Several years ago I wrote a post about Paul
Schneider, a pastor in the Confessing Church of Germany who was martyred in
a concentration camp. Over a long extended period he was beaten, isolated and
finally poisoned to death. Since 2008 a German biography of Schneider, Paul
Schneider: Witness of Buchenwald, written by Rudolf Wentorf and
translated by Daniel Bloesch, has been available for the English reader.
The book is filled with documents, sermons and, various
kinds of correspondence such as Reformed church session minutes and letters,
correspondence from the Gestapo to German Christian Church leaders and even a church
lady’s aid group pleading in a letter for the release of their pastor from
detention.
Rather than writing the standard book review I have decided,
using the book as reference, I will look at the various reasons Schneider was
harassed by the leaders of the German Christians, the Gestapo and even the Nazi
government. Contemporary orthodox Christians will relate
to most of the controversies that plagued Schneider, although rather than dealing
with a dictator and extreme nationalism they deal with a culture increasingly intolerant
of Christianity. A culture whose prejudices toward morality and faith feed into
too many organizations and governmental bodies.
Reading Wentorf’s information and documentation, it is clear
that the issues for Schneider revolved around morality, ministry to youth,
church discipline, and false revelation. All of these issues needed faithful
believers to affirm biblical teaching and lift up Jesus Christ as the head of
the church.
According to Wentorf, Schneider became a pastor in 1926. He
was installed in the churches of Hochelheim and Dornholzhausen after the death
of his father, the churches’ former pastor. He still pastored those two
churches when Hitler came to power in 1933.
The Nazi’s began programs that would interest youth and they
held most meetings on Sundays. A motion with a statement was made by Schneider
and his church session. It was to have the district synod send a message to be
read in all churches and also to send it to “the youth clubs, sport clubs and
gymnastic associations, including the Hitler Youth and SA [Storm Troopers] and
SS-units[protection Squad] . For Protestant Christians our Sunday worship must
be our top priority and will continue to be our main concern.”(68)
As the Nazi groups continued to take over most of the youth
work in Germany the church fought a continuing battle to keep its young people.
The beginning of real hostilities had to do with a newspaper
article which began with the statement that “Chief of staff of the SA Röhm is
campaigning against sanctimoniousness.” The article was supposedly aimed at the
“leaders and troops of the SA and SS.” But not really. According to Wentorf, it
was aimed at denominational youth associations outside of the Nazi Youth
groups. (84) And Schneider reacts. He places a protest in a glass case notice
board in his congregation which includes this:
“If chief of staff Röhm thinks
that the development of our people have nothing to do with morality and
chastity and when he speaks of these things as being done by “eccentric
moralists” he is mistaken and has not done our nation any favor by issuing this
appeal. (84)
Letters go back and forth over Schneider’s protest. He is
threatened with “preventive detention” if he does not renounce the statements. It
is finally resolved but letters sent by the ruling consistory (made up of
mostly German Christians) to higher church authorities suggest that there is
hope to transfer Schneider to a different church. So for clarity, the first issue
that Schneider dealt with was morality and the continuing need to protect the
faith of the young people.
That argument continued in a different way when Schneider
decided that those youths who came for a special celebratory communion and yet
did not attend any other service or Bible class could not take communion. But
they could attend a service of confession which would end in communion. Even Schneider’s session disagreed with his
plan. But always Schneider was seeking to place the church on its true
foundation, Jesus Christ. His heart was
set on guiding the young people in the faith.
Once again the issue of morality was raised. Schneider
attacked an essay written by Nazi Propagandist Goebbels, “More Morality, but
less Moral Hypocrisy.” As author Wentorf points out the essay came as Nazi leadership
not only pushed young Jewish and Polish women into brothels, killed those
people who they considered unworthy to live because of disabilities and “so-called
hereditary diseases,” and also encouraged sex outside of marriage in order to
produce more, supposedly, Aryan children. That was a campaign called, “Give the
Führer a Child!” (128)
Schneider was also incensed, as were other pastors, by a partially
pagan rally held by the German Christians, “the Sports Palace Rally.” Speakers at the rally threatened those Christians
and pastors who refused German Christian ideology.
Spies were always in Schneider’s services taking notes. They
reported on him and sent their notes to the leadership of the National
Socialist Worker’s Party, (NSDAP), who then sent reports to the Protestant
Consistory who were generally German Christians. After being called to a
meeting with the Consistory Schneider naively sent his sermon to them.
The sermon is meant as a wakeup call to the congregations.
