German Church Struggle Research Articles

Het Herderlijk Schrijven van de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk in 1941

The Pastoral Letter of the Dutch Reformed Church of 1941 The defeat of the Dutch army in 1940 was followed by five years of German occupation. As Dutch churches were not directly under control of the state, they retained the freedom to present their critical views to the occupier. This article analyses an early public request by the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) to withdraw antisemitic policies, followed by a public declaration of its position under German occupation in the Summer of 1941. The DRC was well aware of the successes and failures of the German church struggle. Given this background, the General Synod developed a careful but critical attitude towards the German authorities.

“To Struggle Against the Tree of Life”: Reading Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall guides readers through a “theological” exegesis of Genesis chapters 1–3 and was an early manifestation of the “German Church Struggle” (Kirchenkampf) against National Socialism. In this paper, I propose a re-reading of Creation and Fall attentive to contemporary environmental and political conditions. Drawing on the work of William E. Connolly, I outline points of affirmation, critique, and supplementation. Just as Bonhoeffer recognized the need for a “crisis theology” in the face of Nazism, so now global warming and the rise of “aspirational fascism” demands analogous efforts. I argue that Bonhoeffer’s focus on biblical myth as a counter to fascist myth, his articulation of a relational ontology and embrace of “incarnational humanism,” are all relevant to the task of Christian political theology today. There is a need, however, to transcend Bonhoeffer’s anthropocentric bias, supplementing his readings of Eden’s mythic symbols to encourage forms of “entangled humanism” that are essential to Creation’s defence.

The Church Struggle and the Confessing Church: An Introduction to Bonhoeffer's Context

This article traces the German church struggle form 1933 to 1945 with particular emphasis on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s role. Although Bonhoeffer’s status in the world today is that of a great theologian and courageous opponent of the Nazi regime, he did not have much of an impact on the direction of the Confessing Church during the church struggle. Bonhoeffer’s striking albeit marginal role in the German church struggle and his inability to affect significantly the direction of the Confessing Church was due to many factors, including his young age, his liberal-democratic politics, his absence from Germany from October 1933 to April 1935, his vacillating and at times contradictory positions on central issues, his radical theological critique of the Nazi state, his friendship with and family ties to Christians of Jewish descent, and ultimately his willingness to risk his life to destroy Hitler’s regime.

Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity. The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936–1939 (review)

Reviewed by: Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity. The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936–1939 John S. Conway Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity. The Kulturkampf Newsletters, 1936–1939. Edited and translated by Richard Bonney. [Studies in the History of Religious and Political Pluralism, Vol. 4.] (Bern: Peter Lang. 2009. Pp. x, 578. $86.95 paperback. ISBN 978-3-039-11904-2.) Some of the most incisive and forceful descriptions and analyses of the Nazi campaign against the German churches and indeed against Christianity were contained in 135 Kulturkampf Newsletters written between January 1936 and the end of August 1939, which appeared at almost weekly intervals. Published first in Paris, they also appeared in a German edition, a British edition in 1937, and a U.S. edition in 1939. They have now been republished in an almost complete edition translated by Richard Bonney. As a contemporary source, these newsletters were extremely well informed and provided a valuable chronology of the Nazi persecution of the churches. They served as one of the first decided commentaries outlining the essential opposition and incompatibility between the Nazi Weltanschauung and Christian faith. This repeated theme is supplemented by detailed documentation of the Nazis’ overt harassment of dissident priests and pastors, the suppression of the churches’ publications, and the closure of schools and organizations. In addition, extracts are given from the speeches and writings of prominent Nazis, outlining their deliberate hostility, which were all seen as part of a wider campaign not merely to control but eventually to eradicate Christianity from Germany. Fittingly, the final issue condemned the Nazi ideology, with its “divinization” of Hitler and its appeal to racial consciousness as the basis for a new state religion. These newsletters also provide evidence of the attempts made by the churches to combat this ideological campaign. The sermons of Bishop Clement von Galen of Münster were quoted with approval, as was the Papal Encyclical of March 1937. Increasingly attention was paid in 1937 and 1938 to the campaign against the Protestant churches and to the valiant responses of the Confessing Church. In April 1938 a whole issue was devoted to the show trial of Pastor Martin Niemöller. His sentencing to a concentration camp, despite his legal acquittal, was seen as another example of Nazi plans for repression of all church opposition. Further, another recurrent theme of these newsletters is the folly of those gullible churchmen who believed they could be good Catholics or Protestants and good Nazis at the same time. Here, these illusions were resolutely [End Page 388] attacked. In April 1938, for example, the sad case of Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna and his craven submission to Hitler after the Anschluss was rightly castigated as an unforgivable betrayal of true Catholic interests, which foolishly ignored what had happened in Germany over the previous few years. There are, however, problems with Bonney’s edition. Curiously, he does not provide answers in his introduction to such important questions as the identity of the author or authors, the sources and provenance of the detailed and often local information provided, the intended audience, the size of the imprint, or the origins of the funding needed for this multilingual enterprise. Nor does he try to assess the impact these newsletters had at the time or explain why they ended so abruptly. He makes no attempt to place them in the wider context of exile German resistance efforts or literature. Surprisingly enough, no one came forward during the war or afterward to claim responsibility for these newsletters. Thus there is still an unresolved mystery. A fuller attempt to find answers can be found in Heinz Hürten’s edition of the German version, which appeared in 1988, but even Hürten admits puzzlement as to the authorship question. Nevertheless, the republication in English of these intrepid letters and commentaries adds to our picture of the German church struggle and stands as a warning against connivance with anti-Christian ideologies, which still needs to be heard. John S. Conway University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Emeritus) Copyright © 2011 The Catholic University of America Press

