GERMANY: New Heathenism

Berlin’s vast Sportpalast rumbled one night last week with a great gathering of the “German Christians,” Nazi Wing of the Evangelical Church (TIME. June 12, et seq.). on deck to demand the super-Nazification of the Church. Their presiding officer was brisk, sleek, pomaded young Rev. Joachim Hossenfelder. Bishop of Berlin and Brandenburg. Their prime hot-head was one Dr. Reinhold Krause. Meeting a few days after the 450th birthday of their Church’s founder, Martin Luther, they proceeded to juggle ecclesiastical dynamite. According to Nazi Pastor Krause, German Protestantism needed a “second Reformation.” He submitted three reforms:

1) Elimination of the Old Testament and of “palpably misrepresenting or superstitious passages in the New Testament.”

2) Elimination of the crucifix.

3) Strict enforcement of the Nazi “non-Aryan clause” which has barred professing Christians of Jewish blood from Evangelical churches. Special “Ghetto churches” should be provided for such “Jewish Christians.”

“We must demand a return to the heroic conception of Jesus,” clarioned Dr. Krause, “not as a God enthroned to be conceived dogmatically, but as a fearless fighter and leader.”* The meeting enthusiastically adopted a resolution supporting Dr. Krause’s reforms.

Instantly cries of “Sacrilege!” “Infamy!” rang throughout the Evangelical Church. Three influential non-Nazi pastors even demanded a rescinding of the rule against “non-Aryans” in the Church. The sounds of fury and chaos rose to Reichsbischof Ludwig Muller. As the personal friend and henchman of Chancellor Hitler, he might have been expected to side with the Sportpalast “reformers.” Instead, caught by the news from Berlin while traveling in southern Germany, he sent a telegram of strong reproof: “I speak only as leader of the Church who is responsible for the preservation of the creed before God. … It is said, though I can hardly believe it, that the sacred cross has been rejected as the symbol of our Christianity. … I, as leader of the Protestant Church, reject such a spirit with all my energy. … I shall never permit that such heresies shall be taught in the Protestant Church.”

Scudding north hot behind his telegram, Reichsbischof Muller expelled Heretic Krause from the Church. At once Bishop Hossenfelder expelled the three embattled non-Nazi pastors, who held charges in his diocese, “for offering resistance to the National Socialist and the German Christian spirit.” The non-Nazis then called for the expulsion of Bishop Hossenfelder for listening with equanimity to the Sport-palast resolution of heresy. The Sport-palasters retorted that their meeting “was to express what the spiritual leaders of the Church in Germany really think about the Old Testament and to give the highest bishop an understanding of the opinion of the people.”

Highest Bishop Muller tried to calm his flock by suspending temporarily the “non-Aryan clause,” but non-Nazi pastors rallied 3,000 strong to denounce the Nazi “German Christians.” Risking reprisals from Nazi Storm Troopers, they read out from 3,000 pulpits throughout the Reich a stinging protest directed, by implication, at the Nazi State itself. “Heathendom has penetrated into the bosom of our church,” they read. “Many Christians have to submit their consciences to human leaders, in contradiction of the essence of the Church!”

Going even further than the text of the 3,000 pastors’ protest, the rector of Berlin’s fashionable Jesus Christ Church cried: “When the government of the Church compels its preachers to proclaim that all other nations are inferior in comparison with the Nordic Germanic race, it is guilty of an arrogance and an uncharitableness that has no parallel in history. No Christian should dare even to breathe the suggestion of a ‘ghetto church.’ ”

Most significant was the fact that German Catholics at once rallied to the daring German Protestants. “We Catholics cannot afford to sit coolly or gloatingly by.” declared the Catholic organ Germania. “This anti-religious new heathenism is on a much lower level, even, than pre-Christian heathenism, which at least honored its gods and was in this sense pious.”

*When seven members of a sect caller! Bible Researchers at Lichtenstein refused to vote and distributed handbills on Germany’s election day reading “Jesus Is Our Leader,” police took it as a snub to Leader Hitler, arrested all seven.