Word: dibeliuses
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...Pastor Dibelius wrote a book called The Century of the Church, in which he offered his fellow Protestants an outline of a new church-state relationship. He advised pastors to be pastors and not just preachers, to lead the church into all the concerns of public life. And he warned bluntly that the church must raise its necessary funds from the free-will contributions of its parishioners-no longer through the tax collectors of a state that was now avowedly secular...
...Century of the Church pulled down a hornet's nest. It brought an especially strong buzzing from Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, who disagreed on theological grounds with Dibelius' view that the church must fill the void left by the passing of the Kaiser's "Christian state." Snapped Barth: "I have nothing against your argument, but don't call it theology." Dibelius looked on Theologian Earth's criticism as a front-line infantry commander might regard a staff officer's observations on tactics. Said he: "I think dogmatics are a mischief. A systematic theologian...
Open Warfare. In 1933, the monster state of St. John's Revelation appeared: the Nazis took over Germany. Dibelius was at first cautious. In Potsdam's Nikolai Church he preached a guarded but firm sermon to Reichstag members, including President von Hindenburg and many of the Nazi Party leaders. "We do not resist authority," he said, "since to do so is anarchy and thus irreligious . . . But as soon as the state demands to be the church, and strives to assume power to rule the souls of men . . . then we are asked by Luther's words to exercise...
...long before the Nazis began open warfare against religion. In rigged elections, they pushed pro-Nazi clergymen into positions of authority in the provincial Lutheran churches. Pastor Martin Niemöller was arrested when he spoke out against their anti-Semitism from his pulpit. Dibelius preached from Niemöller's church in Dahlem the following Sunday, and was soon on trial himself. Although acquitted by an old-fashioned judge, he was suspended from his position as general superintendent of the Kurmark church district. Still, he kept up a stouthearted resistance. Once Albert Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs...
...Stuttgart, at war's end, Dibelius and Niemöller, released from a Nazi jail, signed the "confession of guilt" on behalf of the German churches. Neither this, however, nor their anti-Nazi activities during the war meant that they were secret adherents of the democracies all along. Two of Dibelius' sons, Franz and Wolfgang, had been killed in action. A hymn Dibelius wrote while they were at the front sounds like a companion piece to Deutschland iiber Alles (beginning: "Surrounded by the power of the foe. arise, thou German land . . ."). Dibelius' essential objection to Naziism, like...