Word: synods
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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From Berlin had come Dr. August Jaeger, Realm Bishop Miiller's legal adviser. With chin out, Dr. Jaeger, surrounded by four detectives and a squad of secret police, stomped into the Lutheran Synod Hall, demanded the keys of the safe and proceeded to lay down the law. One elderly pastor remained seated at the Nazis' entrance. "ON YOUR FEET!" bellowed Dr. August Jaeger...
Morally this was indeed a blow to Dr. Müller, but the Reichsbischof, knowing perfectly well that his acts have been illegal for months, recently had them retroactively confirmed by an act of his hand-picked Church Synod which has yet to be tested in the courts...
Riding the Synod roughshod, Reichs-bischof Müller demanded that it abdicate its legislative powers, vesting them in his Church Cabinet and compelling all pastors to take, on pain of expulsion from their pastorates, this oath: "I swear before God, holy and omnipotent, that I will be true and obedient to the leader of the German people and the German State, Adolf Hitler, and that I will offer every sacrifice and service for the good of the German people. Furthermore that I will perform my duties as pastor in accord with the instructions issued by the German Evangelical Church...
...Leader's" shadow, Reichsbischof Müller jammed his entire program through the Synod by a vote of 42 to 12. The meek churchmen even abolished their Church flag: a purple cross on a white field. To correspondents the triumphant Reichsbischof cried: "We must now build for our Leader a really strong Church...
...spiritual dictatorship of Dr. Müller. Their Council of Brothers, organized after he squashed their Pastors' Emergency League, circulated secretly a bold manifesto which such stalwarts as fashionable Berlin Pastor Dr. Martin Niemöller read out from their pulpits to packed congregations. Denouncing the Reichsbischof's hand-picked Synod as "an assemblage organized in open violation of the Church constitution," the Council of Brothers manifestoed: "In all responsibility before God, we, therefore, declare to churches and their members: Obedience to this church regime means disobedience...