CHURCH AND STATE

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 86, 11 April 1935, Page 6

CHURCH AND STATE

NAZI "IDOLATRY"

A SYNOD MANIFESTO

FOKBIDDEN BUT READ

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, March 16.

As the result of a recent meeting of the Prussian Confessional Synod the strongest manifesto hitherto issued against the Rosenbergian philosophy was read last Sunday in a number of churches in Germany.

The reading of the manifesto was forbidden at the last moment on the instructions of Dr. Frick, Minister of the Interior (writes "The Times" Berlin correspondent). Messages were sent by telephone to the- Confessional pastors. Whether the message reached all pastors is doubtful, but the majority apparently learned of the prohibition in time.

Pastors in Berlin, and evidently in other parts of Prussia also, took the view that the Minister of the Interior had nothing to do with what-was said on important religious matters from the pulpits of their churches, and decided to read the manifesto as arranged. The arrests in Pomerania and other outlying districts were presumably due to the zeal of the local secret police, who were aware of the prohibition, and may, perhaps, have gone farther than the Minister had intended. The theory is also to be heard that police action would not have been taken so readily if Herr Hitler had not been away in South Germany.

In Berlin no arrests were made, though after the services copies of the manifestoes were seized by the secret police. In the case of Dr. Niemoller, the courageous and -popular Opposition leader and pastor of the Berlin suburb of Dahlem, no action at all was taken either before or after the service. Apart from Berlin the manifesto is reported to have been most widely read in the Rhineland and Westphalia, those strongholds of the Confessional movement, chiefly because the distribution there was very efficiently arranged and all the pastors received their copies in time.

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT.

When the draft of the manifesto was presented to the Senate it was explained that it was not meant to be an attack against the State or the NationalSocialist movement, but a bold attempt to bring State and nation back to their senses after a period of chaos, to save them from falling into a perilous idolatry. A prolonged silence on the part of the Church, it was contended, might be interpreted as a certain justification for those hankering after religious experiments. The first Commandment (the manifesto declares) is "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have none other gods but Me." The new religion is contrary to that Commandment. First, the racial Weltanschauung becomes a myth in it; blood and race, nationhood, honour, and freedom are raised as idols. Secondly, the belief demanded by this new religion in "eternal Germany" takes the place of belief in the eternal Kingdom of God. Thirdly, this mad faith creates its god in the image of man. In it man honours, justifies, and redeems himself. Such idolatry has nothing to do with the "positive Christianity" of the original NationalSocialist programme. It is antiChristianity.

CHURCH'S DUTY.

The State, the manifesto continues, receives its sovereignty and authority through God, who alone creates and limits human authority. He who puts race and nationhood in the .place of God as the Creator and Lord of State authority undermines the State. Temporal justice ignores its Divine Judge and guardian, and the State itself loses its powers, if it assumes the dignity of an everlasting kingdom and declares its authority to be supreme in all spheres of life. Obediently and gratefully the Church recognises the authority of the State founded andlimited by God's Word. For that reason it cannot submit to the claim of a totality binding on conscience which the new religion ascribes to the State. It is the Church's duty to protect its baptised members from a religious and philosophical education which mutilates and eliminates the Word of God in the Old and New Testaments and teaches faith in the new myths.

At Dahlem the manifesto was read by Dr. Niemoller at a service held in the parish hall, as the church was too small for the large attendance. Afterwards Dr. Niemoller declared it was time for all present to decide where they stood, and he asked the congregation, to take the oath to the Confessional Church. The whole congregation, which included many young folk, stood up and took the oath. In his sermon, Dr. Niemoller referred cryptically to help that had come from an unexpected quarter.

A NAZI REPLY.

A statement was issued by the Minister of Education, Dr. Rust,, providing for a general reduction of the Church tax for 1935. It is understood that this step is meant to be a first warning from the State to the Confessional Opposition in Prussia. The movement itself, however, regards it as much more. It is interpreted as a preliminary introduction of Herr Rust as the future Minister for Evangelical Church Affairs under the plan—known to have been under consideration —for a fresh State intervention. Otherwise, it is asked, what has the Minister of Education to do with Church- finance, or with the Church at all, apart from Church schools and State theological colleges? Striking evidence has recently been afforded (says "The Times" correspondent) that the Confessional'movement has some justification for its complaint that in the "new religion" racialism and nationhood are put before Christianity. In some high auarters in the regime, at any rate, the whole Church conflict is regarded in a purely political light; the resistance of the pastors is characterised as an attempt to nut race, "blood and soil," and similar NationalSocialist ideas in a secondary position, which is passionately resented. If those quarters had their way the whole rjower of the State would be used to sweep away the movement which is 'Wending basic Christian manciples. There seems to-be no particular reason why the counsels of those particular auarters should be followed in matters of no rtiri ="'+ rnncrn to them, but now thnt the Minister of Education has tnken to decreeing Ch'irch taxes there is no knowin" \v*>at P^ns.rtment may next takp f> hirtH.

On the plain of Delhi the Hall of a Thousand Pillars has been laid bare. Tt is the hall where Mohammed bin Tughlak, cruel tyrant of the House of Tughlak received the subjects of a turbulent empire in the century when Edward the Third reigned iri England. On this plain, where now the new Council House of the British Raj rises, are buried the relics of many Mogul eranerors an dsultans who came aid went. The Tughlaks were Turkis, sometimes called the slave kings, who succeeded the Pathans and built a great wall about their capital of Delhi. Mohammed or Mahmud was one of them, and himself the son of a rebel, firmly and cruelly held down the provinces, which after his death threw off the Delhi yoke. Of all that he did and was little more than the site of a wall of Jahanpanah remains.