Does America Need Barmen Declaration-Stringfellow

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DOES AMERICA NEED A BARMENDECLARATION?

WILLIAM STRINGFELLOW

distinctions as to any apparent similarities.O rto pu t this concern in oth er wordswe must

not address the question of the need for a newBarmen in a way that relieves us of making the de-cisions we must make. It would be a grandiose para-dox to recall the Barmen Confession in a way thatabets default on our part in America now. Underthis rubric I offer these remarks concerning boththe political situation and the church situation inthe United States today in referance to the prece-dent of the Barmen Confession.

The Political Situation

One important distinction between Germany in1934 and America now is that Germany then wasarising as a nation from the calamity of defeat inWorld War I. She was a nation regaining her vanityafter the most profound humiliation of her history.She was on the ascendancy (again); indeed, Ger-many in 1934 was a nation on the verge of blitz-krieg, conquest, plunder. And her hope, fantasticas it may now seem, outreached the glory oftriumph in war over enemies who had once subju-gated her millenial pretensions of world domina-tion.

The contrast with contemporary America is start-ling. America is now rapidly losing world pre-eminence. The nation is in decline in virtuallyevery sense in which such matters are commonlycalcu latedmorally, m onetarily, c ulturally, idea-tionally, militarily, productively, environmentally.H er powerher superp owerproves preposterousand ineffectual and is more mocked than fearedelsewhere in the world. Her vanity is confounded;the popular myths about her destiny are ridiculedand doubted; her citizens are sullen, bemused,despairing, vulnerable.

In 1934 Germans were becoming excited and en-thralled with the Nazi ambition for their country,and they were being mobilized in that cause. Am-ericans have lately become demoralized, distracted,apprehensive as to any causeespecially th at of thena tion except, perhaps, the purchase or purs uit ofindividual safety and survival in the most mundane

T h e c o n s i d e r a t i o n of a question such as do we need a new Barmen Declarationf or do Ameri- cans now need a Barmen Declaration? at once dis-closes how history is comprehended. The very waythe issue is framed furnishes temptation to supposethat history repeats itself in an eventful manner, sothat the current American political circumstancesare beheld as constituting a recurrence of those inGermany 40 years ago and are, in turn, thought towarrant a response analogous to that of the BarmenConfession.

To succumb to this temptation stereotypes his-tory. It reduces history to redundancy. It representsa modified predestinarianism that deprives crea-turesbo th persons an d princ ipaliti esof responsi-bility for dec ision s. an d ac tions a t the same timethat it narrows and ridicules the militant judgmentof God in history. As a conception of history it iscategorically unbiblical and, furthermore, it is dull.

For all of that, the present American crisis issufficiently bewildering to entice many citizens totreat history in just such a simplistic, imitative

manner. In this vein, Nixon is compared withHitler; Amerika is named fascist; Watergate isequated with the Reichstag fire.

I reject this view of history as false, misleading,escapist. I esteem history as ambiguous, versatile,dynamic.

I do not imply that there are no appropriatecomparisons to be ventured or no significant simi-larities to be noticed. But I find that history re-peats itself as parable rather than analogue, andthat the edifying similarities are topical rather than

eventful, having to do with perennial issues em-bodied in changing circumstances from time totime instead of with any factual duplication trans-posed from one time to another.

As a practical matter, this means that for someAmerican church people today to recall Barmenand to inquire as to its relevance requires attentionas much to situational differences and analytical

WILLIAM STRINGFELLOW, a Contributing Editor, is author of therecently published "An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a

Strange Land" and other books. Well-known as a lay theologian,he lectures widely across the country.


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with doctrinal monstrosities such as these, whichremain virtually unchallenged among the Ameri-can churches.

Another issue at Barmen sharply contrasts withAmerican circumstances. The Nazis not only hadsponsored a widespread propagation of their posi-tive Christianity but had also engaged in bluntecclesiastical interference, directly subverting thegovernment of the German churches. The effortwas organized under a Reichbishop whom the Nazisfoisted upon the churches, and by the time of thesynod at Barmen more than 800 pastors had beenousted from their pulpits by the regime's churchadministration.

