Lutheran dogmatists Paul Althaus and Werner Elert from Erlangen…declared that the volkisch diversity of external church organization’ expressed ‘a necessary consequence of the the divisions of the peoples which are to be affirmed in terms of destiny as well as ethics’ and thus had to be taken into account ‘in admission to the ministry of the church’.

For the Church’s new task ‘of being a Volkskirche of the Germans’, in the present situation, ‘the occupation of its ministry by persons of Jewish origin generally would be a severe burden and a hindrance’. Therefore the Church must ‘require the withholding of its Jewish Christians from office’.

That with these words the two professors were, retrospectively, calling for Jesus, the Apostles and New Testament authors to be ‘withheld’ from the German Evangelical Church, does not seem to have entered their minds!

(Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance, 139-140).

Advertisement