Die Methodistenkirche im »Dritten Reich«

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Summary The Methodist Church was not able to establish itself on German soil until the middle of the 19th century. The Free Church’s attitude toward the National Socialist state in the early years of the Third Reich was largely the result of previous negative experiences, especially with the state and the national church. In 1933, the ›Nationale Erhebung‹ [National Uprising] raised expectations for Hitler’s ›positive Christianity‹, in which the Methodists saw a new opportunity for missionary activity. – The Methodist Church leadership took the threat of ecclesiastical ›Gleichschaltung‹ [enforced conformity] very seriously. German-Christian slogans and the events surrounding the intended Reich Church led the Methodists – also at the level of the Association of Protestant Free Churches (VEF) – into discussions with exponents of the Reich Church about ways of unifying the Free Church, in order to oppose integration of the Free Churches into the Reich Church. The Reich Church authorities were mainly concerned with the ›Aufklärungsarbeit‹ [educational work] favouring the Reich, which was to be carried out abroad by the Methodist side. In the wake of the ideological and statutory adjustment, the German Methodists gave their church a new legal basis. With the formation of the German Central Conference and the election of a German bishop in 1936, the path to national independence was consistently pursued within the framework of the overall Church, independent of Reich Church claims and removed from confessional church groups. The Methodist Church remained within the confines of the Nazi way of thinking, for the very reason that it lacked effective theological work. In conduct conforming to the state, the Methodist Church leadership’s rhetoric and activities were oriented to the absolute Hitler state. Free Church concessions, which often caused a wearisome struggle in the communities, were manifested in such areas as the preaching service, in silence over the Jewish question, in the Free Church Nazi propaganda at the 1937 World Church Conference in Oxford and in the Methodist press. Well before the outbreak of war in 1939, the Methodists – like other Germans – were not able to form even a remotely objective picture of true events; they only listened to and read what German propaganda served. Although the Methodist Church was in a position to save itself by way of the Third Reich, it proceeded on a path to theological, religious and ecclesiastical decline as a result of its moral failure, fear, opportunism and lack of faith.