Here there is no similar ecclesiastical meddlingperchance because the churches in America aremore in nocuo usno r does there need to be. In-stead, there is an elaborate American comity bywhich political domination of the churches is sane-tioned by the status of church property holdings.Thus, tax exemption for the churches inhibits acritical political witness by the churches. Thus, aPresidential assurance of aid to church-relatedschools can insure the silence of the ecclesiasticalhierarchy on certain public issues. In short, the de-pendence of the American churches upon propertyrenders the churches so utterly vulnerable to politi-cal manipulation as to obviate a more direct ec-clesiastical interference.

For all of this, if it is concluded that somethinglike a Barmen Confession is appropriate now inAm erica and , it mu st be said, confession of faithis always propo sthere rem ains a q uestion of howsuch a confession could happen. Who is there toconfess? At Barmen the churches at least had aunity and cohesion sufficient to convene a synodthat could speak out. The inherited churches hereexist in such disarray, such disunity, such incoher-enee as to supply the inference that they have, asyet, no capability of confession.

Another Barmen Declaration may be timely, butwe cannot overlook the fact that the very idea ofsuch a confession is unA me rican disruptive of tha tbasic comity thought necessary to the nation's reli-gious and ecclesiastical pluralism. Nor can we gain-say the depth with which it is embedded in theAmerican mentality that anything like a confessionof faith is a m atte r of resolute privacy (which is thereason the content confessed typically affirms Jesussaves but not Jesus Christ is Lord ). On the oth

hand, a doubt lingers as to whether the so-calledsocial activists from the nation's churches are ableto distinguish between some mere political mani-fes to and a hist oric confession of t he Gospel.

Perhaps the answer to the question about anynew Barmen Declaration is to be found in anotherway altogether. Perhaps the question is answered inwhat actually happened to those who signed theBarmen Confession. Every one of them was ex-ecuted, exiled or imprisoned.

When American churchpeople are ready for suchconsequences we will be enabled to confess thefaith. Ironically, if we are not able to confess we

will ce rtain ly suffer the same consequencesignom-iniously.

authority displacing the law, of authority becomea law unto itself, of unaccountable authority, of thevery premise of government become the exercise ofauthority per se, of authority abolishing law and ofcoercion substituting for order, and of all personsmade vulnerable to political aggression.

In this connection Nazism is sometimes repre-sented as a revolution for the German nation.Whether, analytically, that be the case or not, Am-erica has been enduring a counterrevolution for thepast quarter-century that the Nixon Administrationhas epitomized but did not instigate. It is a counter-revolution with respect to the social ethic of theAmerican Revolution, in which the governinginstitutions have been usurped or set aside by thepowe r of ext raco nstitu tiona l agencies (like theCIA, the White House plumbers, the Pentagon, thesecret police operations, the industrial-technocraticcomplex) that have come to function as a secret,second government beyond the reach of publiccontrol. It is this that renders the contemporaryAmerican political situation chaotic. If there bea sense in which it can be said that Hitler savedGermany from anarchy, it must also be said thatNixon feigns to rule where anarchy has becomepredominant political reality.

The Church Situation

The churchmen who gathered at Barmen madetheir confession of the Gospel as an exposure ofand rebuke to the doctrinal monstrosities ofNazism's so-called positive Christianity."

In America we have nothing so definitive or soself-conscious as positive Christianity" was in Ger-many in 1934. The American civil religion hasgrown and has become diffuse and vague. It repre-sents a loose and jumbled collection of memoriesand myths and other notions permeating the na-tional ethos, and it lacks the coherence and form-ality that the Nazi version of positive Christianity"had. Yet this does not imply that the civil religionhere is less pernicious or any less hostile to theGospel. One monstrous doctrine, for example, ofAmerican civil religion is the false and uncriticalidentification of the American churches with in-cumbent political authority and, beyond that, withthe national vanity claiming a unique or divinelynamed destiny for America.

Associated with this grossly unbiblical view isthe redundant assertion of America's moral super-iority, as among the nations, commonly said to beverified by war and weapons capbilities, produc-tivity and consumerism. And this moral pretension,in turn, requires an endless supply of scapegoatsand other victims to explain away whatever goeswrong or otherwise detracts from the supposed na-tional preeminence. Thus we are implicated inconstant denials of corporate responsibility in soci-ety, as in casting upon Lt. Calley the burden ofcommon guilt for the genocide of the Indochinawar.

If there are American Christians inclined to uttera new Barmen Declaration, a place to begin is

Christianity and Crisi


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Does America Need Barmen Declaration-Stringfellow