In recent weeks, a group of evangelicals crafted a Confession of Evangelical Conviction in response to the “social conflict and political division” plaguing the American church, especially amid another contentious presidential election season.
Few know, however, that this confession was conspicuously modeled on another: the Barmen Declaration of 1934, a framed copy of which hangs in my office. It was penned during Nazi-era Germany by Christians who opposed indirect state interference in the work and life of the church.
The Barmen Declaration has since become a model for resistance against other forms of ideologies and political systems that domesticate the gospel and compromise the church’s witness. It inspired both the Belhar Confession, penned in opposition to South Africa’s apartheid, and the international Orthodox opposition to the Russian Orthodox Church’s nationalist views after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Making public statements in response to cultural shifts has become a modern evangelical instinct, due in part to the legacy of Barmen. What can we learn from this document, and what critical reminders does it offer the Christian church today? There are many things we might consider, but here are five enduring lessons.
1. Our theology always has real-world implications.
In the 1930s in Germany, a group called the “German Christians” was already sympathetic to the political goals of National Socialism long before the rise of Hitler since they shared its convictions of racial and ethnic nationalism and antisemitism. They hoped to unite various German confessions under a single bishop and establish a single Volkskirche, or “people’s church”—one sympathetic to the Nazi government and supportive of the Germanic ideology of Adolf Hitler’s Reich.
These German Christians believed the divine will was revealed in Jesus Christ and in Scripture, but they also insisted that it could be discerned through natural theology—in nature and historic events. They concluded that the existence of different races and people was God’s design and that each group was to be kept distinct (the intermarriage of Aryans and non-Aryans, specifically Jews, was officially forbidden by the government in 1935). Natural theology for the German Christians was thus one of Volk (“peoplehood”), a mystical fusion of culture, blood (racial supremacy), and soil (land/nation).
In addition, German Christians believed the divine was expressed, and could be discerned, in singular historical turning points. Foremost among these events was the rise of National Socialism and Hitler, which they understood in spiritual terms and took to be the direct work of God’s providence in history for the salvation of the German nation.
In contrast, a group of Christians who called themselves the “Confessing Church” sought to oppose the German Christian teachings and governance. In May 1934 in the city of Barmen, 139 concerned delegates gathered for what would become the Confessing Church’s most famous synod, not least because of the Barmen Declaration that it produced.
Lutherans Hans Asmussen and Thomas Breit and the Reformed theologian Karl Barth were commissioned to write the confession, with Barth as its principal author. The confession has six articles—the most well-known article of which is the first, which states,
Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
“We reject the false doctrine that the Church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures and truths as God’s revelation.
From its first article, the Barmen Declaration explicitly rejects the premises of natural theology, and this rejection is a key to its legacy. In a time when distorted theology led to devastating consequences, the declaration sought a return to “Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture.”
2. The church’s confession must be centered on Jesus Christ alone.
Many National Socialists spoke freely about God, but in terms of an absolute being. Most often, they referred to God with reference to his omnipotence as “the Almighty” (this was Hitler’s preferred way to speak of God). Others, like Joseph Goebbels, the Reich’s propaganda minister, spoke passionately of “the Divine” or of “Providence.”
But these were vague utterances. As one pastor during the war observed, the word God in Germany is “an empty word into which any concept can be poured.”
In contrast, every resistance to National Socialism by Confessing Church members—such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Barth—was sustained by an appeal to the singular and supreme revelation of God in Jesus Christ as attested in Scripture.
These Christians perceived that, no matter how much traditional Christian language its leaders used, National Socialism was a rival religion that appealed to a different god—whether a god of a mystic ideal of racial superiority, or of the state itself, or of a generic, divine “Almighty.”
Moreover, the theologians in Germany who were most open to a natural theology of nature and history—and in turn downplayed God’s particular revelation in Christ and, at times, denied Jesus’ relation to Israel and Judaism—were those who were the most implicated in compromises with National Socialism.
Only a particular theology of the God of the gospel, a theology of the cross, could ever resist such idolatry in its full force.
3. An exclusive confession of Christ protects against ideological and political capture.
We as Christians can never place our ultimate hope in earthly political leaders or movements, no matter how promising or powerful they seem or however threatened we may believe ourselves to be. (Many Germans overlooked problems with National Socialism and fascism because they were terrified of communism and the Russian revolution of 1917.)
