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The Conflict Between Church And State In The Third Reich
La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press October 28, 1934 [http://www.newspaperarchive.com/FreePdfViewer.aspx?img=61598330&firstvisit=true&terms=Einstein pg. 9]

Editor's Note: Dr. Cadman, back from a visit to Germany, finds that the resistance of the church to the encroachments of the state and the teachings of racialism, is not simply an affair of a few religious leaders but is rooted in the deepest convictions of the German people.

By REV. DR. S. PARKES CADMAN

(Copyright 1934 by N. C. J. C. News Service)

As the press in this country has been carrying such excellent accounts of the German church conflict, those interested can hardly fail to have by this time at least a rudimentary idea of what it is all about.

For the struggle in simplest terms is to determine whether state worship in modern form, racialism, and nationalistic extravaganzas shall take the place of a spiritual and universal religion, which has always found at least some degree of expression in the Christian churches—both Catholic and Protestant.

In this connection it is worth quoting in free translation a statement made by Professor Einstein last year to one of my colleagues who has been prominently identified with the Protestant church in its contacts with Germany. “Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced.

“Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. “Then I looked to individual writers who as literary guides of Germany had written much and often concerning the place of freedom in modern life; but they too were mute. Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth.

“I never had any special interest in the church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”

Opposition Rooted in People
What was true when Dr. Einstein spoke a year ago is even more true today. Events have demonstrated that the resistance of the church to the encroachments of the state and the teachings of racialism is not simply an affair of a few religious leaders but is rooted in the deepest convictions of the laity as well.

Despite the shameless and lying propaganda which has assiduously shown only one side of the issue and has sought at every point to deceive the German church people concerning the real issues at stake, the facts have penetrated to a very considerable portion of the church members with consequences that are increasingly serious for the future of the Nazi movement. Again and again the statement has been made that both communions would be accorded confessional freedom and the liberty to preach their religious message in accord with the great traditions of the past.

But all the time it has been understood that of course this freedom must be made to comport with the new Nazi ideology and the “Weltanschauung” of its high priests led by the unspeakable Rosenberg. Furthermore, limitations and qualifications put upon this liberty of preaching, through deliberate attempts to control the administration of both church groups, are enormously significant.

The Roman Catholic church has not in recent months felt as much pressure as the Protestant for the very good reason that the Saar plebiscite is in the offing and the Nazis do not wish to reveal fully their intentions until after that event, so pregnant with possible consequences for the ambitions of the Reich. Just as the use of police in the attempt to destroy the resisting church governments of Bavaria and Wuertemberg was postponed until after the Universal Christian council, representing the non-Roman world, had met in Denmark this September, so the use of coercive measures on the Catholic church is being postponed until after January.

But neither Herr Hitler nor his lieutenants have hesitated at times to send up what might be called trial balloons in the form of statements about a contemplated unification of the two movements in one Reich church.

The effect of this has been to drive the Catholic and Protestants into a united movement which has the peculiar characteristic of being designed to marshall all their respective forces to achieve a continued separateness! They are consequently closer together in spirit than heretofore. They unitedly contend against an artificial “Gleichschaltung” forced on them from without and motivated wholly by state ideology.

The repressions, restrictions, intimidations, arrests, unscrupulous spying, and vicious misrepresentation which have characterized the activity of the Reich church is only a prelude to what will come in February, 1935, if the Nazis have their way. If by that time they have not learned the ultimate futility of their planned course of coercion, there will be seen in Germany a “Kultur-Kampf” far more serious than that from which Bismarck was compelled to draw back after bitter disillusionment in the late eighties.

Resist Racial Theories
It is significant that in the beginning, and to a degree which has not been wholly realized in this country, both Catholic and Protestant resistance centered about the adoption of the Nazi racial theories, particularly with respect, to the Jews. It has doubtless been small comfort to many Jews to observe the form which this resistance took since it must have appeared simply the result of a desire to keep the way open for proselytism and to guard the theory of the universality of the church which has never been carried out in its fullest implications in Christian practices. That it was more, many evidences prove.

The treatment of the Jews, where it was known (as it frequently was not widely known in German church circles), aroused a moral condemnation which was not sectarian but which does credit to the finer instincts of both Catholic and Protestant Christians in the Reich.

In more recent times the pressure on the very life of both communions has been so great that this other issue has been pushed into the background, though by no means lost to view. For both Catholic and Protestant it is intended by the thoroughgoing Nazi that a state of affairs shall be achieved in which whatever may be the technical arrangement the actual consequences will represent enforcement of the following conditions:

1. The church shall be in all essentials one with the state in its purpose.

2. The supreme leader of the church, as of everything else in the nation, shall be the head of the state—Adolf Hitler.

3. The church shall not go against the will of this dictator in the choice of its highest officials.

4. The “leadership principle,” supreme in the Nazi state, shall apply likewise in the church, the unsupported and arbitrary word of the bishop of the Reich being the supreme law of the church.

