Setting the Table in the Midst of Nazis

[Music]
In February of 1934, the German Church Foreign Office said Bishop Theodore Heckl to London England
to rein in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and reprimand him for not signing Regreen with the Aryan paragraph.
Bonhoeffer walked out of the meeting and was then labeled an "Animie of the State"
and prohibited from saying anything short of unconditional support for the Nazi regime.
A few weeks later, he entered the pulpit to respond.
[Music]
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Corinth, "My strength is made perfect in weakness.
Let us be truthful and not unreal. Let us ask the question, what is the meaning of weakness
in this world?" We all know that Christianity has been blamed ever since its early days for its
message to the weak. Christianity is a religion of slaves of people with inferiority complexes.
It owes its success only to the masses of miserable people whose weakness and misery Christianity
has glorified. It was the attitude towards the problem of weakness in the world which made
everybody follow us or enemies of Christianity against the new meaning which Christianity gave to
the weak against the glorification of weakness. There has been the strong and indignant protest
of an irrisocratic philosophy of life which glorified strength and power and violence
as the ultimate ideals of humanity. We have observed this verified going on up to our present days.
Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence,
arbitrariness and pride of power and with its apologire for the weak. I feel that Christianity is
rather doing too little and showing these points than doing too much. Christianity has adjusted itself
much too easily to the worship of power. It should give much more offense, more shock to the world
than it is doing. Christianity should take a much more definite stand for the weak than consider
the potential moral right of the strong. Hello everyone, this is Trip and I am here with Jeffrey
Pugh and we are back for episode 5 of the Rise of Bonhoeffer. In this episode we are going to be jumping
in to 1933 and all the changes that are taking place right after Hitler comes to power and just how
Bonhoeffer experienced and wrestled with the transformations of Germany at large and the challenges
taking place in the Church of Germany. In this episode we will talk about the birth and the
complicated legacy of the Confessing Church, how Hitler's strategic plan for cultural hegemony
impacted the Church and generated a host of theological controversies in which Bonhoeffer took
the radical response. We are going to talk about how Bonhoeffer came to see all the attempts at
moderation and compromise on the inclusion of Jewish people within the life of the Church as an
ambiguity preserving a heresy as a betrayal of the gospel and we are going to learn what happened
when Bonhoeffer went to London to pass their two German congregations before coming back to Germany
to take charge of a Confessing Church seminary at Finkinvaltah. If you remember our last session
together we had stopped with Hitler's announcing that there was going to be a Aryan clause,
the civil service legislation that manned Jews from public employment and this garnered a response
from within the Church it set off a counter move by those Church leaders who would become known as
the Confessing Church. It was led initially by Pastor Martin E. Moller and Bonhoeffer in that
counter movement was most concerned about the fact that the former Landon's Kierke, the former
regional churches were being forced to align with Hitler's desires because Hitler wanted a kind of
religious glue maybe the same way that Constantine wanted Christianity to legitimate the empire.
Hitler wanted a religious glue that would help him. There were actors in the individual
synods and administrative districts at the time that were on board with this agenda for Hitler
and so they fell into place. This was the case with most of the synods, three of them remained in
attack which meant that the Reich Church could not pacify them. Now I just want to point out a
couple of things real quick about those who formed the Confessing Church because some people
think of them as the great heroes of this particular era. But the reality is that they were conservative
elites. They were ambivalent about the Third Reich. They hated the Weimar Republic many of them.
They considered it was immoral that there was the kind of chaos they detested the communist and
the socialist. They hated most of the things that Hitler did. They did not object so much to Hitler's
foreign policy which they saw as restoring Germany to a triteful place. They wanted the leftists
in prison. They wanted their power broken especially the Marxist who were the greatest danger
who seemed to be the great boogie man of all political orders that want to use power to manifest
themselves. The sympathy with Nazi views was expressed in religious language. You could hear a number
of the people in the Confessing Church even going on. I like some of the things that Hitler's doing.
I like his policies. The secularizing of public schools, the lessening of the penalty for abortion,
saw me if any of this sounds familiar to you. The emancipation of women from traditional roles,
permissiveness in public morals led to Christians charging all the rising divorce rate. They're
familiar themes here, I think throughout many cultures maybe even into our time. And as we've said in
previous episodes when Hitler comes along and says he's going to erase all of these things because of
of a kind of positive Christianity. As a matter of fact in the Nazi platform in Article 24,
it says that we demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state. Insofar as they do
not jeopardize, the state's existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the
Germanic race. The party is such a pold as a point of view of a positive Christianity without
tying itself confessionally to any one confession. Now that word confession is going to be important
in our later conversations. It combats the Jewish materialistic spirit at home and abroad.
