LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 334

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334

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

ordinate to the state. What must be conceded to the church is that its mem-
bers should be able to gather undisturbed in the name of Jesus Christ, that
the gospel should be properly preached to them and the sacraments cor-
rectly administered. Even how that happens, and under what order and
law is a Secular matter. ... Does that mean that the state not only can but
‘may’ do with the church what it wishes, and the church may not say 2
word to rebel? Certainly the state can do that. It can appoint bishops when
it kes, and as many as it likes. It can establish community boundaries as
it hkes. It can transcend the Landeskirchen and organize a Reich church to
suit itself ... in short, it can exercise the most rabid control over the Lan-
deskirchen.'"*

This kind of thinking immediately provoked some spirited opposition,
including that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse, two young Ger-
man Lutheran theologians who saw more clearly than most the danger in
the Nazi “leader” principle and racial theories. Bonhoeffer and Sasse draft-
ed the Bethel Confession in June of 1933, which some consider more bril-
liant and insightful than the better known Barmen Declaration of May
1934. Bonhoeffer also helped to create the “Confessing Church” of Luther-
ans and Reformed, which proclaimed that the creed of the “German Chris-
tians” was apostate.

Yet, while a Reich church was created and a Reich bishop elected, it
never succeeded in setting aside the traditional state churches and their well-
entrenched administrative machineries. Thus, many German Protestants
were content to “look the other way” when Hitler chose to forego (or at least
postpone'”) any serious confrontation with the churches. Because, at first,
Hitler brought renewed vitality to German national life, many German
Lutherans simply ignored the early, ominous signs of catastrophe. More
importantly, however, their traditional view of church and state simply did
not provide for a church that opposed the government Even those, like Mar-
tin Niemoeller, who had initially opposed Hitler (when the Reich church
was being created), never joined the active resistance to Hitler once it became
apparent that Hitler wanted to avoid a confrontation with the churches.

While there was potential for resistance to Hitler by German Chris-
tians (as Hitler himself saw from the beginning), no German bishops—
Protestant or Catholic—were arrested for political reasons. Both Hitler and
the church leaders sought to avoid a direct confrontation.'* After the war,

“Wilhelm Stapel, Die Kirche Christe und der Staat Hitlers (Hamburg, 1933), 68-70; Stapel,
Votkskir he ader Sekte? (Hamburg, 1934), $7. Quoted in Scholder, 422.

“At the latest after 1941 the National Socialist leaders were clear about the need to
annihilate Christianity in Germany because of the ideological rebellion of the churches. ..
However, tactical considerabons meant that this aim had to be kept back until the end of the
war.” Klaus Scholdet, 4 Requiem for Hitler and Other New Perspectines on the German Church
Strugyie. trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1989), 116,

Scholder, A Requiem for Hitler, 130-39

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Berggrav’s Man and State (written while in prison) pointed to resources in
Luther himself for asserting the limited claim that secular authority has
upon Christian conscience. Since World War II, most Lutherans have rec-
ognized that “Luther's intention was to demonstrate God’s twofold mule of
the whole world by law and Gospel, and not to separate it into two
divorced realms of the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular.’”'* Most Lutherans now
affirm the need to prevent two-kingdom theory from merely legitimating
the state.

Big Government and Religious Lobbies

What some American Lutheran church bodies have done since World
War I], in order to implement a more socially conscious two-kingdom
ethic, is what most other American church bodies have done since then:
establish a Washington lobby. A 1951 study identified 16 church offices
operating in Washington and also surfaced a complaint that would even-
tually become commonplace: “In many cases ..- church lobbyists promote
the causes in which groups of church leaders are interested rather than the
views of church members in general.”'"*

At first, the church-body Washington offices operated at relatively low
levels of activity, but with the election of John F. Kennedy, the pace quick-
ened. While the initial motivation might have been to establish a listening
post for church leaders or perhaps to do some lobbying on issues that most
affected churches, those meager efforts soon mushroomed into full-
fledged lobbying on all sorts of issues. In the 1960s, the political advocacy
was mostly by mainline churches, but by the 1980s, retigious conservatives
also had weighed in with their own lobbying efforts.

For many mainline church bodies, the emergence of “Liberation The-
ology” coincided with their own advocacy interests. Several Latin Amerti-
can theologians, notably Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Luis Segundo, and Jose
Miguez-Bonino, argued that the strategy of liberation must supersede the
strategy of development, because poverty exists primarily as a result of
political and economic oppression. “Liberation theology” was admittedly
sympathetic to Marxism and voiced distinctly-anti-American sentiments.
After 1970, liberation themes and ideas were common in the social state-
ments of mainline American churches. A delegation of seven churchmen
returned from a visit to Cuba in 1977 with the recommendation that its
“process of creating a society without beggars, starvation, or illiteracy is a

* Lazareth, “The Twentieth Century Recovery of Lutheran Political Responstbitity,”
130.

"Luke Eugene Ebersole, Church Lobbying in the Natwn's Capitol (New York: Macmillan.
1981), 25. Quoted in Reichley, 246.

