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The Barmen Declaration or the Theological Declaration of Barmen 1934 (German: ''Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung'') was a document adopted by Christians in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
who opposed the
German Christian movement. In the view of the delegates to the
Synod that met in the city of
Wuppertal
Wuppertal (; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, with a population of 355,000. Wuppertal is the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and List of cities in Germany by population, 17th-largest in Germany. It ...
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Barmen
Barmen is a former industrial metropolis of the region of Bergisches Land, Germany, which merged with four other towns in 1929 to form the city of Wuppertal.
Barmen, together with the neighbouring town of Elberfeld founded the first electric ...
in May 1934, the German Christians had corrupted church government by making it subservient to the state and had introduced
Nazi ideology into the
German Protestant churches that contradicted the
Christian gospel.
The Barmen Declaration includes six theses:
# The only source of revelation is the Word of God — Jesus Christ. Any other possible sources (earthly powers, for example) will not be accepted.
# Jesus Christ is the only Lord of all aspects of personal life. There should be no other authority.
# The message and order of the church should not be influenced by the current political convictions.
# Leadership in the church is not dominion, it is in service of its ministry entrusted to all its members; there can be no special leader ("Führer") apart from that ministry (Mt 20, 25f).
# The state should not fulfill the task of the church and vice versa. State and church are both limited to their own business.
# Therefore, the Barmen Declaration rejects (i) the subordination of the Church to the state (8.22–3) and (ii) the subordination of the Word and Spirit to the Church.
"8.27 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans."
On the contrary, the Declaration proclaims that the Church "is solely Christ's property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from his comfort and from his direction in the expectation of his appearance." (8.17) Rejecting domestication of the Word in the Church, the Declaration points to the inalienable Lordship of Jesus Christ by the Spirit and to the external character of church unity which "can come only from the Word of God in faith through the Holy Spirit. Thus alone is the Church renewed" (8.01).
:8.04 Try the spirits whether they are of God! Prove also the words of the Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church to see whether they agree with Holy Scripture and with the Confessions of the Fathers. If you find that we are speaking contrary to Scripture, then do not listen to us! But if you find that we are taking our stand upon Scripture, then let no fear or temptation keep you from treading with us the path of faith and obedience to the Word of God, in order that God's people be of one mind upon earth and that we in faith experience what he himself has said: "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Therefore, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
The Declaration was mostly written by the Reformed theologian
Karl Barth but underwent modification, especially with the introduction of its fifth article (on the two kingdoms), as a result of input from several Lutheran theologians.
The document became the chief confessional document of the so-called
Confessing Church. The ecumenical nature of the Declaration can be seen by its inclusion in the ''
Book of Confessions'' of the
Presbyterian Church (USA) and the ''Book of Order'' of the worldwide
Moravian Unity, the
Unitas Fratrum.
One of the main purposes of the Declaration was to establish a three-church confessional consensus opposing pro-Nazi "German Christianity". These three churches were
Lutheran
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...
,
Reformed, and
United.
See also
*
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
*
Martin Niemöller
Notes and references
Sources
*
Further reading
*
External links
Original German text*
A translation of the Barmen Declaration into English with footnotes, licensed under CC BY 4.0
*Barmen Today: A Contemporary Contemplative Declaration is a collaborative response to the times by seven students of the Living School of th
Center for Action and Contemplation Available in English and Spanish, Barmen Today was released in August 2018 and has 22,500 signatories. The document may be viewed at bit.ly/barmentoday
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German resistance to Nazism
Nazi Germany and Protestantism
Reformed confessions of faith
1934 documents
1934 in Germany
20th-century Christian texts
Karl Barth
20th-century Reformed Christianity
Proclamations