And is convinced that the permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within
on the basis of the common good before individual good. Now that's Article 24, the official
Nazi platform. There were many Christians that were absolutely totally on board with that sense of
positive Christianity. But in this instance now with the passage of the Aryan paragraph,
the confessing church's spite came because they felt like the state had overstepped its bounds,
like we mentioned last week. It did not mean that they disagreed with anti-Semitism. They were still
part of the Christian world and one of the things that we explored last week was the fact that
the underlying antipathy to the Jew as Jew prevented the confessing church from an all-out resistance
to the anti-Semitism that Hitler unleashed. So that said, the confessing church becomes a powerful,
domestic voice prevents the Nazis from removing some bishops who were dead set against aligning their
churches with the Nazi regime. In the aftermath of April 3 and 4, when the German Christians,
the people that we've talked about before, the German Christian faith movement, the German Christians,
they promoted a kind of synchronization of church and state that we talked about. They adopted
the fewer principle and at that point then the confessing church starts to emerge with Martin
Nemuller who had another confession. So now this is April 3 and 4 when the German Christians
are starting to sort of really push all of those district churches to start their alignment processes.
They're very good at gaining powers of church bureaucracies and church control. And then on April
25, a meeting is held to draft a constitution of the newly united, German evangelical church,
and Hitler has his upcoming Reichswitch-Ludwig-Müller there. And then on May 1,
Hitler gives a Mayday speech and he's reassuring the Protestant church leaders he doesn't want to
take anything away from him. The brown shirts and uniforms attend the church services. The pastors
feel like, you know, Hitler might be making a people's mission to make Germany Christian again.
They come fully on board and things start moving quickly from this point on. May the 27th,
there's another fight within the church about who's going to become the bishop of this particular
group. On July 14th, Hitler personally orders elections to be held for the leadership of this new
Protestant church. On July 23rd, that same day, Bishop Theodore Heckl offers Bonhoffer a
pastorate in London. Bonhoffer is one of the early resistors to the designs of the Nazi state.
He and Nemuller are starting to form this pastor's emergency lead. And in July, he's offered a way out.
We have these two pastors for you in London. On July 20th, Pius XI sends the Concordata an agreement
with the Third Reich, not to interfere. In exchange for this, Hitler gives assurances to the Catholic
Church. They will not be attacked. These church elections are very important. They're held,
the German Christians get 70% of the vote. Ludwig Müller is appointed Hitler's representative for
the Protestant churches and installed as the Reich bishop of the First-Ever National Church of
Germany. Well, there's a few things here that I think come to mind as worth emphasizing. And one is
the prior to Hitler really seeking a unity of all the different churches in Germany. They were
organized much more locally in these different synods and then getting them all on the same page
where there's a consolidated Reich Church is a part of that goal of transforming German culture,
getting all of the people on the same page. And then once you get a church with a more strict hierarchy,
more authority on what's happening in the individual congregations, there's now a contact point,
a kind of line of authority down to generate more control. So it's a totalitarian move, right?
The other element of that is emphasizing that the attractiveness for so many within the church
is in part their experience of the culture in the Vimar Republic before Hitler came to power.
There's all those elements of more modern culture or transformation of the family, sexuality,
art, and these kinds of things. When Hitler is seizing power and organizing things in an authoritarian
way, he's also using that power to wage the culture war that a lot of individuals in the church saw
as a threat to their German identity and their Christian identity. But an interesting part of that is
that if he had not have tried to institute the Aryan paragraph if the church had not taken that up,
would the confessing church have even emerged? Because given the fact the confessing church was made
of conservative elites, was made of people that still held to a Christian supercessionist theology,
the question could be asked if this issue of who gets to define who is a member of the church
didn't get raised. Would they have actually ended up forming a resistance to Hitler? Once it became a
matter of is this Christian Jewish person, a member of the church? Once the state tried to define
who and could be a member of the church, that's when things kicked off. Right now, as the situation
stands, the church is fighting for Jewish converted Christians to be a regular part of the church. They
are not fighting for Jews as Jews at this point. And I think you can see the tensions that show up
both in the ecumenical movement and in Germany's own self-understanding at that time, even when you look
at the example you gave from Article 24 of the Nazi platform, it ends with this kind of call to the
common good, but everything before it is narrowing who counts as human. It ends up being Aryan,
definitely not Jewish, very much German, and then we can talk about the common good. And once you've
seized culture and are using all the levers to render, null, and void the humanity of large portions
of your population, then it's nice to have a good positive Christian message and support the common
good because you've already decided who it's for. So we're in a situation where the struggle
between the Confessing Church and the German Christians was for control of the Protestant church,
and there is also a struggle within the Confessing Church between the conservative and radical
wings over the nature of the church's opposition to the German Christians and the Nazi state.
