An example of strength through faithfulness

Considering the continuing challenge and threat of Racist, antisemetic and other kindred groups, The blogger Laughing Pastor finds something to celebrate in the church's heritage:

I am proud to be part of a faith tradition that stood up and spoke out during the Nazi era. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who refused to remain silent. The banner depicted above is a symbol of the words spoken in Barmen. Reformed Christians rejected Hitler, and his Nazism. They died for not remaining silent.

The blog post carried a picture of the dramatic banner designed to celebrate the 1934 Theological Declaration of Barmen. That Declaration does stand as a courageous monument in Christian Theology. We would do well to follow their example... once we figure out what that example is.

They were concerned with Hitler and National Socialism, to be sure, and Bonhoeffer in particular paid the ultimate price, executed for his involvment in anti-Hitler plots.

But they were equally concerned -- if not more concerned -- to call the church back to its roots. They confronted the "German Christian" movement which compromised the Christian gospel, embracing various social movements and cultural opinions as revelations of God. (It would be anachronistic to say they found the words of the prophets written on the subway walls...) They found authoritative revelations in culture, science, and human experience.

Against that, the Confessing church leaders declared "Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death."

The mainstream church leaders called them narrow-minded, said they were resisting the new things God was doing in a new day. They thought looking for God's word in "other events and powers, figures and truths" outside the Scripture would open them to the work of the spirit.

Instead, it sapped their strength, and made the church useless when people needed it to stand up to the evil of National Socialism. It was not an opening that allowed them to receive new things from Jesus. It was instead an opening that allowed the power of their message to escape. It wasn't as much a door as a slow leak.

History has vindicated those narrow-minded folk who insisted the place where we hear the voice of the Word of God is in the Scripture. May we find the strength to follow their example.