Church and Zeitgeist

What lessons does the experience of the church in 1930s Germany teach us today?

In November 1995 I was flying back from a meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society), of Biblical Literature in Philadelphia. A group of eight or ten women, who had been associated earlier with the radical feminist Re-Imagining conference, were returning from the same conference I had attended.

Across the aisle of the plane they were discussing 'the take-over of the denomination at the big showdown in Albuquerque' in 1996. At Albuquerque the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), (my denomination), was scheduled to make a definitive decision on the question of the ordination of practising homosexuals. The talk in the plane was how to commandeer the process in favour of ordaining homosexuals.

What interested me most about this airborne caucus was that only one or two of the women were Presbyterians. The others with whom I was familiar were Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, or United Church of Christ. It was clear that advocates of a radical agenda - across denominational boundaries - were targeting Albuquerque for purposes beyond those of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

This illustrated for me how a significant realignment is taking place within mainline Protestantism today. Most mainline denominations are witnessing the emergence of two camps or movements within them, with supporting organisations and publications for each one. The one camp inclines toward the conservative side of the spectrum, committed to recovering the church's biblical and theological basis. The other camp leans to the liberal side of the spectrum and defines the nature of the church in terms of pluralism and inclusiveness.

Neither camp has any formal membership insignia, but it is usually no secret who belongs to which camp. In fact, each camp typically has more defining power for its adherents than does the denomination itself. It is not unusual for members of a camp to share more in common with corresponding camp members in other denominations - like the group on my flight - than they do with opposite camp members of their own denomination.

Germany

The two-camp conflict currently defining the American church struggle, if it can be called that, is not unique to our time and place. The history of the German church in the 1930s is in at least two respects a prototype of the current situation of mainline denominations.

The Synod of Barmen, and the Barmen Declaration (1934) that issued from it, grew out of what was known as 'the German church struggle.' The struggle was perceived and articulated by the Synod of Barmen in terms of confessionalism versus accommodation to culture. Specifically, that meant a conflict between two understandings and models of Christianity. The one, represented by the 'German Christians', advocated a 'positive Christianity' seeking to integrate the gospel as far as possible with the prevailing ideology ushered in by Hitler and National Socialism. This included discarding the Old Testament and abandoning the Jewish context of Christianity, Aryanising Jesus, downplaying or denying the Cross and Atonement as symbols of weakness and defeat, and recasting Jesus as a heroic figure serviceable to the Nazi cause. The ruling axiom of 'German Christianity' was that the church realised its purpose by championing the Zeitgeist (spirit of the times), which at that point was the new Aryan Mensch (human being) and his political genie, National Socialism.

The other understanding of Christianity was expressed by the 'Confessing Church', which Barmen and subsequent synods protested against reformulating Christianity according to Germanic, especially Nazi, archetypes. Barmen appealed to Holy Scripture over Nazi ideology, to the lordship of Jesus Christ over the demagoguery of the 'Fuhrer', to the freedom of the church over a 'Brown' cultural and ideological captivity. 'We reject the false doctrine', declares the first article of the Barmen Declaration, '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.'

Today's context

The issue of confessionalism versus secularism is immediately relevant today, although it is potentially dangerous to adduce an analogy from the German church struggle with Nazism. I am not suggesting that those who advocate the ordination of homosexuals, for instance, are to be equated with Nazis. That would be grossly unfair; the commitment to inclusiveness of many pro-homosexual advocates simply cannot and should not be likened to the impulses of domination, power, and hubris inherent in the 'German Christian' movement. The likeness is thus not between pro-homosexual ordination and 'German Christians', nor between the evangelical renewal groups in mainline Protestantism today, for example, and the Confessing Church at Barmen, for that matter.

Sola Scriptura

The lesson from Barmen is rather this: The current church struggle in the Presbyterian church (of which 1 am an ordained minister and so the mainline denomination with which I am the most familiar) is likewise over the authority of Scripture and creed versus the authority of alien and humanistic ideologies, between the church's faithfulness to the lordship of Christ versus an accommodation and reformulation of Christianity to the spirit of the age. The issue at stake is this: Who sets the agenda for the church, sola Scriptura or solum seculum, Holy Scripture or the dominant ideology of the day?

The debate over sexuality is only one facet of a larger struggle. The more fundamental struggle is over whether the gospel is the final authority and only means of salvation for all people, or whether Christianity is one of various equally valid means of salvation, one of many paths leading to the same summit. Barmen speaks a clear and powerful word that Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture is the one and only Lord of the church. This is a word needed by a church whose message and purpose have become eclipsed by causes or movements other than the authority of the gospel - a church tempted to divide its allegiance, following its historic creeds and way of life where they are compatible with prevailing ideologies and abandoning them when they are not.

Professors not confessors

There is a second parallel between the current struggle in the Presbyterian church and Barmen. The 139 representatives who convened at Barmen in May of 1934 were pastors and laity rather than church officials and university professors. Over one-third of the delegates at Barmen were laity. The remainder were almost without exception pastors. True, Karl Barth, the driving force behind the drafting of the Barmen Declaration, was a theological professor from Bonn, but when his name is omitted (Barth was expelled from Germany by the Nazis in 1935), a body of pastors remains who formed the backbone, muscles, and sinew of the Confessing Church.

While Dictrich Bonhoeffer, one of the most famous members of the Confessing Church, was not present at Barmen, he illustrates the point at hand. Bonhoeffer declined a chair of theology at the University of Berlin in favour of a pastorate because he feared that a tenured professorship would be tempted - or expected! - to substitute theological abstractions for the decisive engagement with the gospel that was inherent in the 'costly grace' demanded of a Christian, and especially of a pastor. The forerunner of the Confessing Church was the Pastors' Emergency League, founded by Martin Niemoller. An ad hoc convocation of 150 pastors, the Pastors' Emergency League, sought to stem the tide of encroaching National Socialism in the churches. It is significant that there was never a 'Professors' Emergency League,' or a 'Bishops' Emergency League.' Unfortunately, the latter two groups were the chief nests of opposition to Barmen and the Confessing Church.

Resistance movement

It is no secret that the 'German Christians' were largely manoeuvred by the church hierarchy from Berlin, many of whom were stooges of the Third Reich. More troubling, however, was the number of theology professors who either absented themselves from the conflict or outright opposed Barmen and the Confessing Church. Their names are known even in the English-speaking world: Althaus, Gogarten, Heidegger, Hirsch, G. Kittel, and Weber.

A single statistic clarifies this sorry reality: more than 3,000 pastors were imprisoned by the Nazis, of whom no fewer than 21 were killed for the sake of the gospel. (This figure does not include the July 20 1944 conspirators.) By contrast, very few professors (including theology professors) opposed National Socialism, fewer still were dismissed because of their opposition, and only one, Prof. Kurt Huber from Munich, was executed for his. Albert Einstein's dictum is worth recalling: Resistance to Nazism came not from the universities but primarily from simple Christian laity and their pastors!

This is an extract from an article in the August 11 1997 issue of Christianity Today and reprinted with permission.

Church and Zeitgeist

Lessons from the experience of the church in Germany in the 1930s

Germany

Today's context

Sola Scriptura

Professors not confessors

Resistance movement

J Edwards

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