All of this is kind of complicated because of the relationships between the Protestant church
and German culture that extend back in time. A process that Vicky Barnett helps us understand.
It's a complicated question in Germany, so you've got two-thirds of the German population
belongs to this church. German Protestantism had a very different history than the German Catholic
Church did, and a different leadership structure because of course you have the Pope and Rome,
especially under Otto von Bismarck in the late 19th century. As Germany was becoming a nation
state with these different regions, German Protestants felt that they were central to this project,
in a way if there was actually discrimination against Catholics during that year. So you have a sense
of heritage and nationhood that probably comes out of the reformation, where there is this sort of
identification of, especially Protestant clergy, with the state. The status of clergy as civil servants
is a complicated one because all it means is that if people belong to a church, Catholic Protestant
or otherwise they pay a tax and that gets sent back to the respective institution. I didn't realize
this until fairly recently, but that was apparently how rabbis or Jewish communities were supported in
the 1920s as well. That doesn't necessarily translate into people understanding themselves as servants of
the state. Although the Protestant Church's that mentality comes more from other things, it comes from
Lutheran, it comes from the heritage, it comes from the sense of who they are in the Prussian
Church, for example. That does mean that they feel, especially because of the German Christians,
were the ones who really epitomized this and propagandized it in 1933. There is this sense of a special
mission, if you will, within this new regime, that these people see themselves as having. The special
mission was complicated then because while you're wanted to be part of a culture affirming a culture
building, an institution like Christianity, this point Christianity is under attack. I think one of
the interesting things about this is that even Martin Nemuller, the purported hero, the confessing church,
found the regime's curtailment of Jews tolerable given what he saw as the vast number of Jews and
liberal professions that didn't bother him as much as it did when it became a matter of could the
converted the baptized Jew be a part of the Christian church. Even Bonhoff was struggling with that
in the essay that we talked about in the last episode, but that adoption of the Aryan paragraph that
was the straw that broke the camel's back. The German Christians kind of envisioned a separate church
where converted Jews could go and worship that way they would not pollute their purity,
but that was heresy to the confessing church. The pastor's emergency league was also willing to fight
against the removal of all Jewish influences in the church. For instance, when some German Christians
said that the Hebrew scriptures Old Testament should be taken out or when they tried to
Aryanize Jesus as it were, they saw this as out of bounds. Bonhoffer was accounted as one of the
radical members of this early resistance. He was the most resolute and fighting against
the removal of Jews from church offices and protecting unbaptized Jews even, but the anti-symmetism
still of 2000 years of cultural conditioning made even the confessing church ambivalent. A clear
voice might have prevented more damage, even Nemuller, fault that non-Aryan should avoid seeking
leadership positions in the church in order not to put church members in a difficult position.
There was sentiment that baptized Jews should not put church members in direct opposition to the
state. So this meant that in some senses Jews never had anything more than a guest status in the
Christian churches and race was still a factor. Bonhoffer is asked to work on a confessional statement
that would oppose what was taking place this internal church struggle. He was asked to write a
confession and he ended up in Bethel with a couple of his colleagues and they meant to write a confession
and tending to contradict the heresies of the German Christians. In our conversation with Reggie,
he laid out just how this particular issue even with those seeking to resist the German Christian
movement in the church became a sticking point for Bonhoffer theologically. The church struggle
begins with a young reformer's movement and becomes pastor's emergency league. Bonhoffer is
involved with it. He co-authors the Bethel confession in this pastor's emergency league
and in this Bethel confession he includes that Christians should pay attention to the Jewish
question. Now this is a matter for him. This has to do with the content of our faith. It's
bargaining back to an argument among earlier Lutherans about things that are indifferent, things
we should be indifferent about. The Adiapura controversy. Is the Jewish question a matter of things
indifferent or does it relate to the actual preaching of the Gospel? So for Bonhoffer it's not
Adiapura. This is a matter of the gospel of the preaching of the gospel. It's not simply
a government issue which is God's left hand and the people who administer the gospel,
the church are God's right hand. This is a matter of the church itself because they've been told
that Jews should be kicked out of the church. This is the government moving into spaces that it
should not be in some of the church how it's to live in slight. It was doing it specifically
