REBEL PASTOR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 157, 5 July 1937, Page 5

REBEL PASTOR.

NAZIS DEFIED.

CHURCH THRONGED.

WOMEN RISKED ARREST.

FORBIDDEN DOCTRINES.

From Berlin last week came a cable announcing the arrest of Dr. Martin Niemoller, leader of the Congregational Movement against Nazification of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Dr. Niemoller was charged with announcing from the pulpit the names of members of the congregation who had seceded from the church. This was forbidden by law.

Writing in the "Sunday Express" recently, George Edinger described a visit to the church where the rebel pastor preached every Sunday. He wrote: —

My friend had left a telephone message for me at my hoteL "Pastor Niemoller is preaching at the Jesus Christ Church at Dahlem at 10 o'clock to-morrow, Sunday. Please be there at 9.30. Get out at Thielplatz station."

My train went at 8.30. As the Berliner likes to lie in bed on Sunday, I wa3 surprised to find it quite full. The lady sitting next to me said that I need not worry about missing the station. Everybody would be getting out there. I had heard so much about Pastor Niemoller. He is the only man in Berlin who speaks publicly against the most vital things in the Nazi programme and nobody can understand why nothing has happened to him. The gist of the quarrel between Hitler and the Protestant Evangelical Church is that Hitler proclaims the necessity for race purity and for teaching the children that the German Aryan race is superior to other races, to Jews, for instance, while the churchmen teach that all men are equal in the sight of God.

Pastor Niemoller put it all into one sentence when he preached from the text "There shall be neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free." In spite of everything, German parents insist on sending their children to the Protestant Sunday schools, where they learn on Sunday things that flatly contradict what is taught the Hiler Youth on the other six days of the week. On Every Road. We walked in a long file over the allotments to the church, a large plain brick building erected seven years ago. Every road and pathway had its long procession of worshippers trudging silently to the church doors. I thought we would not get in. It was half-past nine and every seat in the nave and in the gallery had long been full. The central aisle was already full of people wedged shoulder to shoulder from the church door to the steps of the chancel. I found somewhere to sit down on the steps themselves. At a quarter to eleven the doors had to be shut. There were all classes there. About two-thirds of the congregation were women, i A choir began the service. They sang from the gallery. They wore no surplices; the singing was very beautiful. It was Bach's Cantata, "Jesus, My Joy Is Jesus." After this the whole congregation sang Martin Luther's great hymn: A mighty fortress Is our God A trusty shield and weapon. The last line I thought was sung with a peculiar fervour. "His realm on earth endureth." Luther's word for realm is Reich. The same word is used by the Nazis who speak of the Third Realm, to denote at once their system and their philosophy. Sung Responses. After some prayers and sung responses Pastor Niemoller stepped into his pulpit. It was the first time I had seen him. Although he is an ex-sailor (he commanded a submarine in the Great War), he looks like a university lecturer, tall, thin, sharp featured, dark-haired. He looks about forty. He talks concisely, without emotion, very distinctly. "And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. "And it came to pass . . . they were perplexed thereabout . . . they were perplexed thereabout." ■ ,

Then he spoke to his people of their own perplexity in these dark days, of the choice that they must make between the old faith of their fathers and the new doctrines that were abroad in the land. A time when long friendships would be broken. "We cannot keep with us any who would leave us. The day of deciding is also the day of departing." But those who were steadfast he urged to be strong and of a good courage. He asked our alms to continue the work of teaching the Gospel, the old Gospel, to the men of to-morrow that the light might not go out in the land. Prayers For "Martyrs." He had no way but this to make his needs known, he said. The sermon ended, he asked our prayers for those who were faithful, even, some of them, unto death. He read out the list of their names with a few sentences to describe their fate, "Forbidden to preach by the political police . . . not allowed to leave their houses. ... In the concentration camp . . . the prison. When he mentioned the case of a prisoner in the Moabit gaol the people round me were sobbing. He asked our prayers, too, for the widow and children of a prominent Evangelical layman who had been found dead in a concentration camp. "It was given out that he took his own life, yet he had patiently and valiantly endured the sufferings of many months without complaining," Pastor Niemoller said. In the church porch the members of his Evangelical Youth Association were offering copies of books and pamphlets by the Protestant leaders of modern Germany. The books are forbidden to be sold outside the churches and many Germans are bitter that this should be so while the publications of Ludendorff's Pagan Movement are sold and advertised everywhere. As it was, I was told, all these young men and women were risking arrest.