THE CHURCH IN GERMANY
Sot,—In your issue of the 24th instant, Miss Mary Cubitt asks whether there is any evidence that the reviving Churches in Germany are " calling their parishioners to repentance and amendment of life." Having just returned from Switzerland, where I met pastors of the German Con- fessional Church, I am able to answer the enquiry affirmatively.
Dr. Wurm, the Lutheran Bishop of Wurttemberg, issued a message to be read from all Protestant pulpits in his diocese at Whitsuntide of this year, in the course of which he said: "Today everyone can see what the consequences are if a people, which was formerly able to receive rich blessings from Christ and His Gospel, abandons its best traditions. . . . We do not wish to demand from God an account of why He has allowed such a dreadful thing to happen, but we must see in our turning away from Him and from His rules for living the deepest cause of our misery. Accordingly our motto must be: " Back to Christ and back to our brothers."
Professor Gunther Dehn, who was imprisoned for a year by the Gestapo, recently said: " In 5945 the German people recognises its faults and is ripe for repentance. Formerly, Germany has always followed some leader, Kaiser William II, Hitler. Now it can no onger hear the voice of these men. There is only God's Word left. We could, of course, say: ' It is the fault of the Party, but we know that we are all responsible because we have allowed the Party to continue.'"
Pastor Asmussen, a champion of the Confessional Church throughout the war, said at Whitsuntide: "The Church is guilty, the Church of ooth confessions. Our guilt dates very far back. It consists in the fact that we were silent when we ought to have spoken and that we poke when we ought to have been silent. For long decades we tried to come to terms with world conceptions in which there is no ultimate truth. Instead of saying 'No,' we said ' As well as . . ."The German citizen is guilty, for he has fought his own peace above all in every circumstance. He is guilty because he sacrificed right in his desire for ease. He is guilty because for a long time during the war he was willing- to keep silent before all sorts of horrors provided they had a
happy sequence. He is guilty because he deliberately made a god of his welfare. He is guilty because he allowed the authorities to exercise an influence which rightly belongs to God alone."
I do not wish to give the impression. that the only outspoken state- ments have been by Protestant leaders. Cardinal Faulhaber repeatedly spoke in strong terms of criticism of the Nazi regitne during the war. As Miss Cubitt's enquiry appears to refer to what is being said at the present juncture, I quote from a recent Pastoral Letter by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Freiburg, Mgr. Grober. He said: " The ultimate reason for all our misfortune is the philosophy of life which has been forced on our people by speech, newspaper and authority. . . . We must look upon it as our chief aim to banish what we have considered to be the spiritual cause of our defeat. The new philosophy of life has pronounced judgement upon itself, for its foundations are false."
All the foregoing statements are from men who maintained a con- sistent witness within Germany throughout the war, at personal peril. The current issue of the Christian News-Letter (August 22nd) publishes a series of statements to the same effect, made during the war by German
Protestant leaders.—I am, yours faithfully, HENRY CARTER. Christian Council for Refugees from Germany and Central Europe. Bloomsbury House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C. r.
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