based on antichimitism. Bonhoffer is hearing, he's saying the racist. He's naming a racist. This raises
racism and national structures of racism to a matter of the gospel being preached. The initial work
on the Bethel confession happens in August 15 through 25 and it's a very strong statement. Unfortunately
what happens too often in the church is that the Bethel confession gets sent out for other
theologians and other church people to weigh in and give an opinion on. It finds a committee. It
finds a committee and while that's happening, German Christians, they're not asleep at the switch on
this. The brown synod takes place on September 5 with brown shirted German Christians overwhelming
the general synod of the old Prussian Union church. They throw out any confessional stance. They
put in a new leader. They install the Aryan paragraph. They demand unconditional support for the
national socialist state. And in response to that on September 21, Bonhoffer and Nemuller organized
the pastor's emergency league, which opposes the Aryan quals on September the 27th a crucial moment
I think in our timeline. Bonhoffer and others protest against the Vittenberg national
synod of the church held in Vittenberg for a particular reason. It's associations with Luther,
it's association with the Reformation. And a very interesting thing takes place at this
synod. Hitler out foxes the pastor's emergency league. He tells Moller not to allow the synod to
adopt the Aryan quals. They're all worked up. They come to this. They're all prepared. And then
Moller says, you know what, we're not going to pass the Aryan quals after all. So a golden opportunity
to galvanize opposition to galvanize public protest is taken away from them. In a certain sense,
when Hitler says, you know what, don't worry about the Aryan quals at this thing. And so the pastor's
emergency league doesn't have the kind of rallying cry that they were hoping to maybe have after this.
So in the meantime, the Bethel confession gets passed around to a lot of different theological
voices. Some of whom are not as radical as Bonhoffer and his friends who are riding this and it
gets watered down some more and gets watered down some more to the point where Bonhoffer just looks
at that and goes, I can't even agree to this. I can't affirm this. There's nothing I can affirm.
Interestingly enough, behind the scenes, there are some church people are going, well, you know,
Bonhoffer's just a, he's a young theologian that's been captured by the Academy and he doesn't know
any better. So they're downplaying Bonhoffer's work. They're downplaying his theology, which kind of
goes to the point where, you know, historically speaking, Bonhoffer is not the major voice of actors
at this particular time. He's a minor voice and they feel like they can actually push him to the
sidelines. Bonhoffer's theological output during this time is just massive. So he's not only working
with the Bethel confession in this. He's also working in other spaces. One of those spaces was a
catechism that he and Franz Hilderbrand were working on together. They started this work in Germany.
Bonhoffer started as soon as he came back. One of the reasons that Bonhoffer is writing the instruction
manual catechism is that the German state was trying to shape citizens, inform citizens, bring them into
the state's way of thinking. Gerbels had a little book called the Little ABCs of National Socialism.
Believe it or not. And it was a catechism for shaping German citizens. And in that catechism, it
add this exchange. What is the first commandment of every national socialist? The answer? Love Germany
above all else and your ethnic comrade as yourself. Faced with a kind of fascist catechism that brings people
into the state in a certain way. Bonhoffer felt the need for him to work on a catechism that would be
a different kind of catechism into a different kind of community. Regiolium helps us understand
how Bonhoffer's experiences in New York with racism will inform his understanding even to the point
of the kind of catechisms that he is writing. I would connect this to a catechism that he writes
weeks after he returns from New York. He writes his catechism with the Jewish friend Franz Hilderbrand.
And in the catechism he says, "Although it would be uncomfortable for the Christian time may come when
the Christian must act politically on behalf of your sister-in-law." Try to say good love. This is one.
He also calls ethnic pride as an, against the Holy Spirit, the unpardonable sin. Now you've got this
ethnic pride for Aryanism, for the full, the foundation, the whole for the Aryan. And now the
government, the political structure is targeting your sister or your brother. It is a part of the Christian
faith to speak about that. It's not an helpful. He sees that very early on. And he's important to see
he's writing about that right when he gets back from New York. What does the church do in the world
that you're a part of as a contributing member? This is the question for Christians. And if it doesn't
include love and neighbor in a very concrete way, whether they're a Christian, this is plenty for people
whose bodies have been targets of a political system that is made for whites only. This is
plain, Franz. You've got to pay attention to the fact that I'm getting my butt kicked and people
like me are dying at the hands of political systems across this country and the Western world.
Here, for you to say that the gospel is not political means that you don't give a damn about my life.
And that's not Christian.