He suggests that some in the church think the church should “organize its life
from a political standpoint as the “German Christians” do. And then he compares
the differences in the two worldviews:
Of course, they [the German
Christians] must underpin the practice with the false teaching that the message
of the church is not the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, the Savior of sinners
and the Kingdom of God alone, but our national character and traditions plus
the gospel. They are in fact breaking with the living God and his Christ by
placing blood and race and the history of the nation as sources of revelation
alongside God’s Word, alongside God’s will revealed to us in the Word of
Scripture alone, alongside Jesus as the only mediator between God and man. The
struggle in our church has erupted over this issue [the false revelation] and
there can be no peace until the traitors of pure doctrine and those who have
forced their way into the sheep pen as wolves have vacated bishop’s chairs and
representative seats or until the confessing Christians have left this false
church. (139)
After explaining all of the attempts of the German
Christians, backed by the government, to stop the members of the confessing
church from confessing that Jesus is the only Lord, Schneider states, “The
little ship of Christ’s church is sailing in a storm.” And he uses this theme
throughout the rest of his sermon showing that the storm is batting hard
against the church and yet proclaiming that Christ was with the “little ship”
in all storms. (139-145)
For instance:
We tolerated the teaching of
Balaam, of liberalism among us, which praised the goodness and freedom of man,
reduced the redemptive work of the Savior and God’s glory and dissolved the
seriousness of eternity into a foggy notion … We do not hate the works of the Nicolaitians
enough! The letters of Revelation warn us about the works of those who are
morally lax, greedy, disreputable, and despise the Lord’s Day. We have had
communion with obvious and unrepentant sinners. … And now the storm tide has
swept over our church, and its little ship is swamped by ruinous and corrupting
waves, and we need to scoop them out.
And:
Do we not want to rejoice that
this ship is given to us? See, it is not just a story of old, our gospel is a
story of today, of the living Lord and his church, just as you have been
singing this song in the village from earlier times: “O church of Christ, noble
ship, how glorious your course, many a reef surely threatens you in the storm,
many a wave surges up. But God is with you, so be confident, the Lord is
leading you to your destination. However much the sea surges and rages, when he
gives the command, it is still! (143)
Schneider did mention Goebbels in his sermon and later
apologized for doing so, but still he was suspended and sent to a different
church. It was during this time of ministry that he began the bigger battles
that would lead to prison and death. One issue was paganism. The final issue
was church discipline.
After having moved to the parishes Dickenschied and Womrath,
Schneider conducted a funeral for a young man, Karl Moog. Schneider in a letter
to the superintendent complains that the district leader of the NSDAP had
spoken and stated that Moog “had crossed over into the storm of Horst Wessel.”
Schneider would have nothing to do with such anti-Christian words at a
Christian funeral. As he stated in his letter he had spoken up saying he
protested and “This is a Church ceremony and as a Protestant pastor I am
responsible for the pure teaching of the Holy Scriptures.” (153)
Schneider also wrote to the district leader about the occasion.
He was arrested and held in what was called preventive detention.
(153-155) Schneider would later be released but his final trial begun when he and his
session, using the their Book of Order, backed by the Heidelberg Catechism and
certainly by the Bible, attempted to discipline two farmers who among other
problems, were spreading vicious slanders against the pastor.
They were national socialist and wanted a
German Christian pastor. One of them, Ernst Scherer, who wanted his son taught
in a German Christian church, writes to the “Highest Administrative office of
the Protestant Church” in Berlin and to the Consistory. Part of his letter to
the consistory states, “In his opinion [Schneider’s] only those who have a
green membership card of the Brotherhood Council Church [The Confessing Church]
are considered to be “genuine Christians”
… Moreover, after having become familiar with his quite eccentric medieval
goals with a fanatical zeal …”(206)
Schneider is eventually rearrested and with an agreement
by the consistory. But the Gestapo steps into the final argument and makes the
final arrest. All of the groups, Nazis and German Christians have their files
full of his “misdeeds” and they all seek to end his influence on the church and
the community. Because Schneider refuses deportation away from his church he
eventually ends up in Buchenwald where he continues to preach to his fellow
inmates. When his wife goes to pick up his body, as she looks at his face, she
states, “Dead, but not defeated.” (384)
There is a great deal more to learn in Wentorf’s book. He has
written about a culture completely given over to the Nazi ideology. There is far too much material to cover in a blog
posting. The Confessing Church continues to teach the western church about
standing for Christ in a time of cultural madness. The Confessing Church
continued on in East Germany during the Communist rule and withstood the contrary
ideology of Marxism.
But the issues that Schneider and the other confessing
pastors faced are not that different than those contemporary western Christians
face. Only the context is different. Issues of false revelation, immorality, a
battle for the faith of youth, the need for church discipline, failure to
uphold the Holy Scriptures and most of all faithfulness to Jesus Christ. Truly the
little ship, the church, needs to face the future in the strength of Christ.
