More on Politics and Religion (Germany 1933)

With Hitler in power the first attack was on Communism, much violence erupted along these lines and many presses were closed and 4,000 Communists were taken from their homes. All of this culminated in the Reichstag fire which paved the way for Hitler to declare, on Feb 27, 1933, the "Reich President's Edict for the Protection of the People and State" to remain in force until further notice. Bethge writes "it abolished virtually all personal rights protected by the constitution." It remained in force until May 8, 1945.

This led to increasing anti-Communist and anti-Semitic measures. On April 1, there was the first boycott of Jewish firms and the first "non-Aryan law" for the "reconstruction of the professional civil service." In the Bonhoeffer family this day involved, Dietrich's 91 year old grandmother calmly walking through the S.A. cordon to shop at the Jewish-owned department store and Dietrich and Klaus discussing the days events with their NY visitor how to tell the right circles in America what was really going on in Germany.

It was also in April that Bonhoeffer circulated his treatise on The Jewish Question. He described three phases of church responsibility:

1. The church can ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and accordance with its character as state; i.e., it can throw the state back on its responsibility.
2. It can aid the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to Christian community — "Do good to all people." In both these courses of action, the church serves the free state in its free way, and at times when laws are changed the church may in no way withdraw itself from these two tasks.
3. The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.

So next is the stormy church meetings. The "German Christians" those enthusiastic for the National Socialist Party began to attempt movement into higher and higher church leadership. There was also much discussion on how to handle the Aryan clause which stated that the state was no longer to employ any Non-Aryan. There were many in the church who were sympathetic for the Jewish pastors and those Jewish pastors in training (meaning Christian pastors of Jewish descent, this included Dietrich's brother and law). The argument that seemed most in vogue was to see the enthusiastic German Christians as the "weaker brethren" of Paul's letters, and that they should assent to keep unity.

In a June meeting on this issue, Bonhoeffer astounded his audience by proposing that they rediscover "council," "heresy," "confession," and "doctrinal decision." While many were assenting through a weak laissez-faire attitude, Bonhoeffer proposed "a council--confessed and arrived at doctrinal decisions, defined the heretic, and called upon the church, in obedience to the Gospel, to separate itself from heresy." "His elders looked upon the younger man as a mere visionary."

On the other side of things the German Christians were taking over offices, virtually by SA force. On Sunday, July 2, the leader of the German Christians "ordered services of praise and thanksgiving for which the churches were decorated with flags, and ordered the following message to be read from the pulpit:

All those who are concerned for the safe structure of our church in the great revolution of these times, must ... feel deeply thankful that the state should have assumed, in addition to all its tremendous tasks, the great load and burden of reorganizing the church.