So let's pull the lens back for just a minute because as we sort of roll through these,
it's really hard to get a feel for the kinds of pressures, the kind of intensity that
Bonhoeffer and his colleagues that the entire country of Germany is experiencing during this time.
Enormous pressures from violence in the streets, from political orders seeking to take power
through this violence, from political orders seeking to take power in the church, from the church
acquiescing to this political power. Just put yourself in the position of a 27-year-old young
theologian who really doesn't have much of a profile or reputation. And you are opposing
massive energies and powers of the state. Powers that even things like media are acquiescing to
are falling into line with that are not standing up to the state. And there you are. Some rag-tag pastors
are trying to fight us. What's worse is that you have people within your own community of resistors
who do something like take a confession that you write at Bethel and start to order it down to the
point where you can no longer even associate yourself with it because they have ordered down the
power in the energy, the theological focus that you were putting into it in the beginning.
So when you're offered a position to step outside this for a minute of just the enormous
pressure, certainly understandable to me, at least, why it is that Bonhoeffer accepts the offer
of a pastorate in London. And so in October he finds himself in London, then he also finds himself
with a little bit of cleanup on aisle three back in Germany, one of which came when he has to write
Karl Bar and tell him why he left. If it is all desirable after such a decision to find
well, he find reasons for it, I think one of the strongest was that I no longer felt inwardly
equal to the questions and demands that I was facing. I felt that in some way I don't understand.
I found myself in radical opposition to all my friends. I was becoming increasingly isolated
with my views of the matter, even though I was and remained personally close to these people.
All this frightened me and shook my confidence so that I began to fear that dogmatism might
be leading me astray since there seemed no particular reason why my own view in these matters
should be any better, any more right than the views of many really good and able pastors whom I
sincerely respect. And so I thought it was about time to go into the wilderness for a spell
and simply work as a pastor as unobtrusively as possible.
In Bonhoeffer saw the sympathetic ear to being worn down by the fight. Karl Bar was not the type of
person that would let him escape on that one and maybe he shouldn't have even written Bar
responds with a blistering letter that just lays Bonhoeffer out. He deserted his people. He deserted
his church. He deserted himself. He chads Bonhoeffer and he says he didn't have the luxury of playing a
lige under the juniper tree or Jonah under the gourd. You should be here and then Bar says with
guns blazing. Yikes! Bart goes on to excoriate Bonhoeffer and says in so many words your feelings are
not important. Fighting this darkness that has taken hold of Germany and the church is more important
because he says your church is house is on fire. One of the things that this exchange with Bart
helps bring to the forest is just how lonely Bonhoeffer felt, how he couldn't see the church's
crisis differently and yet so many of the people he respected and valued were much more
compliant and willing to compromise and so that loneliness drove him to this period of wilderness
and then to get a letter a blazing from that theologian who inspired you in your early 20s one
who you got to interact with and we got to talk about that story in a previous episode to show
up and go no you understood the situation differently than now but that's because you saw it clearly.
Now uh GTFO to Germany. Yeah that exchange actually reveals a kind of ongoing tension.
Eeeh for the rest of Bonhoeffer's life there's tension between these two men tension that
exists right up until Bonhoeffer dies. One can only imagine that sinking feeling in the pit of your
stomach as he got Bart's biting response and realized that he was not going to be returning to
Germany and that would only make Bart even anger you're at him. Part of the issue there was that
Bart's displeasure wasn't just at Bonhoeffer he was also in some conflict with Nemuller and Nemuller
had assumed that the sort of leadership role in the pastor's emergency league in Bonhoeffer's absence
but he embarked clashed on any number of occasions about how the church was supposed to respond
but in fact uh Bonhoeffer his heart was never really all that far away from the struggles of the
German church in the face of Hitler and that's something that Laurie talks about in reflecting on a
sermon from London and just how these two German churches Bonhoeffer was serving stayed connected
to places that were attempting to bring life in the tragedy that was going on at home.
In 1934 when he was serving churches in London he preached a sermon on 2nd Prudence 129
which is about the weakness of God coming into the world in weakness. In that sermon he's
that Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence,
arbitrariness and prudence power and with its plea for the weak. Got the passage it's not very well
known. When Bonhoeffer was working with emergency pastors league that formed on the weight of Hitler's
rise to power and response to the things that were happening in the springing summer of 1933
one of that work was taking place in a air facility people with mental illness for disabilities
Bonhoeffer was struck by their vulnerability, especially in the planches of the Nazis. He started
thinking about that different perspective on world events that comes from the place of vulnerability
and saw throughout the next year when he was in London he was having his church
under nations to this, to the ability to bear with these people and I think that both Wacklegan forward
it points back to what work in his dissertation where he talks about encountering the other demands
of response from me when it points all the way forward to his work in the ethics or he doesn't want to
sort of cut forward a universal ethics that has some kind of universal validity that's good for
all time in places that whether it's the respond to the people in Son of Man need. Ethic
with Russian is not white, was it meant to dig but what is the little of file on that question
this then more. Most importantly, handing it down to the in need that made Smahawk right now.
