Gregg Quiggle | False Religion, the Barmen Declaration, and the Fight for the Church’s Soul

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Before we start today's episode, I want to take a moment to tell you about UsefulToGod.com. From online courses to free downloadable study guides, I'm confident you'll find something to help you live faithfully in today's world. You can also check out some of my books, including Christian Resistance, Serpents and Doves, and my most recent contribution, the D.L. Moody Essentials Collection. Coming this fall, we're also running a German Reformation tour. The tour runs from October 30th through November 9th, and we'll be visiting sites from Berlin to Munich. The booking deadline for the tour is May 31st, and spots are filling up fast. If you're interested in learning more about the Reformation, World War II, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you can check out the tour at the link in today's show notes. As always, if you find this podcast valuable, take a second to like, share, and leave a positive review. It really does make a difference. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm joined again by Dr. Greg Quiggle, and we're going to be discussing today the Barmen Declaration, or the Barmen Confession, sometimes it's called. And the Barmen Declaration is something that I've gotten interested in here probably over the last couple of years as I was doing some of my research for Serpents and Doves. And thought it'd be a great time to revisit it with Greg since it really does originate and finds its locus of life, I suppose, in Germany. And so we're planning a Reformation tour to Germany this fall. You can find more about that in the show notes. I'd encourage you to go check out the link to Thomas Tours there and take a look at what we're planning for this coming fall. Deadline for that is toward the end of May, so you have a little time to look at it and figure it out, but I just encourage you to go, and that's what's prompting this conversation today. So welcome, Greg, back to the show. Greg, how are you doing? Pretty good. How are you, James? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. So I'm looking forward to this. Like I said, I've studied the Barmen Declaration a little bit, and I'm interested to get a little bit more of a historical take from you on this, man. See what I can help you with. All right. Well, you know, this is going on not exactly during World War II, if I'm understanding that right, correct? This is almost like a precursor to World War II. It is. And just to do a little bit of the backdrop, Germany post-World War I is really a mess. There's a lot of confusion. World War I in and of itself is a confusing event. Most Americans have a much better grasp of World War II than World War I. You have multiplicity of factors going on with World War I, and we will not get into World War I, but you have the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russia, and Russia is in and out of the war and et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, what happens is there is an armistice signed, and the terms of that armistice are extremely draconian or hard on Germany in particular. Germany is seen as responsible for this. And so the rest of the Allied powers, the Western powers, really want Germany to pay. And there are extraordinary reparations placed on Germany, which create all sorts of all kinds of problems. And as an aside, the West learns a lesson. After World War II, they do exactly the opposite. You have what's called the Marshall Plan, where they actually invest in and rebuild Germany and Japan instead of we're going to make these guys pay. And because of that, you have massive instability. You have incredibly high inflation. You have all kinds of political turmoil, communism, socialism, anarchy, et cetera, et cetera. And into this void, you have this figure, Adolf Hitler, who emerges with this movement known as national socialism, fascism, and he comes to power in the 20s and 30s. And it's in this context that the Barmen Declaration comes out. This is as Hitler is sort of coalescing his power. He is moving towards this position of Fuhrer, where he is going to be the father of Germany. This is really a religious movement. He is going to become the Messiah, and it is deeply and profoundly anti-Semitic. It is racist that the Aryan people must, in order for the human race to reach its intended end, the Aryan race must dominate the world. And the problem is that the subhuman race species, the Jews, and their polluted blood have been mingled with the Aryans. And the reason Germany, one of the reasons Germany lost World War I is because the Jews had engaged in this, they call it the stab in the back, that the German army had never been defeated in the field, and this was a stab in the back. And so this became incredibly powerful, and Hitler was leading this movement. And it's in this context that the Barmen Declaration comes out.And that sort of, if I'm remembering right from our last sort of tour of Germany, this anti-Semitism that Hitler ultimately adopts and sort of takes to its zenith, we could say, actually originated, am I right about this, in Austria, and then was carried over into Germany? Because you had all of these problems in the war, there needs to be a scapegoat, obviously. But Hitler's really not coming up with this. He's sort of living and breathing this air. Am I right or wrong about that? Well, Hitler is born in Austria. He is active in Bavaria, in Munich. There is an attempt to take over the Bavarian government. It's called the Beer Hall Putsch. That does not work. But what he is able to do is put together this coalition where they are, by 1933, they have seized power, and they are trying to Aryanize the church, expelling Jewish Christians from ordained ministry and adopting what's called the Führer principle as the organizing principle in church government. And so that Adolf Hitler is seen as the German prophet, and this racial consciousness that comes from Adolf Hitler is seen as a source of revelation alongside the Bible. And so the way to bring the millennium to the world is to have the Aryan people control everything. So it's this mixture of quasi-Christianity with this Aryan racial theory. And what he's going to increasingly do is remove Jewishness from Christianity. And ultimately, replace Jesus with himself so that Hitler becomes a messianic figure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, this idea of a German prophet and the gospel is racial purity. And this is, you know, the Old Testament is increasingly disappeared. This is shades of an old, old, old heresy called Marcionism back in early Christianity when they got rid of the Old Testament and took all the Jews.