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the highly controversial Landesbischof Ludwig Marahrens defended his col-
laboration with the Hitler regime: “For me the decisive thing was this: |
achieved my aim of bringing the church through the threats uttered by the
state and maintained the preaching of the Gospel in the communities,
peace in the manses [parsonages] and tranquility at work.”""* The two-
kingdom ethic had become a rationalization for looking the other way
when the state becarne demonic: as long as the beast did not seek to devour
the church, the church would refrain from inciting the beast

Karl Barth’s criticism of Lutheranism in Germany in 1940 may have
been harsh, but it largely was justified:

To a certain extent, Lutheranism has provided a breathing space for Ger-

man paganism, and has allotted it—with its separation of creation and law

from the gospel —something like a sacral precinct. It is possible for the Ger-

man pagan to use the Lutheran doctrine of the authority of the state as a

Christian justification for National Socialism, and it is possible for the Ger-

man Christian to feel himself invited by the same doctrine to a recognition

of National Socialism. Both have in fact occurred.’

Yet, Barth’s alternative was simply traditional Reformed teaching (with a
“Christ the Transformer of Culture” model). He called for the church “to
set in motion the historical process whose aim and content are the mould-
ing of the state into the likeness of the Kingdom of God.”!?!

There is consensus among Lutherans now that two-kingdom teaching
must not be applied as German Lutherans had learned to do.'” It is also
generally agreed, however, that this was not the failure of Lutheran two-
kingdom teaching per se, so much as the failure of a particular application
of it. Indeed, it was in Norway during the Nazi occupation that Bishop

”) Beckmann, ed. Kirchliches Jahrbuch 1933-1944 (1976), 146. Quoted in Scholder, ibid..
139.

"Carl Barth, Eine Schweizer Strmme, 1938-1945 (Zollukon-Zurich, 1945), 113. Quoted in
William Lazareth, “The Twentieth Century Recovery of Lutheran Politicat Responsibility.”
in The Ethic of Power. The Interplay of Religwn, Philosophy, and Politics, ed. Harold Lasswell and
Harlan Cleveland (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962}, 127,

"karl Barth, Community, State and Church: Threv Essavs (New York: Doubleday Anchor,
1960), 80. Quoted in William Lazareth, “Luther's Two Kingdoms’ Ethic Reconsidered,” in
Christian Social Ethics in a Changing World: An Ecumenical Thestogival Inquiry ed. John C Ben-
nett (New York: Association Press, 1966). 121

“ Even leaders of the Confessing Church in Germany. which had done the most among,
the German churches to resist Nazism, admitted thei gutlt in October 1945: “True, we have
struggled for many years in the name of Jesus Christ against a spint which found its terrible
expression in the National Socialist regime of violence, but we accuse ourselves for not wit:
nessing more couragedusly, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyous
ly and for not loving more ardently . .” Translation from Stewart Herman, The Rebirth of the
German Church (New York. Harper and Row, 1946). Quoted in Lazareth, “The Twentieth
Century Recovery of Political Responsibilty,” 128-29

58

revolution that deserves our respect and support.” In 1978, the Committee
on Justice and Service of the World Council of Churches gave a grant of
$85,000 for humanitarian aid to guerrilla forces fighting to overthrow the
government of Rhodesia—a government headed at that time by Bishop
Abel Muzorewa, a black Methodist who was supported by the dominant
white minority. Also in 1978, the Washington office of the United Church
of Christ issued a congressional report card based on 20 votes, which were
graded positive or negative depending upon whether the position was rec-
ommended by the church’s Washington Office."

The emergence of the New Christian Right in the late 1970s, however,
gave religious conservatives an opportunity to use the same approach to
oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, the Panama Canal treaty, Roe v.
Wade, evolution, and secular humanism while calling for family values and
prayer in the public schools. Activists created “biblical scorecards” that
identified representative votes in Congress by which to judge office hold-
ers’ worthiness for re-election. Some, like Paul Weyrich, said flatly: “We're
radicals working to overturn the present structure in this country—we're
talking about Christianizing America.” *

Prominent religious leaders have recognized that this has gone too far.
Charles Colson has concluded, “Both liberals and conservatives have made
this mistake of aligning their spiritual goals with a particular political
agenda.” The danger, he warned, is that political alignment compromises
the Gospel:

Because it tempts one to water down the truth of the gospel, ideological

aligrument, whether on the left or the right, accelerates the church’s secu-

larization. When the church aligns itself politically, it gives priority to the
compromises and temporal successes of the political world rather than its

Christian confession of eternal truth.'7

For Colson, only a church free of political alliances can be the conscience
of society.

Dutch theologian H. M. Kuitert agrees that politicizing the church will
ruin it, because politics brings the church into contradiction with itself, sad-
dies the church with a role for which it is not equipped, and promotes @
partisan intolerance among its members. Christians must not be afraid to
participate in politics, Kuitert admits, because it is the only way to achieve
social justice; but the church as church will lose itself if it participates in pol-
itics.!2* Kuitert argues that this is so because, in a modern democratic polit-

See Reichley, 265; 266.
See ibid., 327-31.
+ Charles Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987), 310-11.

ELM. Kuitert, Everything Is Politics but Politics Is Not Everuthing: A Thenloxical Per-
spective on Faith and Politics. trans. John Bowden (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, [1985]
1986), 146-51

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