So Jeff when we think about Bonhoeffer's time in London what are the particular features of it
that can help us understand just what's going on in his own life and how he's continuing to process
and wrestle with what his responsibility as a German and as a follower of Christ look like.
There's a certain sense in which he's obviously disperated things that he had hoped for colleagues
that he had believed in did not pan out exactly the way he hoped. You know we've mentioned the sort
of unfinished hero there's also the notion of the wounded prophet and he's in its other country now
but that said because he's brilliant he's taken seriously in whatever room we find himself in
and what happens in London is it several doors open to him and one of the most lasting impacts in
London is the friendship that he develops with George Bell the Anglican Bishop of Chiticeur.
Bell was also committed to the evangelical movement would find common calls with Bonhoeffer
on a number of concerns. He becomes one of Bonhoeffer's closest confinants it's
Bell to whom Bonhoeffer turns when he enters into the circle of the conspirators it's Bell that he
trusts to give an honest assessment of what's happening in Germany and to solicit his help with the
English government. Bonhoeffer was feeding Bell information about Germany through Bell but that
information fell on deaf ears he's meeting other people too and other people through ecumenical
communities. Think about it is it's a church bureaucrats back in Germany they were keeping a very
keen eye on Bonhoeffer. They knew what he was all about they knew that they couldn't entirely trust
him they knew he's not on board with the alignment of the churches along with Reich Bishop Mueller
Mueller sent people to keep an eye on Bonhoeffer to talk to English church dignitaries to keep an eye
on him the English Stonewall that Germans this effort would be followed by another German
Theodore Heckl who is head of the church foreign office of the Evangelical Church
and he comes to visit with Bonhoeffer and he declares Bonhoeffer an enemy of the state imagine there you are
your salaries being paid for by the state church and your superior comes and says in fact you are an
enemy of the state and if you express anything other than unconditional loyalty to the third Reich
in his fewer you'll be dealt with you'll be taken care of he was hoping for Bonhoeffer's
capitulation but unlike media outlets he left London without that desired submission if they were
concerned about Bonhoeffer at this point that he would raise concerns about what was taking place in
Germany within certain circles they knew that they were not going to be able to bring him to
heal as a result sometimes Bonhoeffer would then go to these ecumenical conferences and be a speaker
and the German Christians the Hitler Church they would also send representatives to these ecumenical
conferences to record what he said and to keep an eye on him part of the tension that shows up
in ecumenical conferences where they're not just different denominations but different
denominations in parts of the church from different countries the fight over who the German
Church is now becomes one that the rest of the church gets brought into right the German Christians
know that Bonhoeffer has an influence in the larger church circles of Europe and they're concerned
about how they're getting portrayed they want to blunt it and Bonhoeffer wants in some senses when
he becomes his most radical he wants the German Christians to be disavowled as a church in Germany
and for the Confessing Church to be recognized as the only authentic Christian church in Germany
but also at these ecumenical conferences Bonhoeffer is moving beyond a kind of German nationalism
to understand all of the reading all the thinking all the theological reflection he's been doing
on the sermon on the mail he's starting to coalesce and bring this theological thinking to bear on
certain issues one of which is warm peace so he has some very powerful things to say at these
conferences one of which is the conference at final in which he offers a prophetic word for what
it means to return to the radical call of Jesus which is decidedly oppositional do any kind of militarist
nationalism that is sweeping in that country peace on earth is not a problem but a
commandment given at Christ's coming and then perhaps the most serious question did God say you
should not protect your own people did God say you should leave your own prey to the enemy
no God did not say all that what he has said is that there shall be peace among men
that we shall obey him without further question that is what he means
he who questions the commandment of God before obeying has already denied him
you can imagine for a church that is not pacifist in its orientation and the ecumenical church
wasn't it must have been shocking for the attendees but think about how that must have sounded
on the ears of the Nazi wing of the church that was in attendance for bonhoeffer to step out of this
nationalist frame into an international one this goes along with the fact that a lot of the
theologians in Germany were very suspicious of the ecumenical movement what happens in totalitarian
states and in totalitarian religion is that you don't want a pluralist understanding of faith you
don't want a faith of that extends beyond the boundaries of your known world and maybe more
insidious you don't want to faith it extends beyond the boundaries of what you control
and what you want to control so when you see faith extending beyond those boundaries and you
become threatened by that this is exactly what's happening one of the elements about this peach is
the theater of the imagination that you have representatives from the whole ecumenical movement people
from church leaders across different countries different denominations and then when you go to
think of just who's there from Germany you have someone like bonhoeffer making a call to
