The American Church Conflict

Being salt and light

I remember.

It was the late 1960’s and early 70s. I had been a campus civil rights leader (Congress of Racial Equality), now more focused on anti-racism and the War in Vietnam. In seminary and then newly ordained, I often wore the cross of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship (back then the EPF was for peace and wasn’t enabling North Vietnam’s government in the war). My USMC honorable discharge certificate hung upside down in the bathroom and a large poster of Jesus, looking a lot like Che, was in the living room with a rifle on his shoulder. I was confused. I didn’t feel confused but I was truly confused.

In college and seminary I did a lot of work on what happened in Nazi Germany, the clashes of the left and the right leading up to the Nazi take over, and how the US and Europe responded. I also had studied the German Christians, the Confessing Church and the Barmen Declaration. And of course Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

• The German Christians aligned themselves with Nazi ideological principles. They had control over the the German Evangelical Church (a federation of Lutheran, Reformed, and United Churches)

• The Confessing Church resisted Hitler’s desire to make the churches a tool of Nazi ideology and political power. They saw the alliance of the German Christians and Nazis as undermining the authority of the Scriptures, tolerating the Nazi belief in the racial superiority of Aryans, and allowing euthanasia and the persecution of the Jews. Barth saw the alliance as an attempt to adopt into the Christian faith the ideas of National Socialism, e.g., “blood, race, nationality, the soil, leadership, etc.”

• The Barmen Declaration was a 1934 statement of the Confessing Church largely written by Karl Barth. It was the Church’s stand against the Nazi attempt to control the church and pervert its teachings. Today the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the Moravian Church, and the Evangelical Church of Germany accept it as an official confession of faith.

In today’s Faith Dispatch Paul D. Miller explores “A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment.” [You can get free access by creating an account]

The American Church

Miller offers a lens to see through. He notes that we are likely to begin our thinking from the vantage point of the Nazis in power. That might get us to ask “what would I have done when the Nazis gained power?”

He suggests that if we do that we will miss the true analogy. We will begin by focusing only on part of the picture and avoid seeing how the injustices of both the left and the right were in play in Germany then and America now.

He wants us to look at the period before the Nazis took over — the Weimar Republic of the 1920s. Miller wants us to examine what led up to the events of 1933. The article caught my attention because between 2015 and now I’ve carried a worry. Sister Michelle can attest to my rantings about how the situation seemed so much like Germany in the 1920s. Street battles between left and right, a strong left presence in the universities, a right seeking major disruption of the existing order, and a government unable to address the priorities of many citizens. Everyone seemed to see themselves as a victim. Of course, there were also many differences between then and now. But the similarities concerned me.

The Acton Institute [1] issued a statement last year on the 90th anniversary of the Barmen Declaration that points in the same direction as Miller. “At a time when political ideologies again threaten to crowd out Christian theology with a “social gospel” of either the left or the right, the Barmen Declaration remains highly relevant. It can help Christians discern the difference between legitimate political activism and social ministry and that which is worldly and idolatrous.” In The German Church Conflict, Barth notes that the roots of the theological error was not from the schools of Luther or Calvin but the liberal theologians of Germany’s universities. “The real problem which confronts us today … lies in the existence of the Protestant modernism, … which has broken out among the German Christians.”

He’s wondering about whether there is a need for a Confessing Church in America — now.

Karl Barth

In The German Church Conflict Karl Barth writes, “There was at once no sphere of life on which it did not make demands and from which it could not have claimed practical response to its demands pretty quickly.” It doesn’t take much work to see how the ideological impulse of the right and the left can make demands on all aspects of our life. However, it’s also important to note that Barth saw the situation in Germany between 1933 and 1945 as unique. He disagreed with Reinhold Niebuhr who saw some alignment between liberal democracy and Christian faith (pretty much my own view). Barth’s view was more along these lines in the context between capitalism and communism, “If a new spiritual crisis were to develop similar to that in the days of Hitler, Barth isn’t sure at all of the direction it would come from—the capitalist West or the Communist East.” (in Against the Stream, Commentary, 1954)

A Confessing Church in America

“We live in a moment when political extremists have figured out how to game our system and hijack our parties. They may well be succeeding.” (Paul Miller)

He makes the case that we are too quick to declare who are the good guys and the bad guys. Some on the right see the secular progressive left as today’s Nazis with its support for abortion and an authoritarian climate in the universities. The other side sees the MAGA movement as the Nazis with its nationalism and demands for loyalty to a leader. Miller wonders whether there’s some truth in each. We have “bad guys” on both sides. He suggests there is a need for the church to recognize that evils may come from either political side acknowledging the “inescapable realities of sin and injustice in every human institution, including every political party.” And to play our proper role we must maintain our independence from any of the political tribes.

He isn’t proposing withdrawal. He writes, “God loves justice, and so should we, and that is a political act. We are called to love our neighbors, and that means to be attentive to the social, cultural, and political conditions in which they live.” He also notes that at times we need to work in and through the political tribes. Though we should not offer our loyalty to a party. “We should withhold something from them, even if only to teach them that they do not own us. There is no compelling reason to identify yourself as a Republican or a Democrat. Do not give them the dignity of identifying as one of them.”

Hmmm, I’ve always been a Democrat. Even when in college I was a member of the Socialist Party, I was still a Democrat. An Episcopalian, Anglo Catholic, Socialist, Democrat. It was a small group.

But I do see what Miller is trying to get at. You can read his piece and see what you think he’s saying. Because in other places he seems to assume our participation in a party. In fact he offers some useful advice about how we can identify warning signs within our tribe. For example, he writes of the need to look at what the political tribes actually do rather than focusing on what they say. “The Nazi Party platform of 1933 did not advocate genocide or international aggression. The Communist Party platform did not advocate slave labor camps, forced disappearances, and starvation.” Miller wants us to know them by their fruits and be “wise as serpents.” He points to the Nazi’s attempted coup, its violence and racism and the Communists’ take over of Russia and execution of its enemies.

Salt & light

In proposing a Confessing Church stance he calls us to be salt and light. If we tilt to the right to speak for the poor and powerless and the rule of law. And if on the left to note how “they deny transcendent truth one day; the next, they announce a new truth, and their online mob will bully and harass us for failing to jump on their latest cause de jour.”

Miller’s call is to a church that speaks the whole truth and is gracious in its speaking. To avoid those “who peddle fear and anger for clicks” and to practice self examination.

I’m not being very critical of what Miller has written. That’s partly because I think that much of what he’s saying has value and partly because I think all of us need to do more pondering and reflecting before we speak and act.

I hope you’ll read “A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment” and do your own reflecting.

This abides,

Brother Robert, OA

[1] “The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is named after the great English historian, Lord John Acton (1834-1902). He is best known for his famous remark: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Inspired by his work on the relation between liberty and morality, the Acton Institute seeks to articulate a vision of society that is both free and virtuous, the end of which is human flourishing.”

The picture - The German Church Conflict by Karl Barth

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