Jewish stuff out of the New Testament, except there's this racial piece to it. Now, the connection that we talked about before was, there's a long history, a sad, tragic history of anti-Semitism in Christianity. And this goes back to this idea that the Jews are the ones responsible for killing Jesus. And so he plays on that, but his spin on this is, there's a racial purity piece, and it's about purity of blood. You can hear Darwinism in this as well, that this is survival of the fittest, this is a kind of social, racial purity, that in order for the human race to achieve its ultimate end, the Aryan race must dominate. And so there's a twisting of the latent anti-Semitism that we find back in people like John Chrysostom, that we see even in people like Luther, and it's turbocharged by this racial sort of Darwinian sort of spin on things, where Hitler becomes this messianic sort of figure, this sort of helping make sense of this sort of thing. I think so, yeah. I mean, it's interesting to me, and I think this gets us probably closer to Barmen, so I guess my next question is, you've got this sort of historical trajectory, let's say, a through line of biblical interpretation that saw the Jews as the ones who killed Jesus. Now, biblically, we obviously know that this is a collusion between Jewish authorities. There's been some fantastic work done on this, the Judeans, as separate from the Jews. Now, it's not that they wouldn't have Jewish heritage, but the Judeans are normally associated with the ruling class of the Jewish religious folk. And so you have this sort of collusion between the ruling class of the Jews, let's say, and the Roman Empire. You know, it's not like Pontius Pilate was actually innocent in all of this. He's the one who's actually going to sentence Jesus. Jesus doesn't get sentenced without Pontius Pilate agreeing to it. And so you have this sort of through line that the Jews are responsible for Jesus' death. That manifests itself in some pretty harsh comments, even in Martin Luther's theology and probably some bad blood along the way in various other writers. And now we get to this point where Hitler's going to take up the cause of sort of a quasi-nationalist Christianity, where he's obviously sort of gesturing that Christians are going to be okay, but his real aim is to sort of purify the German race and get the Jews out of Germany. And the Christian church just sort of goes along with this. I realize that's simplified, but how accurate is that sort of through line? Yes. So what you have happening is, yes, Hitler is going to play on this. So, for example, the flag, there's something called the German Christian movement. And the flag is, I'll try to describe it for you. It looks very much like the Nazi flag. And we all know the Nazi flag is red with the white circle and the black swastika. Well, in this case, it is red with the white circle. There's a black cross, but in the center of the black cross, we have a white circle with the swastika. And on either side at the bottom of the cross is DC, Deutscher Christian. So what they've combined is the swastika with the cross. So what you have is anti-Semitism, racism, and the Führer principle. That is that in order for Germany to be Germany, the Führer must lead. And you have the development of, I'm trying to think of the name of the movement here, the Institute for Research and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life. And you have this journal which is publishing articles like Heroic Christianity. And another one that comes out in 1942, Why Not Only God? Why Jesus? I see. So you can see how this has happened. So here's a pulpit that shows the Sermon on the Mount with a Wehrmacht soldier with the steel helmet on, the famous Nazi helmet, listening to Jesus and a baptismal fount which features a stormtrooper. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so the simplest way to think about this is you have a swastika in the center of a cross. Yes. And all that is superimposed in what every American has seen as the Nazi flag, the red with the white circle. So just picture the red with the white circle with the swastika, except in this case, it's a cross with a swastika in the center of the cross. Yeah. Gosh, it's such an interesting thing to think about how these symbols and signs can be so easily manipulated. And I mean, even if we just went back to our conversation on the Reformation, right, which I'll link to that episode in this episode, but one of the things we talked about in that was the lack of catechesis and the movement toward individual lay people reading the Bible for themselves. Yeah. And, I mean, if you just really think about the way those two things fit together, you're very open to subtle manipulations when you're not appropriately catechized, when you don't have that framework for understanding what is a right interpretation of Scripture and what is a wrong interpretation of Scripture. When the boundaries get fuzzy, some of these things are much easier to sort of smuggle in. And it's just fascinating to think about how this would have worked its way into, especially the Protestant evangelical church, which I think is called the German evangelical church at the time. But it wasn't like Catholics were immune to this, correct? That is correct. Yeah, it would have been both sides. Yes, and interestingly, Hitler's background is Catholicism. Okay. But he's playing off of Luther. Luther is a revered national figure. And so, you know, he can work off of Luther's works on the Jews and their lies. And you know, as an Old Testament scholar, that the Old Testament plays a significantly less important role in Lutheran thought than it does in other theological traditions. Yeah. And so, you know, it's one step further. It's not that much further to remove Jewishness from the Bible. Right. And then you have in the Lutheran tradition this whole idea of spheres of influence where, well, it's the church's job to do the church's things and it's the state's job to do the state's things. And we just need to stay out of the state's way. That's their sphere of influence, not ours. Respect for temporal authority, which had been emphasized by Luther and the use of Romans 13 to support this. So we must, you know, listen, the governor has the sword. He doesn't bear it in vain. And this is a group of people that had been, they had, as a people group, their identity.