‘Intimately Associated for Many Years’

This article discusses the significance of the relationship of George Bell and Willem Visser't Hooft in the context of the early history of the ecumenical movement and the political crises of the period 1933-1958. Based on their lengthy correspondence, it shows how the two men collaborated in steering the movement through the difficulties of the German Church Struggle, the entanglements of the world war and the controversies of the Cold War. It argues that the gifts and qualities of Bell, the bishop, and Visser't Hooft, the ecumenical statesman, often complemented each other, and that this proved one of the decisive, and defining, alliances of international church life in the middle years of the twentieth century.

Was ist »lutherisch«?

The problem of giving specific Lutheran identity a designation most often arouse in times of crisis, exemplarily in the German Church Struggle ("Kirchenkampf") since 1933. The equivocational use of the term and the ambiguity of the meaning had a fatal effect. Thus the "Deutsche Evangelische Kirche" should have been determined by the lutheran "Reichsbischof", but he was a "Deutscher Christ" who understood Lutheranism as national religion in convergence to Nazism. In opposition, since 1934 Lutheran bishops and theologians organized a community, which defined the meaning of Lutheranism on the basis of the Lutheran Confessions (since 1936 organized in the "Rat der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche Deutschlands"). But the reference to the Lutheran Confessions remained formal, without an exact definition of the theological substance. Several attempts to furthermore define the Lutheran essentials did not lead to a consensus. This condition lasted until the foundation of the "Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands" in 1948.

The Scope of Public Theology

This article examines the changing scope and method of ecumenical public theology from the World Missionary Conference of 1910 until the present. Most changes were made in response to the changing ideological and political contexts. The collapse of liberalism and the social gospel was followed by a type of confessional ethics which arose directly out of the German Church Struggle. In opposition to this there emerged a realist ecumenical social ethics, much indebted to Reinhold Niebuhr, and of Ronald Preston. This type of public theology and its distinctive ‘middle axiom’ method are examined and contrasted with the more recent public theologies which were influenced by liberation theology and grassroots movements. It is suggested that the ending of the Cold War and the fundamental changes that have taken place since September 11 2001 present a radically new kind of challenge to public theology.

