We Would Have Been Them: A warning from history for us all
Published June 22, 2026
The chief business of the hour was the selection of a new Reichsbischof. Up to this point, the Protestant churches of Germany had existed in more than two dozen regional variations, but now they would be integrated into a single, unified body, with the new bishop serving as its public head. There at the heart of Lutheranism on earth, Ludwig Müller was elected to this prestigious post. The next day, he gave a speech at the Stadtkirche dwarfed by the backdrop of Lucas Cranach’s Reformation altarpiece.
The synod participants were jubilant, for this was a moment of national renewal. They had witnessed the decline of Germany’s traditional Christian culture for years under the reign of a leftist government that had encouraged all manner of sexual perversion to emerge in the nation’s cities. It was a time of decadence punctuated by a series of economic disasters. The nation had become a laughingstock on the world stage, utterly weak and tarnished. But the union of the Protestant churches was the crowning achievement of a national spiritual revival. There was even a renewal of interest in Martin Luther and his theology.
It might have been a lovely story, except those clerics who walked to the Schlosskirche were flanked by Nazi stormtroopers. Müller was elected in a heavily criticized process engineered by the Nazi government, and he would be doing the bidding of Adolf Hitler. The very place where the Reformation began was now decorated with swastikas.