It had been destroyed. They had lost national pride. Yeah. And Hitler is playing on all of this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, these were people in pretty destitute conditions after World War I, and so they're probably not as concerned as they might be. They're not in a privileged place to really stand back and think through all the philosophical and theological implications of what is going on around them. I think that would be the fairest to say. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Desperate people do desperate things. Yeah. Well, let's get to Barmen then, because Barmen, it's 1934, I believe, is when it was written and published, right? And this is a group of theologians, we could say. Theologians had a little bit of a different view back then. You know, Bonhoeffer would have been involved with this. He would have been a sort of scholar pastor of sorts. And I think most of the theologians back then sort of functioned in that way, although some would have been in university, I suppose, or seminaries, that kind of thing. But they come together against, really, the German Evangelical Church. And they're pushing back on the German Evangelical Church's acquiescence to the Nazi party, correct? Yes. Yes. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, they meet in Barmen. That's why it's called the Barmen Declaration. Between May 29th and May 31 in 1934, there are roughly 139 delegates. Of those, apparently 53 were church members, six were university professors. The others were ordained ministers. And it appears that the two most significant ones in terms of the drafting of the document were the Reformed theologian Karl Barth, who some of your listeners may have heard of Karl Barth, and the Lutheran theologian they probably have not heard of named Hans Asmusen. There's a couple other names involved that they may have heard of. The other name that they may have heard of is Martin Niemöller, who would have been involved in this as well. And so these people are coming together and they're pushing back against this German Christian and this Aryanization of the church, especially this, we're going to expel Jewish Christians from ordained ministry. So they're starting to say things like, we're not sure this is a good thing. Yeah. And, you know, as I've read through the Barmen Declaration, one of the things I really like about it, number one, it's fairly clear what they're doing. I mean, they don't really mince a lot of words. They have a number of different false doctrines that they reject. I believe they essentially, the document is arranged, or the meat of the document, is arranged around a set of biblical citations. I think it's eight biblical citations because some of them have two or three cited. But I believe it's eight biblical citations and then an affirmation, like a point of affirmation, and then a rejection of a false doctrine. And that's essentially how they carry this through. And so you have things like the rejection of the false doctrine that there could be areas of life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords, areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through Jesus. You know, it's a very simplified statement that, in my mind, in my reading, as I've studied it, I think what they're really trying to do is to retain the identity and boundaries of the church and to say that the church can't become the servant of the state because it's already the servant of Jesus Christ. And so this acquiescence to the Nazi party, this acquiescence to, as you said, the Aryanization of the church, is a real problem because as the church takes on more of an Aryanized identity, we might say, it's actually being disloyal to Christ. It's watering itself. It's diluting its witness down. And it's becoming something other than the church. I think that's probably a fair way to summarize what they're doing here. Would you agree with that? I think that's absolutely at the core of what they're saying. I think they're concerned that the church has simply become an extension of the state. Yeah. And they are simply saying, this cannot continue. If this continues, we will no longer be the church. And this, by the way, this is at the core of what becomes a movement known as neo-orthodoxy. And you will hear this rhetoric in the United States among neo-orthodox thinkers like the Niebuhr brothers who are functioning at Elmhurst College, not that far from Wheaton and Wheaton College, who are writing similar kinds of things about liberal Christianity in the United States, that it had become captive to the culture and the political whims of the state and the culture. And you can hear echoes of Barmen in their writing. So this becomes an important document for multiple Christian movements as they begin to think more carefully and critically about how do we understand our church's relationship to particular states and governments. What I would say, it was pretty, when I found the Barmen Declaration and started reading through the different commentaries on it and really trying to understand the document more deeply, I would say it really informed a lot of my writing in sermons and does, which was about Christianity and politics today. And I think part of what I see is, you know, you look at the you look at the symbology that Hitler used, some of the things you talked about just previously in the episode, the way that he manipulated some of the biblical texts, the way that he fit those texts