Faith from the Ashes: An Interview with Sibylle Sarah Niemoeller von Sell

Faith from the Ashes: An Interview with Sibylle Sarah Niemoeller von Sell Samuel M Edelman and Zev Garber (bio) Preface The first time I encountered Sibylle Niemoeller was at the 22nd Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the German Church Struggle (now named the Annual Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches), which met at the University of Washington from February 29 to March 4, 1992. The conference theme was “Religion, Power, and the Politics of Resistance,” to acknowledge and honor the centennial birth year of two towering giants of the Church Struggle against Nazism, Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Niemoeller. At the opening ceremony, Pastor Niemoeller’s widow paid tribute to her husband, who died 6 March 1984. I was impressed by her poise and stature as she delivered a heartfelt talk on the personality of the quintessential leader of the German anti-Nazi Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church). At the end of the session, I thanked her for her fitting remarks and I was struck by her wearing a Star of David. How fascinating, I thought, Pastor Niemoeller’s widow wears a Jewish religious medal! Had I known her, I would’ve asked, l’shem ma? For what reason the Star—an expression of Christian penance, German guilt, newfound identity? My introduction to the milhomah yahrn (Yiddish, years of World War II) began at Hunter College in the Bronx (now Lehman College), where I studied as an undergraduate between 1958 and 1962. There I learned about antisemitism and the Shoah and discovered that the supersessionist message of Christian teachers, leaders, and saints helped prepare the twisted road from Calvary to Auschwitz and the numerous valleys of death between. Had I not read at the Graduate School of Religion at USC Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison (1958) and found out about the White Rose group, I might not have known about good-spiritedChristians who refused to submit to Nazi ideology. Subsequently I came across Martin Niemoeller’s memoir, Briefe aus der Gefangenschaft Moabit (1975), in which he charged the brethren not to lose hope or direction and to fight the good fight for the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. His letters from Moabit prison and his famous “Confession of Guilt,” which originated orally in his postwar [End Page 44] American travels and became the concluding words of his many addresses to American audiences, left an indelible affect on me. “First, they came for the socialists. But I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.” Inspirational words from a Christian German patriot who refused to bend before the Caesar of the Hooked Cross. I participated in the second Remembering for the Future conference, held in Berlin, March 13–17, 1994. My co-authored paper attempted to find the roots for the Auschwitz Convent controversy in unconscious cultural bias and notable absence of dialogue between Christians and Jews. 1 It also showed the dangers of marginal interfaith interchange which knee-jerks to sectarian claims because we fear to know each other’s fear and see with each other’s sight. Shades of Niemoeller’s wise admonition, indeed! During the conference, I visited with Hubert Locke, co-founder with Franklin H. Littell of the Annual Scholars Conference, Niemoeller’s cell at Sachsenhausen (where he spent three years in solitary confinement after eight months in Moabit and before four years in Dachau, and where he was liberated in 1945). Here my black Christian friend prostrated and wailed, while I, an American-born Orthodox Jew from Eastern European shtetl heritage, said the Kaddish to honor and remember the sacred soul of this chasid ummot ha-’olam, one of the righteous among the nations. And at that moment I vowed to know more about the Pastor Martin Niemoeller. The vow stayed with me for several months, but I did nothing to fulfill it. Time...

Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich: Spaltungen und Abwehrkämpfe, 1934–1937 (review)

