Centre Party and German conservatives for the Enabling Act with a mix of intimidation, negotiation and conciliation. On 23 March 1933, just prior to the vote for the Enabling Act, he described the Christian faiths as "essential elements for safeguarding the soul of the German people" and "We hold the spiritual forces of Christianity to be indispensable elements in the moral uplift of most of the German people." "With an eye to the votes of the Catholic Centre Party", wrote Shirer, he added that he hoped to improve relations with the Holy See. The Centre Party asked for guarantees of the rights of the churches. Hitler promised that the institutions of the Weimar Republic and churches would be protected, and said his government saw the churches as "the most important factors for upholding our nationhood". Amid threats and talk of civil war, the Centre Party voted for the Act. Hitler's false promises of protection for the churches and institutions of the republic were never kept. In January 1934, Hitler angered the churches by appointing the neo-pagan Alfred Rosenberg as official Nazi ideologist. The Fuhrer launched an effort toward coordination of German Protestants under a unified Protestant Reich Church under the Deutsche Christen Movement, but the attempt failedresisted by the Confessing Church. In The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, Susannah Heschel noted that the Deutsche Christen differed from traditional Christians by rejecting the Hebrew origins of Christianity. In public statements made during his rule, Hitler continued to speak positively about a Nazi vision of Christian German culture, and his belief in an Aryan Christ. Hitler added that Saint Paul, as a Jew, had falsified Jesus' messagea theme Hitler repeated in private conversations, including, in October 1941, when he made the decision to murder the Jews. Ian Kershaw said that Hitler had lost interest in supporting the Deutsche Christen from around 1934. However, in a speech 26 June 1934, Hitler stated: In 1937, Hanns Kerrl, Hitler's Minister for Church Affairs, explained "positive Christianity" as not "dependent upon the Apostles' Creed", nor in "faith in Christ as the son of God", upon which Christianity relied, but rather, as being represented by the Nazi Party: "The Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation", he said. During negotiations leading to the Reichskonkordat with the Vatican, Hitler said, "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious