THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1934 RELIGION IN GERMANY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21911, 21 September 1934, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1934 RELIGION IN GERMANY

Signs multiply to prove that Nazi rule in Germany bodes ill for religion. Almost every day lately has had its piece of news of this sort.

To-day comes a report of words spoken at Hanover by Dr. Mueller on behalf of the Government. They are a frank avowal of its aim to form

a single national Church by force. The declared goal is "One State, one people, one Church," and any not joining in the building -up of this Church must step aside or be brushed out of the way. It is impossible to exaggerate the fierce significance of these words. Dr. Mueller is doing with a will the work for which he was appointed by Herr Hitler. The totalitarian State is Hitler's aim. He is determined on bending everyone and everything to his purpose. For freedom there is to be no place in Germany except a grave; even religious freedom is under sentence of death. In Dr. Mueller's appointment as Bishop of the Reich was sensed a lethal attack upon the liberty of the Church. The office was apparently created for him. Nominally it made him State head of the Evangelical Church, a compulsory fusion of the Lutheran and Reformed (Zwinglian) divisions of Protestantism ; in reality it gives him supremacy, or as much of it as he cares to exercise in conformity to expedience. The Vatican asserted its claim that the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, which has never been nationalised, should be recognised as part of a world-wide institution; by the Concordat of last year Hitler contracted to give it freedom of worship and administration, providing it refrained from activity in national politics. He has been slow to observe his part of the compact, recent news showing that his mouthpiece, Reichsbishop Mueller, is bent on complete subdual of every section of the Church. This man, a close personal friend of Hitler and at one time a chaplain fully attached to the army, has little spiritual or intellectual qualification for so exalted a post. His candidature for election as head of the Evangelical Church was strenuously opposed, others with notable gifts being preferred; but the protests were of no avail. Now he has the whole Nazi campaign of force at his back, and is behaving accordingly. In the development of the present position three bodie3 of opinion have emerged. Many Nazi extremists are within the Protestant Churches, and to them the mandate of the LeaderChancellor is everything; they proudly designate themselves "German Christians," with a stress on the first word. Opposed to them are those to whom the racial principle is a denial of the universal Gospel and the method of force a travesty of the evangel. They have made a stand against the Nazi onslaught. A Pastors' Emergency League, more than 2000 strong, has dared to declare and defend the principles that the " German Christians" have abandoned; they have refused to read in their churches the mandatory edicts of the Reichsbishop and have gone to concentration camp or gaol rather than betray their solemn trust. Regional synods, of which that at Barmen in the Rhine Province in Prussia is an outstanding instance, have repudiated the action of the National Synod in handing its authority over to Dr. Mueller, and have supported their members refusing to take the newly-prescribed oath of allegiance to the Nazi decrees. Apart from these mutuallyopposed sections in Protestantism, yet in practical sympathy with the stand taken by the "covenanters" against the Nazi project of reviving Teutonic paganism as a German cult, is the Roman Catholic Church, backed by the Vatican. Hitler has tried to shackle the Catholic Youth Movement, which the Vatican holds is theoretically protected by his promise to allow freedom of religious ministrations He has suspended Catholic newspapers and hampered the work of Catholic hospitals. Now, through the speech of his Reichsbishop at Hanover, he avows his purpose of compelling Catholics as well as Protestants to conform to his

plan of one Church throughout Germany. Seemingly he feels strong enough to defy opposition, whether it arises from within religious bodies in Germany of from the Vatican. He deemed it politic to declare, in his campaign preceding the plebiscite on his assumption of the dual office of Leader-Chancellor, that the State under his control "professes positive Christianity," and that he will "make an honest effort to protect the two great Christian confessions in their rights." Doubtless ho meant the Lutheran and Reformed bodies, as far as they may persist in the new regime he has established; of the Catholics he then said nothing, apparently biding his time. However, his promise of protection was made valueless by his adding to it an expression of his determination to bring these bodies "into accord with the viewpoint and necessities of the present State." This is precisely the point at which the courageous clergy, such as those in the synod at Barmen, refuse to go with him: they hold that Christianity is not something that can be remoulded to meet the political exigencies of the moment. Autocratic power has become so much his obsession, however, that he may pursue his policy regardless of all that history has to say about the readiness of men and women to suffer for their religion, although nowhere has this fact clearer proof than in Germany. If he does, he will find that not even the most powerful dictatorship can succeed against a religious refusal to bow to it.