Die Kirchen and das Dritte Reich:.Spaltungen und Abwehrkampfe, 1934-1937. By Gerhard Besier. (Berlin: Propylaen. 2001. Pp. 1261. EUR23.00.) When Professor Klaus Scholder died in 1985 he had completed only two volumes of his magnum opus on the Churches and the Third Reich. But these took the narrative only to the end of 1934. Now his former pupil, Professor Gerhard Besier of the Heidelberg University, has carried the story on in a third volume of more than 1250 pages, including 300 of footnotes, which covers the period 1934-1937. So presumably we may yet hope for more to come. As before, this continuation adheres to Scholder's original aim of seeing the German Church Struggle as a whole, not limiting the story to one or other denomination, and in particular searching out the convoluted and grandiose schemes of the Nazi rulers. But Besier is equally aware of the dilemma as to whether such an account should treat the churches as a traditional unit of society and compare their responses to Nazi tyranny with those of other institutions. Or should the special role and claims of the Christian churches demand a higher standard of response, and, if so, a more critical judgment on their failures? The years 1934-1937 were those of Hitler's consolidation of success. The economy revived; the national future looked bright; large expenditures were begun on public works and military rearmament. Nazi propaganda skillfully harped on Hitler's achievements, and paralyzed opposition. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of churchmen were prepared to support the new government. Only a handful of clergy recognized the dangers of Nazi totalitarian ambitions. They were quickly silenced or exiled. Only in the Protestant Confessing Church was there any organized opposition, but this was narrowly focused on the theological front to combat any watering down of Christian dogma. The Catholic Church was particularly susceptible to the Nazis' alluring propaganda. They believed the promises made in connection with the 1933 Concordat; they were relieved that the spectre of Communism was overthrown; they rejoiced at no longer being regarded as second-class Germans. The bishops unanimously supported the new regime. Many Catholics also approved the Nazis' campaign against the Jews. Nazi anti-Christian radicalism was assumed to be merely confined to a few extremists. This is the background for Besier's three lengthy chapters on the Catholic Church. like Scholder, he treats the denominations separately, largely because there was virtually no interaction between them, and because the Nazi tactics were very different, even when their strategic goal was the restriction and eventual elimination of both churches. But virtually no one in either hierarchy was prepared to imagine such an eventuality. Their nationalist sympathies and desire to retain their positions as members of the establishment prevented them from facing the totalitarian spectre or mobilizing any effective large-scale resistance. Also like Scholder, Besier is highly critical of the Catholic bishops' failure to shed their illusions, even when prompted by the Vatican. …

Who Needs Enemies? Jews and Judaism in Anti-Nazi Religious Discourse

The so-called German Church Struggle has been a subject of scholarly study and popular interest for several decades. For obvious reasons, the minority of Germans who opposed the Nazis in word or in deed have become compelling symbols of courage and resistance, human reminders of the auspicious role religion can play in situations of political crisis. Rarely, however, has the discourse of anti-Nazi resistance been analyzed in terms of its assumptions concerning Jews, their role in Germany, or their historical destiny. When these assumptions are illuminated, it is apparent that despite their opposition to National Socialism and its encroachment in the affairs of the church, Christian resistors to Nazism transmitted concepts of Jews and Judaism that did little to ameliorate, and often exacerbated, the anti-Semitic environment in interwar Germany,

Totalitarianism: Propaganda, Perseverance, and Protest: Strategies for Clerical Survival Amid the German Church Struggle

The Protestant historiography of the German Church Struggle has been shaped largely by its attention to two fundamental issues. The first has been the intrachurch struggle dominated by two churchpolitical factions: the Faith Movement of the German Christians and the Confessing Church. German Christians whole-heartedly endorsed the government of Adolf Hitler, campaigned to align the organization, theology, and practice of the twenty-eight German Protestant Land Churches with the racial and authoritarian values of the National Socialist regime and worked to create a centralized Reich church under a powerful Reich bishop. The Confessing Church stood for theological orthodoxy and ecclesiastical independence, rejected the authority of the Land Church governments that had fallen under the control of German Christians, and asserted itself as the uniquely legitimate church government in Germany.

The Uses and Abuses of Knowledge: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the German Church Struggle; March 7-9, 1993, Tulsa, Oklahoma (review)

The Uses and Abuses of Knowledge: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the German Church Struggle; March 7-9, 1993, Tulsa, Oklahoma (review)

Britische Presse und Nationalsozialistischer Kirchenkampf. Eine Untersuchung der "Times" und des "Manchester Guardian" von 1930 bis 1939 by Markus Huttner

Brittsche Presse und Nationalsozialtstischer Kirchenkampf Eine Untersuchung derTimesund des Guardianvon 1930 bis 1939. By Markus Huttner. [Veroffentlichungen der Kommission fir Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Forschungen, Band 67.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh. 1995. Pp. 814. DM 108.00.) For the past thirty years publications on German Catholic contemporary history have been appearing with impressive regularity in the magnificently produced Blue Series of documents and monographs. The Commission for Contemporary History, under the sponsorship of the doyen Konrad Repgen of Bonn, has succeeded in printing a large number of works either by his pupils or their pupils, including many dissertations of extraordinary thoroughness and length, of which Huttner's is the latest. All of them are splendidly edited; the scholarship is exemplary and exact; the footnotes, bibliographies, and indices first rate. The problems begin with the author's and the sponsor's perspectives and the shortcomings these impose. German church history is alas! still written along denominational lines. Interdenominational cross-fertilization is regrettably absent. Each group appeals primarily to its own milieu. Who else would be willing to pay the enormous price of these volumes, which in any case are presumably heavily subsidized for publication? This bias is rather obvious in the present work, which arose out of an examination of how the two leading British newspapers reported on the events of the German Church Struggle. Huttner's careful analysis of the Nazi repression of the Catholic Church, and how this was revealed in the British newspapers, gives us only half the story, despite the fact that he knows, and we know, that British readers were far more concerned about the persecution endured by the Protestant communities, especially the Confessing Church. While such limitations may be acceptable for a Ph.D. dissertation, the one-sidedness of this large volume comes over as unbalanced, even though exhaustively researched and presented in an excellently scholarly fashion. After several lengthy opening chapters showing how quickly the newly appointed Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, asserted control over the German press and silenced any reports on oppositional movements, Huttner then turns to the actual course of events, which he follows chronologically from 1933 to 1939, when British reporting perforce had to stop. He shows how the correspondents of the Times and the Manchester Guardian succeeded in evading Nazi censorship, and indeed demonstrates that they were exceedingly wellinformed, principally because of their shrewd choice of insider contacts. Not much escaped their notice. But we in fact learn little new about the actual course of the Church Struggle, which has all been extensively documented in postwar years. The most interesting features of this huge tome are Huttner's comments on the differences in perception and interpretation adopted by the two main correspondents, Norman Ebbutt of the Times until his expulsion from Germany in 1937, and E A. Voigt of the M. G., who early on retreated first to Paris and then to London, but maintained his close interest in German church affairs. Ebbutt interpreted the Church Struggle mainly in political terms, and stressed the internal conflicts between sections of the churches and the Nazi bureaucracy, whose conflicting plans in any case made for a chaotic and wayward policy. Ebbutt believed rightly that Hitler was not much interested in the details of this campaign, but none of the Nazi hierarchy were pleased by the critical tone of his reporting, especially of such scandalous events as the arrest and trial of Pastor Martin Niemoller, which aroused enormous antipathies in Britain. …

Wrestling with Two Texts: A Post-Shoah Encounter: A Midrash on Genesis 32:22-33 and Matthew 26:36-46

54 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 WRESTLING WITH two TEXTS: A POST-SHOAH ENCOUNTER A Midrash on Genesis 32:22-33 and Matthew 26:36-46 by Henry F. Knight Henry Knight is University Chaplain and Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Tulsa. A graduate of the University of Alabama (in English literature) and Emory University's Candler School ofTheology, where he concentrated in Pastoral Theology, he teaches regularly in the Tulsa Curriculum and specializes in post-Shoah Christian Theology (Holocaust Studies). An active participant in the Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and German Church Struggle, Hank chaired that group's March 1993 meeting which he convened in Tulsa. MEETING JACOB AT THE JABBOK1 Introduction What might Jews and Christians discover if they met over a shared biblical text in an honest and forthright attempt to interpret a text each honored as the Word of God? What might they discover if they moved to more problematic ground, namely, a text which for one was sacred and paradigmatic and for the other historically and existentially problematic. The following essay examines these interrelated questions by focusing on iAn earlier version of the first part of this essay has been published as "Meeting Jacob at the Jabbok: Wrestling With A Text," Journal ofEcumenical Studies, Vol. 29, No; 3 & 4 (Summer-Fall, 1992), pp. 451-460. It is used here with permission. Wrestling with Two Texts 55 two key biblical texts. In the first case (Gen. 32:22-33), Abraham's grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, are preparing to meet in the context of a twenty-year estrangement. Jacob has displaced his older, twin sibling, taking his birthright and blessing. The night before their historic encounter , Jacob wrestles with a mysterious, unnamed figure.2 Reflecting on this text, theJabbok story is re-entered and the dynamics which Jacob faced are explored. In the second case, the story of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36-46) is explored, focusing on Jesus' night of wrestling and its meaning for contemporary Christians and Jews as they ask how this central story for Christians has been affected by what happened in yet another night, the long night of destruction called the Shoah. What follows is written in a single voice in this encounter-a Christian one-and is offered where it begins, at the threshold of the Jabbok, self-consciously on the post-Shoah side of the history ofJewish-Christian relations. Facing the Text Who was the ish, the one with whom Jacob wrestled during the night at the Jabbok? With whom (or what) did Jacob wrestle on the banks of the Jabbok? Was it the guardian angel of Esau, as the sage, R. Hama b. R. Hanina, has suggested?3 Was it Esau, the estranged brother, sneaking into the camp under the cover ofdarkness? Was it fear personified? Was it guilt? Was the stranger the haunting and stalking shadow ofJacob's father, Isaac? Was the stranger God? Was the ish Jacob himself, that is, the other side or sides ofJacob?4 Who was encountered that night? What was encountered that night? At the Jabbok, Jacob prepared for meeting his estranged brother on the following day. He sent his family across the river, out of harm's way, and prepared to wait and rest. But nightfall brought no rest. Instead it brought struggle. An unnamed stranger, an ish (literally, a man), came and 2Alan Segal, in his historical study ofthe birth ofJudaism and Christianity, has developed a more direct metaphorical identification ofJudaism and Christianity with Esau and Jacob. Citing Genesis 25:23-24, he contends that rabbinic Judaism and Christianity both grew out of the faith world of Israel's Second Commonwealth as critical transformations of Hebraic life and culture. Consequently, he argues, it is appropriate to equate Judaism and Christianity as "twin religions." See Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Cambridg~,MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 1-3, 142-18l. 3See H. Freedman, trans., Midrash Rabbah: Genesis, vol. II, LXXVII: III (London: The Soncino Press, 1939), p. 711. 'Elie Wiesel, Messengers ofGod (New York: Random House) 1976, p. 123f. 56 SHOFAR Fall 1996 Vol. 15, No. 1 wrestled with Jacob through...

