The Crisis in German Protestantism

Extract

On 11th July, 1948, exactly fifteen years after the dark day on which Hitler founded the ‘German Evangelical Church’, Dr Martin Niemoller was present at the founding of the ‘Evangelical Church in Germany’ (EKD) on the Wartburg near Eisenach, which had once been Luther’s stronghold; there he coined the shattering phrase, ‘the solidarity of the helpless’ on the same occasion as the aged Bishop Wurm described this new structure as a ‘temporary shelter’. These words were sign enough, even for the uninitiated, that this emergency organization was a long way removed from that source of grace, the upper room at Jerusalem. Rendered indispensable by the sheer stress of chaotic political conditions, the new ‘Church’ was attempting to reassert its legal continuity with the past and to affirm the ‘unity of Evangelical Christianity’ in all the occupation zones, especially to bind together the East and the West. Was its motive, therefore, political?

Whilst these lines were being written Wilhelm Niemoller, the pastor of Bielefeld issued an open letter to Germany which ends with the cry: ‘The crisis is upon us!’; and the Reformed Church in north-west Germany has resolved not to attend the EKD conferences any more until they are again animated by an evangelical spirit. What does this signify?

The downfall of the Nazis and their ‘Reichs-church’ means that, for the first time in 400 years, German Protestantism has been given the opportunity to free itself from the state and to give itself a constitution ‘in accordance with the New Testament’ as an earlier conference expressed it.