to his agenda and to the national ethos of the moment. And you can really see that happening even in our contemporary culture today. You can see, you know, the leveraging of various biblical texts in the service of, you know, promoting American values or something like that. You can find these things. It was throughout US history. You can find these things. And so I think when I started studying Barmen, I did find it to be really interesting. Now, I don't know that I would identify myself as neo-orthodox. I mean, I've read the Niebuhr's work, too. And I think there's I think Barmen has a much more concise, clear, simplified understanding of what what they're trying to do. I think as Niebuhr's, the Niebuhr brothers tried to work this out into ethics and practice for the church, it became more and more complicated. Yes. But I think the basic, you know, sort of nugget that you get out of the Barmen Declaration is at the end of the day, the church and the state both have their realms of authority. I think that was something that the Lutheran doctrine got right. The Lutheran doctrine of two kingdoms kind of got right. Right. They both have their own sort of authority. Right. But their authority is still seated under

Jesus Christ. And that means that the church, you know, has this sort of distinct and knowledgeable understanding of where it gains its authority from and what its mission is to do. The state often doesn't have that awareness. The state doesn't often recognize that it sits under the authority of Jesus Christ. And so now you've got this interesting sort of interplay between church and state, church that has the revelation and the knowledge to understand where its authority comes from and how far its authority should or could extend and how it should extend versus the state, which doesn't fully grasp it and often overshoots its authority. And I just found that whole thing sort of fascinating, but I feel like Barmen really addresses this well. Yes, and the difficulty is keeping those spheres distinct, but at the same time, distinction doesn't mean separation. That's right. So what I mean by that is, just because it is not the state or the church's job to wield the sword doesn't mean the church shouldn't speak to the issue of wielding the sword. Correct. And that's where the German church failed, I think, in the 1920s and 30s. They basically did the, well, that's their job, that's their business. What do we know about that stuff? We're just going to keep our, you know, we're just going to keep our mouth shut. And it may be true that pastors don't understand all the details of economic policy and geopolitics, etc., etc., etc. But they do understand ethics. Yeah. And they do understand moral absolutes. Yeah. And they have the responsibility to speak prophetically. It was Nathan's job to shake his bony finger in David's face. Yeah. And there is a time and a place for the minister to say, no, you need to know you will answer to the Lord. And the other dynamic here is, to flip it, is to cede to the state roles that are ultimately Christ's alone. To allow Adolf Hitler to function as Messiah. Right. To allow any political figure, to function as messianic is to, well, number one, it's blasphemy. Number two, it's to deny the doctrine of depravity. Yeah. I mean, I listen to some people talk about certain political figures as if they, A, can walk on water, and B, are not subject to sin. It's just stunning to me. You know, really, really. I thought there was only one Savior. Well, when you really think about that, Greg, I mean, you know, we have in the Old Testament, in Isaiah, you know, Cyrus is called the Messiah, right? But I think that there's a there's a sense in which when we see that there, what we're what we're looking at is, number one, sort of a critique. I mean, the Jews are coming out of exile and this Gentile ruler now is going to be the anointed one that God uses to bring them out of exile. And so there's there is some irony in that. But I think the other side of it is that we tend to fill in gaps that probably we shouldn't. And so what I mean by that is just this. It's, you know, we're seeing problems and what we want are solutions. And so we assume that God wants those solutions, too. Not just a solution, the solutions that we we come up with. He wants our solutions. And so if he wants our solutions, then obviously this is the right way for us to go. And I think that these are areas where, you know, when you're talking about the pastors not knowing about, you know, economics or politics or whatever, I think the pastors and the church at large is supposed to be able to recognize false teaching. It is supposed to be able to recognize false claims. It is supposed to be able to recognize when the government is encroaching on religious symbology. Those are the things it's supposed to do. We're supposed to cultivate the loyalty of God's people and point out the times when the state is calling for a loyalty that should only be given to God. But we're really bad at it in a lot of ways. And so, you know, we we tend to allow for a degree of syncretism, this sort of merging together of principles and ideas that don't actually fit together. And I think this is part of what Barman is addressing, is this syncretism in German life where the Germans are saying, no, these things will work. We can have the Nazi Party and Jesus all at the same time. And the Barmen Declaration comes back around and says, but you can't. You can't have