When rightly understood, Barmen offers a basis for both theological and political resistance against any claims to absolute allegiance made by a state or government. It also serves as an inoculation that fights against any ideology, whether of the left or the right, that might invade the church body.
For Christians, there can only be one Lord, one subject of our ultimate hope and allegiance. As the second article of Barmen declares, Jesus Christ has a claim “upon our whole life,” and Christians should reject “the false doctrine that there could be areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords.”
It was thus inevitable that the church would come into irreconcilable conflict with the National Socialist regime. As Judge Karl Roland Freisler of the Nazi People’s Court in Berlin noted at the death trial of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke: “There is one thing, Herr Graf, which we National Socialists and the Christians have in common, and only one: we both demand the whole man.”
4. Theological declarations, apart from confessional community, are not enough.
Those who assented to the Barmen Declaration not only viewed it as a binding confession but also lived a confessional life together in community. These committed Christians strove to remain faithful to the one Word of God and to be in service to the church and the vulnerable. Though few, they lived a life of intentional witness and corresponding suffering.
Most Protestant churches in Germany had no tradition of political resistance, and most Christians in Germany found such a thing inconceivable. Yet the Confessing Christians learned that, at times, discipleship entailed dissent. Bonhoeffer is perhaps the most famous of such dissenters, but there were many others like him.
Despite its shortcomings, the Confessing Church was the only German entity to resist the Nazi regime. Every other part of the nation—industry, the financial sector, the arts, the universities—was subjugated to state control. And the leaders of the Confessing Church paid a steep price for their convictions. Some were sent to concentration camps. Others were imprisoned or executed.
The Barmen Declaration was poignant because it was not only a statement of words but also a call for a holistic commitment to a costly way of life.
5. We should not romanticize Barmen but seek to live out its spirit in our present age.
It is tempting for us to romanticize Barmen, but there are a couple reasons why we should not do so.
Even for those who strongly disliked the government’s interference in their self-governance, most pastors in Germany—including many who were part of the Confessing Church—were not necessarily opposed to the National Socialist movement itself. Most remained loyal to their nation’s government, not wanting to appear unpatriotic or sectarian in any way.
In fact, the majority welcomed the chance to demonstrate their loyalty by signing up to serve in the German army when the war came. And despite several contrary examples, most said nothing when persecution of Jews and others intensified and was evident to all.
Moreover, we should remember that any superficial comparison between modern Western democracies in the early 21st century to Nazi Germany in the 1930s and ’40s is unhelpful and often distortive. While some Christians in America see themselves as being in a state of persecution, such does not begin to compare to the systematic oppression of the churches that intensified in Germany from 1935 onward and throughout the war.
What can be directly applied from Barmen, though, is that the ultimate task of the church is not to align itself with the levers of political power for its own self-preservation. Rather, the church should trust its safeguarding to the Lord, in whom we find our true and proper power.
Faithfulness to the gospel, not political effectiveness, is the church’s divine commission. And there are real dangers when these are reversed or when the first is replaced by the second.
Two decades after World War II, in his treatise “The Christian Community and the Civil Community,” Barth remarked prophetically, “The secret contempt [that] a church fighting for its own interests with political weapons usually incurs even when it achieves a certain amount of success, is well deserved.”
In the end, the Christians in Germany who were the most committed to resisting the evils of the state were, ironically, those who were the least invested in preserving the church for its own sake. Instead, they were interested only in remaining faithful to the gospel—and this translated into acts of political resistance, often by Christians who were little known and frequently forgotten.
Friedrich Justus Perels was a Christian lawyer in Germany who was deeply involved in the Confessing Church. With remarkable clarity of conviction, he worked to free political prisoners, help relatives of those in concentration camps, and assist Jews in Germany. For these actions, he was arrested in October 1944.
On February 2, 1945, he was condemned to death. During the trial in Berlin, Freisler, the judge who presided over the trial, screamed at Perels: “After the war the Church will be wiped out.”
But Perels calmly replied, “The Church will endure.”
This is the confession of one whose hope was not in the church itself but in God, who through his Son promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against it.
Kimlyn J. Bender is the Foy Valentine Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University. His books include Reading Karl Barth for the Church and 1 Corinthians in the Brazos Theological Commentary series.
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