The Olympics And The Confessing Church

The person who made this sign didn't know very much about the times of Hitler, the Confessing Church or the German Christians. This lack of knowledge is not unusual. What many Christians do not know is that Dietrich Bonhoeffer preached one of his best sermons during the Olympics held in Berlin in 1936.

Sadly as far as I know no one has Bonhoeffer's sermon or those of the other members of the Confessing Church who preached that day.

But they did preach and in Berlin and at the invitation of the German government.

Edwin Robertson in his book, "The Shame and the Sacrifice: The Life and Martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer", details the events of those days. He writes:

"Daily addresses were given by leaders of the Confessing Church in a central church in Berlin and Bonhoeffer was one of those chosen to speak. He was invited in July and at first thought he would refuse. He was obviously going to be used for propaganda purposes and this fear was intensified when he was asked to provide a photograph, which he refused to send. He did however agree to lecture on the Wednesday of the Olympiad at 5 p.m. His chosen subject was 'The Inner Life of the German Evangelical Church Since the Reformation,' which he had to deal with in half an hour!He chose to speak largely about the hymns of the church, from Luther, Gerhardt, Zinzendorf and Gellert."

As Bonhoeffer read the words he was appalled by some of the piety of the words of the authors especially Zinzendorf. And some might ask why? Robertson writes that Bonhoeffer, "felt the air to be much cleaner when he was dealing with the Bible - 'We need the fresh air of the Word to keep us clean.'"

Robertson writes that the lecture was given in St Paul's Church and that Bonhoeffer wrote a letter about the lecture:

"Yesterday evening was very good. The church filled to overflowing, people sitting on the altar steps and standing all around. I wished I could have preached instead of giving a lecture! Some 1,500 or 2,000 people came and an overflow service was needed. "

But the official report was one of displeasure. Robertson gives the "Die Christliche Welt's" report.

"While the lectures given in the church of the Holy Trinity were academically satisfying, they were hardly well attended; those in St Paul's were the opposite of this. Night after night the enormous church was not only filled to overflowing, but parallel meetings had also to be held in another large church to cope with the mass of visitors. Dr. Bonhoeffer struck the same note as Dr. Jacobi had done and illustrated his exposition with a number of hymns. According to him, the decline began as early as Paul Gerhardt; pietism and the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century sink lower and lower. Only in the present and especially in the hymns of Heinrich Vogel (!) do we begin to rise again to the heights of the Reformation. The Speaker tried to prove his thesis by means of selected hymns and was even successful because of the complete arbitrariness of his selection. He did not shrink from quoting the first half of a verse, when the second, left unquoted, made the quite opposite point. When we consider that here we have a pupil of Harnack, we can only deplore this treatment of history. The third speaker, Dr. Iwand of Konigsberg, followed much the same line.

To sum up: in Holy Trinity, valuable theology developed in a scholarly way, but a very small audience; in St Paul's, narrow and very suspect theology, but great religious enthusiasm and vast congregations, listening with the deepest devotion. This state of affairs must cause great alarm among those concerned with the future of the Evangelical Church."

What is important to know here is that pietism set the stage for a faith totally wedded to experience rather than the word of God. By the time one gets to Friedrich Schleiermacher and then Harnack the Christian faith is simply grounded in human experience. Schleiermacher grounded the Christian faith in the experience of a sense of dependence which only God could meet. He and others denied all but the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Jesus Christ was only human, not God. Humanity should strife to be perfect as the Father was and there was no need of redemption. Undoubtedly Bonhoeffer and others of the Confessing Church made their case against such unbelief during the Olympics.

I have looked in vain for a hymn by Heinrich Vogel, but I did find that he was a Confessing pastor and theologian. And I found this prayer given by Vogel on the German Repentence Day of 1945. It is from a Time article, Bowed Heads, written in 1945. "God has made us as dirt and dung among the nations.... We are deserving of all that is happening to us at this time. It is our, fault, our great fault.... O God... watch over those who have power over our powerlessness and show them that hate can never accomplish anything."

Picture taken from The Reformed Pastor by David Fischler

The Four Chaplains

"The two Scottish Execution jurisdictions in the Joint States hug exceedingly one and the same philosophies about the 28 degrees they frequently hand over on their members. The Southern Discipline has overall shy to the mark rituals (WITH REPHRASE LEADER THE YEARS) penned by Albert Acme in the 1800s. These are principally based upon biblical-era or medieval stories, plan their concept from antiquity.In differ, the Scottish Execution Northern Discipline has want had a express wish, that its degrees should be every time unresolved to recline suitable and background to be effective lessons for its members. A casing in revolve is the The 23rd Dimensions of the Ancient All the rage Scottish Execution of Freemasonry (NORTHERN DISCIPLINE), "KNIGHT OF COURAGE," based on an incident from Handiwork War II. That incident, the plummeting of the ship USAT Dorchester and the deep in thought sacrificial victim of four militaristic chaplains aboard her, happened 68 years ago today.The Dorchester was a coastal convey that had been converted to a organizer hauling for Handiwork War II. It was traveling in a need off the drift of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic on the sunup of February 3, 1943 to the same degree it was torpedoed by the German below the surface U-223. As the ship sank, the four chaplains-two Protestant, one Catholic and one Jewish-gave their life jackets to other men.The chaplains, who all whispered the argue of lieutenant, were the Methodist Priest George L. Fox, Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, the Roman Catholic Priest John P. Washington and the Changed Cathedral in America Priest Clark V. Poling. In all, claim 230 of the 904 men aboard the ship were rescued.From a story in Stars and Stripes today, Gallantry of 4 chaplains during plummeting of WWII ship inspires today's componentBy Ashley Rowland:Just the once the torpedo hit, they worked on the ship's darkened deck, short-lived out life jackets, comforting troops and apportion some within life boats. Being the ship's supply of life jackets ran out, they gave unacceptable the ones they were strenuous.The four chaplains were outing seen praying together on the ship's on a slope deck, arms connected, as the USAT Dorchester shortly slid within the glacial waters off the drift of Greenland.Sixty-eight years in the same way as, the four, all lieutenants - George Fox, Alexander Goode, Clark Poling, and John Washington, recline heroes to a chaplain component that, daydream the rest of the U.S. militaristic, has been mandatory by habitual deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And their story is even more vivid, chaplains say, to the same extent of their differences.The Scottish Rite's dramatization of this mark is to teach "THAT CONFIDENCE IN GOD DETERMINATION FIND EXPRESSION IN LOVE FOR OUR FELLOW MAN, EVEN TO THE EXTREME SECRETIVE SACRIFICIAL VICTIM." Rabbi Dr. Alexander Goode, Lieutenant, U.S. Services, as dramatized in the Knight of Courage Dimensions, says the following:"The squeeze that unite us are far a cut above formerly than persons that shield us. We can never bank on to hug spot on tedium in belief. Men determination everlastingly rebel as want as men believe. This bulk pressure not lead to disgrace or ill determination or the shedding of blood. Let us respect each other, advance each other and healthy for the best in each other. Let Christians be upright Christians and Jews upright Jewish, and let the good and the exclusive of any faiths unite for the accomplishment of standard ethics and aspirations for the condition of God and the redemption of patronage."A special reading of this mark occurred outing May aboard the USS New Jersey, performed by New Jersey Scottish Execution Masons. See Jay Hochberg's story about it near.

Credit: healing-magic.blogspot.com