23rd Week of Pentecost

 You are turning to a different gospel

--not that there is another gospel. (Galatians 1;6-7)

A professor recently wrote me distressed by what she saw as the politicization of the Evangelical Church. She recalled that I had taught something of Bonhoeffer concerning the Nazification of the German Church and wondered if there might be some present day application.

There might be, but never exactly. Just like that ancient philosopher who said one can never cross the same river twice. Our situation is never exactly the same. The river changes and the one crossing the river changes. Yet, there remains a river to be navigated.

For starters, the big difference is, the German Church was a state church. Fortunately for us, our forbearers saw to it that our nation would not have a national church. Whenever the church folds itself into the state, the state always prevails. So it was with the German Church. Hitler insisted that “the primacy of the State over the Church must be recognized. The primary assumptions of the State as we have it to-day, expressed in Race, Blood and Soil, must be true for the Church too…” He goes on, “A new authority has arisen as to what Christ and Christianity really are.”  When Germany stipulated that only those of Aryan descent could be employed in civil service (Aryan Clause, 1933); and, since the church and its pastors were employed by the state as civil servants, what was the church to do?

Not all, but a formidable group of German pastors, Dietrich Bonhoeffer being one of their young leaders, removed the church from the state (loss of status and salaries) and formed “The Confessing Church.”  Here’s what the Confessing Church confessed (Barmen Synod 1934, 1^st of 6 statements):

Confession:  Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.

Denunciation:  We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation.

 Such confession and denunciation would not be tolerated by the state. Their seminaries, one of which Bonhoeffer lead, were shut down by the Gestapo; and, their leaders, like Martin Niemoller, were arrested and detained in concentration camps. In the end, it seemed the state won and the church lost. But, that’s not how Albert Einstein saw it (The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, p. 40):

Being a lover of freedom, when the [Nazi] revolution came, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks.

        Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

Isn’t that something: “The Church alone,” writes Einstein after the war, “had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom.”  

As to the professor’s question… Does Bonhoeffer and the German church struggle have any application for the church today? What do you think? Seems to me, when we are faithful to the faith—to the Gospel, we end up defending “intellectual and moral freedom.”