This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Barmen Declaration, the best-known document of the German Confessing Church during the Nazi era. The Barmen Declaration was a theological statement expressing clear allegiance to the authority of God over and against all idolatrous authorities and the idolatry of the state in particular. The political meaning of this strongly theological statement was obvious in Hitler's Germany. It became a tract for political resistance. A number of the signers of the Barmen Declaration were eventually imprisoned, exiled, or killed.
Last summer, I visited Barmen in Germany. I asked my hosts if they would take me to the site of the famous gathering that resulted in the Barmen Declaration. I had feelings of great expectation as we neared the location of this historic event of faith to which we at Sojourners trace some of our own roots and inspirations.
When we arrived I was quite disappointed. A very large and cold, modern church now rests on the spot, and it was locked. There was no memorial, no memento, not even a little plaque. People seemed to have forgotten the Barmen Declaration. My young hosts, who are part of an embryonic, radical, evangelical movement in Germany, also sensed their own roots in Barmen. However, few people speak of it in Germany today, they said, and I was the first person to ask to be taken there.
The Confessing Church had a mixed history. Many of its members accommodated to the Hitler regime. But others entered into active resistance to Nazism and paid for it with their lives. One such pastor involved in the resistance was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and it is appropriate to hear again from him in this issue of Sojourners.
I was graphically reminded of the heroic resistance of some Christians during that period when a number of us journeyed to visit the Woodcrest Bruderhof community in Rifton, New York. I listened with rapt attention and growing excitement as the oldest members of the community told the story of their early confrontations with the Hitler regime: the raids by the Gestapo, their imprisonment, and their eventual expulsion from Germany by the Nazis. Their story is included in this issue.
Led by their founder and first elder, Eberhard Arnold, the Bruderhofers were among the very first to say no to Hitler. Their path of obedience to Jesus Christ took them from Germany to Liechtenstein, England, Paraguay, and finally to the United States. Eberhard Arnold's powerful witness is reflected in the forthcoming book God's Revolution, from which an excerpt is offered in this issue as well.
But the Bruderhof story is not over by any means. Today they are a lively community of faith from which we received great insight and strength for our own life together at Sojourners. Joyce Hollyday tells the story of that visit, which became one of the most profound community exchanges I have ever experienced. There is deep wisdom at the Bruderhof about how Christians can live together in unity. And a strong presence of love exists among them, not the sentimental kind that relies on excessive words and piety, but rather a mutual respect, a readiness to serve, and a joy in one another that clearly has been born of much faith and struggle.
The Bruderhof is now on a journey that is taking them beyond the boundaries of their community and into the world of violence, injustice, and suffering. Something powerful is stirring among them, perhaps another movement of the Spirit in their lives, leading them to minister in the prisons, to serve in food lines, to march for peace in the streets, and to journey to places of conflict like Nicaragua.
How we are to minister in our world today—this is what the Bruderhof is so eager to understand now. The hunger to be ministers of reconciliation in the midst of a broken world will take the Bruderhof to many new places. But I'm sure that their future will be thoroughly consistent with the faithfulness of their past.
The integrity and vitality of Bruderhof community life has touched us deeply at Sojourners. Much that we saw and heard among the people there became a focus for our Lenten reflections on the quality of our life together. Two communities and traditions crossed paths and both will be the richer for it.
Together we stand on the shoulders of those Christians who, 50 years ago at Barmen, stood up for God's way and, in so doing, kept faith alive. We can stand in that faithful tradition in our time by simply doing the same.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine.
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