It's
Germany it's May of
1934, and you're a
Christian. The
Enabling Acts have been in place for almost a year.
Adolph Hitler is now the
Fuhrer of all Germany. Your Jewish friends are finding their lives increasingly restricted. Most German Christians have aligned their teachings with Nazi policy under the
German Christian movement. But you have actually read
The Gospels.
Jesus Christ had only two real
commandments, to love Love God and to love your neighbor as you love yourself."
Mark 12:30-31. In fact Jesus said: "
There is no greater commandment than this."
Now the Weintraubs were your neighbors and they happen to be Jews. You've lifted many a beer with Sol. He fought in the same regiment during the First World War. His brother Heirich was killed at Verdun, and his body never identified. They were good people, and now they have to wear a Star of David and their lives have been totally overturned. Sol lost his job. Brownshirts feel free to beat them up at any time, in fact the SA feels free to kick any ass at any time. They're strutting proud. If you actually believed what Jesus said, this ought to have disturbed you. For many Germans what they saw happening broke their hearts. In may of 1934 a number of them met in Wurpertal-Barmen to talk about what to do as Nazi power not only absorbed the entirety of the German state, but the German Church itself.
Foremost among them was Martin Niemoller. He was a conservative who initially supported the Nazi, and initially an antisemite. But as he watched Hiter's regime grow more and more oppressive his views shift, particularly after the passing of the Aryan Laws, which forbade anyone of Jewish ancestry from serving in the Civil Service. Niemoller was far from the only German concerned with the power of the German state over the German church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was another pastor who watched the National Socialist state in action, and could reconcile none of it with the teachings of Jesus. A number of other pastors equally concerned came to the synod to decide what their church was to do in the face of tyranny.
The resulting declaration became known as the Barmen Declaration. It simply put, stated the state should have no power over the church, and the church was in no way obligated to support the German state or any of its actions. The Barmen Declaration includes six theses:
The only source of revelation is the Word of God — Jesus Christ. Any other possible sources (earthly powers, for example) will not be accepted.
Jesus Christ is the only Lord of all aspects of personal life. There should be no other authority.
The message and order of the church should not be influenced by the current political convictions.
Leadership in the church is not dominion, it is in service of its ministry entrusted to all its members; there can be no special leader ("Führer") apart from that ministry Matthew 20:25.
The state should not fulfill the task of the church and vice versa. State and church are both limited to their own business.
Therefore, the Barmen Declaration rejects (i) the subordination of the Church to the state (8.22–3) and (ii) the subordination of the Word and Spirit to the Church.
This is a very mild declaration in many ways. Though created inside the rising tyranny of the Nazi state, it does not specifically name those conditions. Theologians have argued that it can be used to justify opposition to say, Donald Trump. Or it can be used to object to living under the policies of Joe Biden, for example his assertian of rights for LGBTQ citizens. Given that it was written as Hitler's Germany began its initial moves toward the Holocaust fascism seems its clear target, but that requires understanding the context of its creation.
The churches who accepted their role was to preach under the Declaration became known as the Confessing Churches. The more mainstream German churches saw it as an attack on them, as they accepted the role Hitler was playing in cleaning up vice, fighting Communism, and restoring the power and glory of the German state. Anti-semitism was popular everywhere in the 1930s, and many Germans believed their agonizing defeat in the First World War had come from internal betrayal rather than military force. That was untrue, but Jewish citizens were popular scapegoats in what was known at the time as The Stab in the Back. Hitler was seen as returning propriety to Germany.
Nor was the German state particularly pleased. Niemoller was arrested in 1940 and spent the war in a concentration camp until liberated by Allied troops. He lived until 1966, and if you have heard the speech "They came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I was not Jewish" that was Neimoller, taken from speeches he made after the war. Bonhoeffer was executed as a last act of vengeance as Allied armies closed in on Berlin. The ministers who led the Confessing Churches and their parishioners suffered during the times of Nazi rule. But they also set a standard for how a Christian should act in times of oppresion, with refusal to adhere to the unjust dictates of an unjust state.