this any more than you could have had the prophets of Baal alongside Yahweh in the Old Testament. You can't have this. This isn't right. This isn't the way this can go. And so I take your point. I mean, I think it's we have to manage the how do we distinguish ourselves without isolating ourselves? But I also think we have to recognize that we're shooting for a different end and that our means have to be different in order to meet that specified end. There's a difference, in other words, between operating politically to maneuver and manipulate the world in some way. And I don't mean manipulate in a bad way, just sort of move it in a direction, right? A direction that humans have determined is a good direction. May or may not be versus the church, which is aiming at, you know, standing in the presence of the Lord and drawing other people under the authority of Christ through evangelism and discipleship, really showing God's love to neighbor, right? Through social activities and caring for the poor and, you know, all those various things. That's our end. And so the means we use to do that have to be different as well. Yes. Yes. And when they get conflated is when there are all kinds of problems. So Hitler is seeking to bring about the millennium. Yeah. And he's going to do this by establishing the unchallenged rule of the Aryan race. When Aryans control everything, the human race will achieve utopia. And therefore, whatever means are necessary in order for that to happen are justified. OK. And the church is going to say, well, I'm Aryan, at least the Germans are. You know, OK, that works for me. Yeah. Works for me. Maybe not for everybody else, but definitely for me. You know, and OK. And at some point. So, you know, there are multiple parallel, multiple, multiple societies have played this game where the world will be the better. The world will be a much better place if we are in charge. Right. And therefore, it is God's will for the world for us to be in charge. And for it's everybody's it's in everybody's benefit if if we are the ones who are running the game. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I find fascinating, Greg, is, you know, you can sort of see in what Hitler's doing if you sort of tear it apart in a particular way, you can see that he is trying to usher in a kingdom of a sort. And and he's trying to usher in a kingdom that is very much made by human hands. And anybody who's read probably the Old Testament, but certainly the New Testament as well, recognizes the problem with that. Things that are made with human hands generally aren't, you know, viewed with a great deal of positivity in the Old Testament. You know, they're normally associated with idolatry and idols.

but you can kind of see that, you know, hey, I can fix this world, and I can do it my way. I have the strategy. I know exactly what needs to be done, and I can usher in utopia right now. All we have to do is X. And I think that's just, you know, it's felicious thinking. And again, it's probably, I would argue, beyond the scope of any governing power to build utopia. Like, yes, you want to make your society better, maybe incrementally. You want to do good things. You want to make sure, you know, as Romans 13 would talk about, you're wielding the sword. You're executing justice to the degree that you are able. But ushering in utopia is well outside of what I think the governments of the world are supposed to be doing. And here's Hitler coming along and really leaning into this sort of Messianic message and trying to get people to see him as the Savior to justify everything that he's doing. And the odd part to me in Germany was that the church just sort of falls into this, that it doesn't recognize the civil religious language that Hitler's picking up, or at least if it recognized it, it didn't recognize it as problematic. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a Gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a Gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Okay, that's the odd part. Now, how controversial do you want to be on your podcast? Go for it. Yeah, go for it. I'm always up for a good controversy. Okay, so I have a conversation not that long ago with a guy who says, well, America needs to be, we need to put America first because when America is first, it blesses the world. And so the world is blessed when America is thriving. We bring blessing to the world, and so it's entirely appropriate that we put ourselves first. Yeah. Okay. Right. Go ahead. Okay, so, you know, now we're talking about a person that's in leadership in the church. Yeah. It's something that I wrote an article on not too, too long ago, and I basically said, you know, when we look at the United States, we can certainly say that the United States has been blessed as we could say about any nation. What we have more trouble sort of identifying is why was the United States blessed? And then how long will that blessing actually continue? And I'm gonna, listen, has the United States been generous? Yes. Has the United States also been incredibly selfish? Yes. Yeah. You know, it was Abraham Lincoln that said, well, we need to keep this civil war going, and God's punishing us for all the years of stolen labor that we stole from African American people. We enslaved them. And, you know, I'm quoting the second inaugural now from Abraham Lincoln, who's saying, until we pay for all that we stole from these people, God's going to keep on making us pay