# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1934 masthead not in scan _S356
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

356

which were formulated, with misuse of biblical expressions, in such a way that even the deniers of the fundamental truths of Christianity could accept them and find a right of domicile in the church. And they also made other concessions to the spirit of the age. Representatives of an anti-Christian, Marxist worldview, Freemasons of the most various degrees, gained access to professorial chairs and pulpits. Instead of preaching to the people in all its estates repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus, one fell into an ever greater multiplicity of activities, took part in all possible world conferences which gave support to a perverse internationalism and to pacifism, plunged into "social" undertakings from which one did not always emerge spotless, and boasted that the "Century of the Church" had dawned! The struggle against Rome was waged, out of respect for the Zentrum (the Roman Catholic party), only occasionally and feebly and for the most part not with the right spiritual weapons. Likewise, in the struggle against the moral degeneration of our people and against the loosening and dissolution of the divine ordinances of life, there was often a lack of proper earnestness, and the most necessary struggle, the struggle against the false doctrine that had penetrated the church, was not undertaken at all. That this is not painted too black is proved by statements of leading churchmen and theologians such as Dr. W. Laible in Leipzig and Prof. H. Sasse in Erlangen, which are available in print. In this connection it must unfortunately be said again that the Lutheran leaders and the positive theologians not only failed, but betrayed the cause of Lutheranism and of the Gospel. For it was they who, instead of fighting in earnest against the penetration of liberalism and unionism, again and again built bridges over which these enemies of the church could get into the service of the church. So it was in its time in Saxony with the change in the pledge of office for the pastors, by which entry into the service of the Saxon regional church was made easier for Sulze, a denier of the Trinity, and for others; so it was also in Prussia in the negotiations over the church constitution of the year 1922.

That was the situation of the evangelical people's or regional churches in Germany when last year the National Socialist revolution came and thoroughly reshaped our entire national life. Given the close attachment of these churches to the state, it simply could not fail to happen that they too were drawn into the upheaval. But instead of using the opportunity to reshape the nature of the church from church principles, people let themselves be guided, both on the side of the German Christians and on the side of their opponents within the evangelical churches, by entirely different, purely worldly considerations and human thoughts. The dominant thought on both sides was this: In the new Reich too the evangelical church shall be a powerful structure and have influence on the shaping of public life. Out of this thought the Reich Church arose, or, as it is officially called, the German Evangelical Church. This time too the courage of truthfulness was not found to call this structure what it is in reality, namely an external, administrative merger of regional churches of different confessions and different tendencies, but they described it as an inwardly united church, appealing to the word of the Apostle about unity in the Spirit, Eph. 4. In this deception, however, not only the German Christians took part, but also the others, especially also the Lutheran church leaders. The struggle between the German Christians and their opponents flared up only later, and indeed not under the slogan "Here confession — there denial of the confession!" but under the watchword "Here Müller — here Bodelschwingh!" (Pastor Ludwig Müller is the present Reich Bishop; Pastor Bodelschwingh was the first Reich Bishop, who however soon resigned his office.) In this struggle the issue was the person of the Reich Bishop and the power in the outward visible church. Only later was the Confession then pushed into the foreground by the opponents of the German Christians, when at the much-discussed Sportpalast meeting of the German Christians in Berlin it had become evident that in their ranks there was a very strong current which storms against the Old Testament and the preaching of the cross of Christ, under the assertion that adherence to the Old Testament and to the Bible's doctrine of redemption is incompatible with "Aryan" (Indo-Germanic, not Semitic or Jewish) feeling and German character. This current, even though the Reich Bishop immediately removed the speaker at the Sportpalast from all his offices, is still present among the German Christians. It is indeed incompatible with "positive Christianity," and a "church" which grants room in its midst to such false teachers or concedes to them decisive influence abandons itself as a church. We therefore recognize the struggle waged from the ground of Scripture and of the Lutheran Confession against the false doctrines of the German Christians as thoroughly justified and necessary. On the other hand, however, it must not be passed over in silence and forgotten that such a subversive position toward Scripture and toward Christ's work of redemption was not first taken, and not only taken, by people in the ranks of the German Christians, but that representatives and proclaimers of such errors have for a long time, and down to this very day, been found in the ranks of the theologians of the German evangelical churches and of the teachers at the theological faculties of our German universities, without emphatic and successful protest having been raised against them.

The opposition that has arisen within the Reich Church against the German Christians is directed, however, not only against their subversive false doctrines, which concern the source of Christian knowledge and the content of the Gospel of the grace of God in Christ, but also above all against their radically perverse position toward the nature of the church and the office of the church, and against the manner in which the Reich Bishop and the bishops devoted to him and other organs govern in the church, against the tyrannical, autocratic practice exercised by them, against the equating of secular and spiritual government. We have full understanding for this struggle too. For we have indeed from of old, on the basis of Holy Scripture, stood up for the freedom of the church from all rule of men, for the sole lordship of our Lord Jesus Christ in the church, and for the right distinction between the two powers. But it must nevertheless be recalled here too that the rule of men in the German evangelical churches and the mixing of secular and spiritual power did not come only through the appearance of the German Christians, but was there long before. Also when, with the fall of the monarchy in the year 1918, the sovereign's church government came to an end, an end was not at the same time made of the rule of men in the church, but the church merely adapted itself to the new form of state, by transferring legislative power to the synods and making the general synod, church senate, and supreme consistory the bearers of the highest church authority, which had the right to lead the church and to demand obedience. And quite a few of those who now describe it as burdensome to the conscience to subordinate themselves to the Reich Bishop and the regional bishops have themselves earlier governed in the church and demanded subordination or presupposed it as a matter of course.
Martin Willkomm.