The Barmen Declaration

The German Evangelical Church had been constituted in July 1933 as a federation of the confessional churches that came out of the Reformation (Barmen Declaration, preamble). The synod of Lutheran, Reformed and United churches that met at Barmen declared that the basis of that union was being destroyed by the teaching and the actions of the ruling church party, the “German Christians”, and of the church government they controlled (Barmen Declaration, preamble). The Evangelical Church in Germany, in the introduction it now publishes with the text, describes the German Christians as a movement that saw no conflict between Christianity and National Socialism (Barmen Declaration, EKD introduction (English)). It names the pastors Hans Asmussen, Karl Koch, Karl Immer and Martin Niemöller and the theologian Karl Barth among those who brought 139 delegates together in the Gemarke church at Barmen, in the city of Wuppertal, from 29 to 31 May 1934 (Barmen Declaration, EKD introduction (English)).

Each of the declaration’s six theses opens with Scripture and closes with the rejection of a false doctrine (Barmen Declaration, theses 1–6). The first says that Jesus Christ, as he is attested in holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear, and to trust and obey in life and in death, and rejects the teaching that the church could and must acknowledge, apart from and beside this one Word, other events and powers, figures and truths as God’s revelation and as a source of its proclamation (Barmen Declaration, thesis 1). The next three say that no area of life belongs to other lords than Christ, that the church may not leave the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to prevailing ideological and political convictions, and that its offices are a ministry and give no ground for special leaders with ruling powers (Barmen Declaration, theses 2–4).

The fifth thesis says that the state has by divine appointment the task of providing for justice and peace, by the threat and use of force and according to the measure of human judgment and ability, in a world not yet redeemed (Barmen Declaration, thesis 5). It rejects the teaching that the state, going beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life and so fulfil the church’s vocation as well, and equally the teaching that the church, going beyond its own commission, should take on the characteristics, tasks and dignity of the state and become its organ (Barmen Declaration, thesis 5). The sixth says that the church’s commission is to deliver the message of the free grace of God to all people, and that it may not put the Word of the Lord at the service of purposes of its own choosing; the synod called the six theses the indispensable theological basis of the German Evangelical Church (Barmen Declaration, thesis 6 and conclusion).

In its appeal the synod said that it did not intend to found a new church or to do away with the Lutheran, Reformed and United confessions, and asked the congregations to test its words by Scripture (Barmen Declaration, appeal to the congregations). The EKD’s introductions say that the declaration was adopted on 31 May without amendment and that the Confessing Church gathered around it (Barmen Declaration, EKD introduction (English)) (Barmen Declaration, EKD introduction (German)). Today, by the EKD’s account, its constitution affirms the decisions of the synod; some member churches place the declaration beside the confessions of the Reformation, and most regard it as a guiding testimony of doctrine and faith (Barmen Declaration, EKD introduction (German)).