deep allegiance to God and solidarity with Christ in the face of these demands from our nation
state for violence but then you also have representatives from the German Christian movement
Nazi sympathizers there and so this German church debate about who the church of Germany is
becomes tied to a whole international conversation of who the church ecumenical is the global
churches just imagining a context of where so many people are nodding and others are going
I'm hesitating and then in the corner there's probably someone with a little note pad taking notes
of what mr bonhoeffer is putting out most important thing he's putting out is that the church of
Christ it lives in all peoples it transcends all boundaries even those of blood and soil the followers
of Christ speak of peace they cannot take up arms against Christ himself yet this is what they do
if they take up arms against one another even in anguish and distress of conscience there is for them
no escape from the commandment of Christ let there shall be peace how does peace come about
through a system of political treaties through the investment of international capital in different
countries through the big banks through money or through universal peaceful rearmament in order to
guarantee peace through none of these for the single reason that in all of them peace is confused
with safety there is no way to peace along the way to safety for peace must be dared
it is the great venture it can never be made safe peace is the opposite of security to demand
guarantees is to mistrust and this mistrust in turn brings forth war battles are one not with weapons
but with God they are one where the way leads to the cross which of us can say he knows what it might
mean for the world if one nation should meet the aggressor not with weapons in hand
had praying defenseless and for that very reason protected by a bywalk never failing
this is a kind of a radical speech it becomes a well-known speech of his some people use it to
argue that bonhoeffer is a pacifist we explore that particular shoe in a later episode but he says
individual Christians are in themselves not enough to call for this peace the powers of the world
will just ignore that call you and i can't do that nobody listens to us individual churches can't do
it because they themselves are too wrapped up in their own issues but there is one force he says
that can call for peace only the one great acumenical counsel of the holy church of Christ over all the
world can speak out so that the world the wet nash its teeth will have to hear so that the people
will rejoice because the church of Christ in the name of Christ has taken the weapons from the
hands of their sons for bin war and proclaimed the peace of Christ against the raging world
why do we fear the fury of the world powers why don't we take the power from them and give it back
to Christ the hour is late the world is choked with weapons and dreadful is the distract which looks
out of all men's eyes the trumpets of war may blow tomorrow for what are we waiting
not just this address at faunao but other places in his theology bonhoeffer does seem to indicate a
kind of pacifist stance which is treasonous in the minds of germans who were still enveloped in the
nationalist Christianity and bonhoeffer experienced a great deal of resistance this is also going to play a
role later on in his arrest and imprisonment but this marks another point in bonhoeffer's resistance
to church authority he went as a representative of the confessing church the rick church as we
said before they center on delegation to this conference Charles marsh in his biography the
strange glory he calls it a study and absurdist stagecraft this conference is just one of the examples
steven hangs gave of bonhoeffers intense persistent tenacity when it comes to his deepest convictions
well i like to think about when i think about bonhoeffer was this how young he was relative to a lot
of his peers a poor in the church struggle to find how much he was a leader rather than a follower
i have this image of him when he gave the the clock that that began the church in the jewish question
we got to a certain point where he started to discuss the way the church might resist the state a bunch of
people walked out a bunch of older men and i know that his relationship with me muller was a little bit
fraught because me muller was older and more experienced and had the kind of attitude that there's a
way to do things diplomatically there's a way to say things that cheap you in the room with somebody
bonhoeffer was never very good at that he was very uncompromising he was very laser-fucked this on what
was true the other moment that's kind of interesting in this bbard is when he is a phano conference in
denmark in 1934 and he's been asked to give this possible a piece and he gives his manuscript over to be
vetted before he's going to give it and they say don't say no to this he just ignores it who basically
says what he wants to say so we had this uncompromising walking on to the truth which depending on the
circumstances can't be compromised as he puts it later did on the wrong train it doesn't matter
how fast you walk down the quarter or in the other direction you're lost the conference issued a
statement in the end repudiating german christian claims to be the sole representative germany but
they didn't give the full way to the confessing churches they didn't say it was the one true
evangelical church in germany but bonhoeffer's profile is raised his antagonist in germany had
even more reason to regard him with suspicion this actually is given in august of 1934 but there are
a lot of other things happening in germany that will be a major part of the story one of which is
that with him in london the confessing church is organized and in its first big organizational meeting
it takes place in barman germany and a very important document is generated out of this called the
barman declaration which insists that christ not the fewer is the head of the church and it's
