GERMANY: Church Militant

Sleepy old Wittenberg—the town of Martin Luther who made it the cradle of the Reformation—snapped to attention last week at a new Nazi wonder.

Tramp, tramp, tramp 150 Saxon theological students marched into town, brown uniformed and carrying complete Army equipment, even campaign knapsacks. Wags called them “God’s New Storm Troops.” Newly enrolled, they had been sent by onetime Corporal Adolf Hitler as a guard of honor for his leather-lunged friend, onetime Army Chaplain Ludwig Müller. recently elected Evangelical Bishop of the State of Prussia (TIME, Aug. 21). Last week Dr. Müller was about to mold what amounted to a new German Evangelical Church. He wanted no trouble, no backsliding at the last moment by conscience-stricken churchmen. The militant Saxon theological students were his praetorian guard. Menacingly they faced the famed Castle Church on the doors of which in 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses—the charter of the Reformation. Apprehensively churchmen comprising the Synod of the Evangelical Churches of Germany entered and prayed.

Ever since the election of Evangelical elders and deacons last July—an election which the Nazi “German Christian” faction won after violent scuffling and intimidation—it has seemed inevitable that the Synod must elect Dr. Müller to be Reichsbischof of all Germany. Last week after prayers in the Castle Church the delegates went to the Town Church to vote. In marched the theological brownshirts, surrounded the Synod and watched their every move. Promptly and unanimously the Synod elected Dr. Müller to be Reichsbischof and to bring the German Evangelical Churches under the de facto rule of the Nazi State.

“An attitude by our Churches of unconcerned neutrality toward the State now belongs to the past!” shouted Reichsbischof Müller, hammering home the main point at once to the Synod. ”We must all give loyal service to the State, which disavows — definitely and altogether right fully — any liberal or social freedom of conscience.”

Though the Synod is Protestant and Adolf Hitler of course is Catholic, Reichsbischof Müller told the churchmen that “Our Chancellor appears to us as a gift from God.” Recalling, somewhat left-handedly, Martin Luther’s great declaration of the equal freedom and value of all men in the sight of God, Reichsbischof Müller tacked on this Nazi amendment : “Equality before God does not exclude inequality among men, which is also willed by God. For this reason all non-Aryans* must be barred from holding office in the church!”

When Reichsbischof Müller finally sat down ten bishops rose and laid before the Synod a protest signed by 2,000 German pastors. “It is not permissible,” they declared “that the Church of Christ betray brotherly love and by the rule of force become a kingdom of this world. . . . Church ministration is in the greatest danger. Pastors and church officials are persecuted. . . . We protest . . . especially to the so-called ‘Aryan paragraph.’ ”

Cowed, the Synod ignored the 2,000 pastors’ protest.

*As coined and defined by Nazis the term “non-Aryan” means a person with one or more Jewish grandparents.