“Another Faith, Another Spirit, Another God”
When the Church Plays Politics By Keith Johnson - Posted at Substack: On January 23, 1934, Karl Barth took the express train from Bonn to Berlin to attend a meeting to which he had not been invited. Some of the most influential Protestants in Germany had gathered to finish a memo they planned to deliver to Adolf Hitler two days later. Their meeting with Hitler would be the culmination of a weeks-long plan to remove Ludwig Müller, the Reich Bishop who represented the German Christian Faith Movement. After two months of mounting pressure, they believed they were about to secure a political victory for the church. Barth received a frosty welcome when he arrived. Otto Koopmann, a Reformed minister, met him at the door and told him it was too late to take part in the discussions. Barth entered anyway and, according to later accounts, “took a seat as though nothing were amiss, and lit a cigarette.” At the table sat three conservative Lutheran bishops, Hans Meiser, Theophil Wurm, and Aug...
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