the pulpit. My research reveals a degree of public opposition to the regime within the walls of the German churches, especially in terms of Nazi racial ideology and the persecution of Jews. While pastors did not incite resistance to the Nazi regime or conspire to overthrow its leadership, they at times sou…
Gisela Kriebel: A History of a German War Bride
Among the tens of thousands of GI war brides after the Second World War, a small fraction of them were German women who left their defeated and devastated homeland behind. The war story of Gisela Kriebel explores how her circuitous move from Berlin to Los Angeles, half a world away, meant the virtual severing of family ties and cultural connections that would leave her descendants with scant information about her genealogy and the fate of her fam…
Franz Hildebrandt on the BBC: Wartime Broadcasting to Nazi Germany
Franz Hildebrandt, a German pastor of Jewish descent, fled Nazi persecution in 1937, making his way to England, where he served as a minister in Cambridge. During the Second World War Hildebrandt worked with the British Broadcasting Corporation as one of a cadre of pastors, mostly refugees of Jewish descent, to preach German-language sermons over the airwaves. This article analyses Hildebrandt's sermons, delivered between 1942 and 1945, to an aud…
Karl Barth, Memory, and the Nazi Past: Confronting the Question of German Guilt
This article examines Karl Barth's confrontation with the Nazi past in his post-war occasional writings and speeches from 1945 to 1950. My thesis is that as early as January 1945, months before the end of the war in Europe, Barth publicly argued the collective guilt of the German people yet sought not to examine this guilt or demand a "collective punishment"-for the crimes were so great and far-reaching into German society, the responsibility too…
Franz Jägerstätter and the Way of the Cross: Conscientious Objection in the Greater German Reich
While Jägerstätter's life and courageous stand against Hitler and National Socialism are well known and documented, the connections between his reading of scripture, his understanding of the way of the cross, and his conscientious objection have not been sufficiently explored by scholars. In his letters and writings, Jägerstätter repeatedly appealed to scripture's call for the Christian to bear his or her cross and endure suffering, which he then…
In Defense of a Just Society: Buber Contra Gandhi on Jewish Migration to Palestine
Much has been written on Martin Buber's public response to Mahatma Gandhi's article "The Jews", which had been published in the newspaper Harijan in 1938, just after the Nazi pogrom against the Jews known as "Kristallnacht". I wish to examine more closely Buber's conception of God's command to the Jewish people to settle the land of Palestine in a manner that expresses love for their Arab neighbors, seeks harmony and peace in the land, and serves…
Imagining Friends and Foes: The (Re)Education of Jojo Rabbit
The film Jojo Rabbit is a coming-of-age story that explores the power of the imagination in constructing and deconstructing Nazi ideals. Ten-year-old Johannes (Jojo) Betzler was educated by Nazi society to imagine Hitler, the Nazis, and the “Aryans” as his friends and the Jews as his diabolical foes. Only when he meets and befriends Else, a Jewish girl hidden in his attic, is he able to break free and begin to recognize and deconstruct these imag…
Broadcasting Law and Gospel: Paul Tillich's Wartime Ministry to Nazi Germany
During World War II, the German theologian Paul Tillich, then a professor at Union Theological Seminary, partnered with the United States' organization Voice of America to deliver over 100 religious addresses in the German language into his homeland. In these broadcasts, Tillich utilized the Lutheran categories of Law and Gospel to identify and discuss the sins of the Nazis (and Hitler in particular) and to remind the German population that there…
A New Voice of German Nationalism: An Analysis of Friedrich Schleiermacher's Nationalist Expression, 1799-1813
Friedrich Schleiermacher emerged as a prominent advocate for German nationalism in the Wars of Liberation from Napoleonic domination in the early nineteenth century. Alongside his work as a pastor and theologian in Berlin, and also as the co-founder of the University of Berlin, Schleiermacher developed German nationalism from a distinctly Protestant perspective, one that sought the preservation of Protestantism in the German lands under Napoleoni…
Defiance (2008) and the Cultural Memory of Resistance in the Holocaust
The film Defiance (2008) explores the true story of the Bielski Partisans in the Second World War, led by the brothers Tuvia and Zus Bielski. While the film is in many ways a conventional action-packed war story of resistance to Nazi domination during the war, the filmmakers conscientiously depicted the myriad and sundry ways Jews resisted Nazi racial hatred and the attempted extermination of European Jewry. The Bielski partisans are portrayed as…
Overcoming and The Ninth Day: The Sacramental Life and Resistance in Nazi Germany
Volker Schlöndorff’s film The Ninth Day (2004) presents for cultural remembrance a story loosely based on Father Jean Bernard’s short furlough from the Dachau concentration camp during the Second World War, as told in his memoir Priestblock 25487. The film functions as a distinctive site of memory that reveals the demands of faith from the National Socialist and the Christian perspectives. The filmmakers portray the faith and courage of Kremer as…
Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Nazism (6 works) · Religious studies (6 works) · German (5 works) · History (5 works) · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity (5 works) · Theology (5 works) · Politics (4 works)