Consent and Collaboration

Abstract

“When are we going to admit the truth about the Church Struggle? We lost.” These words to me by a member of the Confessing Church stand in stark contrast to much of the mythology about the Confessing Church nurtured after the war. It is now clear that the Confessing Church lost the battle against Nazism in two ways. First, the Deutsche Christen and their pro-Nazi ideas exercised more influence throughout the period of the Third Reich than did the ideas of the Confessing Church. Thus, for example, the Confessing Church lost the battle over respect for and use of the Old Testament as churches began limiting Old Testament readings in their worship practice. The Confessing Church also lost the battle for respect toward and decent treatment of pastors of Jewish descent. Despite Martin Niemoller’s opposition to use of the “Aryan Paragraph” within the church and despite the widespread support he received in 1933 and 1934 as measured by the growth of the “Pastors’ Emergency League,” all pastors “tainted” with Jewish blood lost their jobs in the church by 1937 or 1938. The Confessing Church also lost the battle over the placement of professors in theological faculties at German universities, with advocates of the Deutsche Christen viewpoint over-represented in hiring policies. There is a second way in which Confessing Church supporters lost the Church Struggle. They chose not to fight. That is, they chose not to fight against the real enemy that now seems so clear to us – the Nazi state and its racist, militarist, brutal ideology. Between the Barman Declaration of May 1934 and the end of the Third Reich, many members of the Confessing Church struggled bravely to uphold traditional Christian beliefs and practices in the face of Deutsche Christen heresy. Some individuals attracted the attention of the Gestapo because of their religious practices and beliefs, those who insisted on preaching and teaching and praying in ways that offended the Nazi state. Some members of the Confessing Church went further, risking their safety and their lives by hiding or assisting Christians of Jewish descent, and some really were imprisoned or even executed as a result.