Confessing Church

 

Ger. Bekennende Kirche, German Protestant movement. It was founded in 1933 by Martin Niemoeller as the Pastors' Emergency League and was systematically opposed to the Nazi-sponsored German Christian Church. The immediate occasion for the opposition was the attempt by the Nazis soon after their rise to power to purge the German Evangelical Church of converted Jews and to make the church subservient to the state. At the Synod of Barmen (May, 1934) the Confessing Church set up an administration and proclaimed itself the true Protestant Church in Germany. After the arrest of many of its ministers the church was forced underground. Eventually the more moderate Lutheran Council replaced it as the most effective opponent to the Nazi regime. After the war Niemoeller and his followers continued as a separate group within the German Evangelical Church. The group is governed by representatives from each territorial church (the Council of Brethren) and its doctrines are based on the Barmen declaration and the Reformation creeds.

Bibliography

See A. C. Cochrane, The Church's Confession under Hitler (1962).

For the unrelated movement with a similar name in North America, see Confessing Movement.

The Confessing Church (German: Bekennende Kirche) was a Christian resistance movement in Nazi Germany. In 1933 the Gleichschaltung forced Protestant churches to merge into the Protestant Reich Church and support Nazi ideology. Opposition was forced to go "underground" to meet, and created the Confessing Church that September. In 1934 the Barmen declaration, primarily authored by Karl Barth with the input of other Confessing Church pastors and congregations, was ratified at the Barmen Synod through which it was re-affirmed that the German Church was not an "organ of the State" for the purpose of strengthening Nazi agendum but only subject to Christ and his mission.

Some of the leaders of the Confessing Church, such as Martin Niemöller were sent to concentration camps, and some died there, while Dietrich Bonhoeffer was sent to Tegel Prison where he was hanged. Christians who did not agree with the Nazis were left without leadership. The Confessing Church engaged in various forms of resistance, notably hiding Jews^[1] from the Nazi regime. The Confessing Church is a unique example of a crypto-Christian movement operating in a majority Christian country.

When the Nazis were consolidating their power in Germany during the 1930s, one of the areas that they exercised significant influence over was the German State Church. Various Lutheran pastors, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, decided to resist the encroaching Nazi influence. This underground resistance movement on behalf of German (Lutheran) pastors became known as the Confessing Church. Unfortunately, many leaders of this underground movement, including Bonhoeffer himself, were sent to concentration camps and later executed for their "treasonous" undertakings.

Even most members of the Confessing Church, however, were relatively cautious and strategic in their protests. A few urged more radical and risky action in the presence of genocide. Daniel Goldhagen in his book “Hitler's Willing Executioners,” describes Berlin Deaconess Marga Meusel as a Christian offering “perhaps the most impassioned, the bluntest, the most detailed and most damning of the protests against the silence of the Christian churches” because she went the furthest in speaking on behalf of the Jews. Meusel and two other leading women members of the Confessing Church in Berlin, Elisabeth Schmitz and Gertrud Staewen were members of the Berlin parish where Martin Niemöller served as Pastor. Her efforts to prod the church to speak out for the Jews were unsuccessful and Meusel and Bonhoeffer condemned the failure of the Confessing Church -- which was organized specifically in resistance to the Nazis -- to move beyond a very limited concern for their church and its Jewish converts to advocacy for all people and especially those suffering the most. Meusel responded to the Confessing Church's timid action in 1935 by saying: “Why does the church do nothing? Why does it allow unspeakable injustice to occur? ...What shall we one day answer to the question, where is thy brother Abel? The only answer that will be left to us, as well as to the Confessing Church, is the answer of Cain." ("Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9) Karl Barth also wrote in 1935: ‘For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not yet have a heart.’ ^[2]

Widely regarded as one of the preeminent Christian theologians of the 20th century, Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship in 1937. This book can be seen as the cornerstone of the Confessing Church movement for it was written at a time when the German State Church was struggling over whether or not to pursue or resist the onslaught of the National Socialist (Nazi) movement. Bonhoeffer claimed that the times represented a true divine test, much like the story told by The Book of Job in the Old Testament. Many Germans considered Bonhoeffer to be poignantly accurate in his remarks concerning the peculiar epoch in German history.

References

External links

• The Confessing Church at the Columbia Encyclopedia

Donate to Wikimedia