5. The selection of future pastors of the church shall be in the hands of the leaders of Hitler youth, who shall say which students are to be admitted to theological training.

6. These future pastors are to come from only one race—the “Aryan.”

7. They shall likewise come from only one party, the National Socialist.

8. The church shall be no longer regarded—from a practical point of view—as supranational and universal but as a distinctly German institution.

9. The church shall support the campaign to eliminate from its own life and the life of the nation the race which produced its Lord and the writers of the Bible.

10. The God of the church shall be officially permitted to be recognized in Germany only if He will salute Adolf Hitler.

Resistance by German Christians
The story of the way in which the Christian Germans, as distinguished from the “German Christians” and the new pagans in the “Glaubensbewegung” have resisted this program will perhaps never be known in detail because the assiduous work of the secret police has resulted in the destruction of records and has prevented any thorough documentation. Enough, however, is known to make the story a thrilling one.

Those of us who have had immediate personal contact with the leaders of the opposition, and with the representatives of hundreds of the churches in meetings supposed to be illegal, and who have personally observed the plight of Christian leaders driven from the country because of their loyalty to God rather than to Hitler, know the pathos, the drama, the heroism which characterizes this chapter of contemporary religious history.

As a result of this resistance one after another of the leaders of the German Christian party have gone down. Hossenfelder, who was the “Fuehrer” of the church in the eyes of the “German Christians,” Oberheidt, who was the “chief of staff” in the Reichsbishop's office, and a series of cabinet members in the Spiritual Ministerium, may be cited as examples.

Some have left because of opposition; others because they have become disgusted with a situation which they did not clearly understand when they gave their allegiance to the “German Christians.” The Pastors' Emergency Federations throughout the country, the Confessional (or Free) Synod with its national body of twelve, and a number of old synods, particularly in the South, have fought valiantly. Again and again it seemed as though Ludwig Mueller would be displaced as Reichsbishop. His consecration, contemplated in 1933, was postponed because none of the foreign churches invited would participate. It was carried through on the 23rd of September, 1934, with no foreign churchmen present. At the very hour when he was being officially inducted to office, vigorous and uncompromising protests were being read from the pulpits of many of his supposed followers, who risked their freedom thus to satisfy the demands of conscience.

Mueller May Be Replaced
It is too soon to prophesy as to the final outcome of the grim struggle. On the one hand it is motivated by resurrected primitive racialism, fanatical nationalism, and belief in violence.

On the other hand it springs from a triumphant faith in the universal and spiritual qualities o£ religion and the determination to put first the will of God as revealed by the prophets. It relies upon historic Christian tradition expressed through the distilled wisdom of past ages, not in any one nation but in all Christendom. That Jaeger, the commissar who prevented Dr. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh from functioning as Reichsbishop and who has been the executive power behind Mueller, will be replaced is actually promised by Hitler now. That Mueller would soon follow possibly on grounds of some diplomatic illness, is not unlikely. But the essential struggle will not be so easily concluded. There exists with the German church a deep division. Probably what will emerge will be a church much smaller than the old Evangelical church with its 48,000,000 nominal members. There may even arise a well organized Free church of a new variety. This while regrettable, would certainly be much preferred to a wholesale acquiescence in the unwavering intention of the Nazis to prostitute the church to the purposes of the state.

Those who steadfastly intend this shameful thing are not to be dissuaded by present failure. They can be counted on to continue their agitation, which will in the future, as in the past, be characterized by violence, propaganda, and the exaltation of incompetence and narrow nationalistic sectionalism.

If the Hitler regime lasts, in spite of its grave errors, there will always be a fundamentally irreconcilable conflict of philosophies within the German state. The church is by no means the only institution which will feel the strain of this for professional life generally, the universities, and the literary world will be similarly affected.

May Strengthen Hitler
The lesson for the rest of the world will be of great value. We are reminded that hate begets hate; that repression and discrimination reproduce themselves; that power of modern propaganda controlled by one party is demoniac in its consequences.

Whether or not Hitler can hold on is a question to be answered by the unfolding of the unknown future. For the present his strength, may be increased by what has been done in the spirit of revenge and hatred either within or without Germany If he can point to the activities of organized boycotts as being an evidence of foreign enmity, he will be able to stimulate the moral equivalent of a war psychology and to inspire his followers to grim self-denial in the interests of a unified national resistance to outward pressure.

The world has seldom been challenged by a more difficult situation. Religionists, diplomatists and economists will need to bring to the problem the very best that they possess of insight, patience, intelligence and goodwill.