perhaps good for us to just take a couple of minutes and unpack this in may of 34 representatives of
the confessing church and others they met in barman and in the course of this synod issued the
barman declaration carlbart was the primary writer i think he was fortified by some port and cigars
but he wasn't the only writer there were others who added this document was meant to draw
line in the sand between the church and the state it was the church's declaration that it was
standing against the state's attempt to dictate to the church or to form the church or shape the
church to the state's desires and they say that the church must center itself on jesus christ alone
that the state has no new revelation and it is the church's confession of jesus christ is the one
true word of god not ideology any other word from other sources other than the bible and there's
some debate over the document but it was adopted and it became the distinguishing mark of the confessing
church resistance the irony of this is that even here the place that history is recorded is one
of the few bright spots of the church's resistance you do not see a speaking out on behalf of the
Jews which many people consider a significant failure it was an attempt to draw the strong boundaries
between state and church working to fence off the state from interference in the church it had
its strengths and it had its weaknesses will let viggy barnet pick up the story from there
during 1933 this is primarily sort of an inward looking church is fighting the german Christians
not to not see regime even martin emelor in the past as emergency lee continued to emphasize that
they are supporting many of the things that Hitler is doing they just don't want these heresies
to determine the course of german Protestantism so that's more of an internal argument than
looking at the state and figuring out how we're going to do all this i would say that that begins to
materialize that more sober reflection of how the churches are going to have to behave on
the national socialism i think the barman declaration provokes that because it is very carefully
worded it is the product of a committee i mean crowbar rights it but he's consulting with german
Lutheran theologians who i'm sure putting input and i wonder if that's why he doesn't mention the Jews
i mean we don't know but i could imagine that in those conversations leading up to barman somebody
said to him listen you can't put that in there in any case it's a very clear message of what the
church of jesus christ stands for and it ends up being one that everybody's able to get around even
the leaders of german christian led churches so this is a consensus document but it has an opening
at least the opening for more radical people to say if jesus christ is lord of the church and we
don't owe allegiance to any worldly fear that that means that we can actually protest
however we'll intention these efforts were the fact is that the confessing church was never able
to completely overcome the belief that one could serve both Hitler and god
neem aller himself couldn't even escape the gravity of german duty to the state where your primary
allegiance was was the actual theological issue not so much whether you were conservative or
liberal the fact that steven ains point out to us i don't think it was so much theological liberalism
though that was the problems for the german church i think it was a desire to do a card of the
news net what they saw as inevitable in a salgithic regirum culture if you think about the loyalty
of beringston but even people in the confessing church ended up taking on drones and item floreyate
it's suggested even people who were theologically opposed to the nathsings still had a streak of
patriotism and loyalty that ran so deep they in bonifers means jettisoned all their resistance
we see the same thing in that the barman chanted in 1934 that well these are the good guys these
people who really had a fiosk for problem with not use them with german christian movement
but even though it's very clear if you read this mystery of this chanted that they're author of the
statement carl barred very clear that he couldn't say anything really about
questioned royalty to the general regime or journal nationalism or even about Jews or
russ there would be no consensus so i don't think it's so much liberalism or conservatism or near
orthodox and votes be crucial variable in the german church struggle i think it's the degree to
which people are willing to consider opposing or standing against the way the german patriotism
and that's the thing that bonyl also was able to do that so remarkable now if he leaves germany in 1923
goes to the den
partly because he realized how difficult it was to withstand that flood in his own country i think
that's the lesson for the church how important is for christians to resist nationalism to resist
the sort of ethno-sentbert christianity resist this call to a previous christine time and artistry
thought it was really a while in this period of trying to take the sting on
a second conference was held at neemolder's church later on in the fall of 1934 to protest the
house the rest of two bishops by muleur's legal administrator and that issued in a declaration that the
confessing church represented the true evangelical church of germany and they urged complete separation
from the german rick church it was in the aftermath of that last meeting that the confessing
church starts to set up separate structures schools for the training of clergy one of which
becomes bondhoffers next assignment they will call him out of london and ask him to come back to
germany to teach in the seminary at finken baldah from which we get bondhoffers most famous in well-known
works discipleship and life together next week we go back to seminary back to seminary and uh
just think everyone else gets to do it dead free
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