A Requiem for Hitler and Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle. By Klaus Scholder. Translated by John Bowden. London and Philadelphia: SCM Press and Trinity Press International, 1989. xviii + 203 pp. $15.95 paper.

A Requiem for Hitler and Other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle. By Klaus Scholder. Translated by John Bowden. London and Philadelphia: SCM Press and Trinity Press International, 1989. xviii + 203 pp. $15.95 paper. - Volume 62 Issue 1

Onuki, The Breakdown of the German Church Struggle

Onuki, The Breakdown of the German Church Struggle

Book Review: III. Historical-Theological, a Requiem for Hitler and other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle

Book Review: III. Historical-Theological, a Requiem for Hitler and other New Perspectives on the German Church Struggle

Book Reviews : German Church Struggle

Book Reviews : German Church Struggle

Luther's Resistance Teaching and the German Church Struggle under Hitler

Luther's Resistance Teaching and the German Church Struggle under Hitler

Protestant Social Thought and the Nazi State, 1933-1937

Adolf Hitler's accession on 31 January 1933 meant a crisis for the Protestant churches of Germany. By spring of 1933, Hitler's Gleichschaltung attempted to bring even organized Christianity under Nazi control. Thus began the German church struggle, the Kirchenkampf, a painful conflict that would redefine the nature of German Christianity. Historians have described in great detail the political machinations surrounding the creation of the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche (DEK), a new united church that replaced the existing loose federation of virtually independent provincial churches. The foundation of the DEK was a victory for Hitler and the Deutsche Christen, the party of dogmatic Nazi pastors, for it was truly a national church founded to serve the state and express the will of the people. The intrusion of state policy into internal affairs of the church gave rise to a rival group of Protestants, the Confessing Christians, who dissented against Nazi church reforms. Most of the voluminous literature on the church struggle {Kirchenkampf) deals with this fascinating political, institutional conflict.1 The intellectual dimensions of the church struggle, although a primary concern of participants at the time, have been largely ignored by historians.2 German churchmen were, indeed, faced with a profound theological and ethical dilemma after 1933 that centered around a question that has plagued German Protestantism since Martin Luther: Does the church provide normative guidance for the state or must it merely obey and even actively support state policy? In addition, scholars have portrayed participants in the conflict as either protagonists or antagonists, firmly on the side of Hitler's