in blood. That's Abraham Lincoln. I didn't say that. He did. And, you know, we can go on and on with this stuff. So I just, So it's easy to sit here, and I'm not saying, I'm not even close to equating the United States with what went on in Germany, but I am saying it's very easy to see the stuff in somebody else's eye and not see it in your own. And this is the discernment part. How can I have, how can I create space? How can I find ways to separate myself? On one level, you can say, well, it should have been easy for people in Germany in 1933. Well, yeah, we weren't there either. Right, right. And I'm guessing if you talk to other people in other parts of the world, they would have some interesting questions they would want to ask us. Yeah. No, I mean, I take your point, and I hear what you're saying. I wouldn't want to equate the two things either. I think they had, they led to very different results and they probably had very different motivations sitting behind them, you know, between, you know, what happened obviously in Nazi Germany and what happens in any other country with the church. What I would say is the point of contact for me, at least at a minimum, is the church continually forgets itself. Yes. It seems to continue to want to lean in to the, it's almost like a weird aberrant, soft version of prosperity gospel, right, where we don't really want to suffer that much. And so what we'd really like is for our governments to provide us with good things. And we start to forget that it's God that's providing us with all these good things and that the real underlying dynamics of life have to do with obeying God, even when it's inconvenient for us to do so. And so once we start forgetting that, now it's sort of easier for us to sort of sway over and go, yeah, I think economic prosperity for our nation would be fantastic. Yeah, let's put America first. Let's do that. And, you know, whatever your politics are, doesn't really, you know, there is some bearing, obviously on this, but I think the point is that that is not necessarily a Christian position. It's not a bad position to take necessarily, but I think that when we put that position in theological terms, we make a category mistake that we should walk back. In other words, I don't know that I can confidently say that, you know, everything that, you know, America does blesses the whole entire world. And I'm not even sure that I would say that leaving it, you know, having America first because we bless the entire world is even anywhere near to theologically accurate. You could have said the exact same thing about the Roman Empire. And, you know, there were myriad abuses within the Roman Empire that needed to be fixed. And so I just think overall, what we see in Scripture, and I think this is sort of a minority report within Scripture, but Genesis 15, 16, where it talks about the iniquity of the Amorites not being complete, and this is why it's going to take 400 years for Abraham's descendants to be in a foreign land before they take the land of Canaan. You see this in the book of Daniel as well, that there's a level of pride that a nation has to reach before God will topple that nation. And I think that there's just a sense in which we never know where that line actually is. We try to pull it back. We try to talk about, you know, morality. We try to talk about, you know, Judeo-Christian values. We try to talk about all these different things. But the reality is that the drift of society, because it isn't linked to Christ, is always going to be toward iniquity, which means that these nations are never going to survive long-term. And it's the church's job to proclaim to these nations who Jesus Christ is and try to bring them underneath his dominion and power. That doesn't mean ruling over nations. That doesn't mean that the church is in charge. It means that Jesus is in charge, and what we're trying to do is recruit people for his kingdom. And so, I don't know, within all that babble, I think, is something that resonates probably with the Barmen Declaration. Yeah, I guess, yes. I would spin it this way, too, James. I think it's an identity question. Who am I? Yeah, yeah. And am I a Christian or am I an American? Yep, yep. And I know I'll answer that most of the time. Right. So, you know, and now we're talking about a person that's in leadership in the church. Yeah. It's something that I wrote an article on not too, too long ago, and I basically said, you know, when we look at the United States, we, we can certainly say that the United States has been blessed as we could say about any nation, but we have more trouble sort of identifying is why was the United States blessed? And then how long will that blessing actually continue? And I'm gonna, listen, has the United States been generous? Yes. Has the United States also been incredibly selfish? Yes. Yeah. You know, it was Abraham Lincoln that said, well, we need to keep this civil war going, and God's punishing us for all the years of stolen labor that we stole from African American people. We enslaved them. And, you know, I'm quoting the second inaugural now from Abraham Lincoln, who's saying, until we pay for all that we stole from these people, God's gonna keep on making us pay in blood. That's Abraham Lincoln. I didn't say that. He did. And, you know, we can go on and on with this stuff. So I just, so it's easy to sit here, and I'm not saying, I'm not even close to equating the United States with what went on in Germany, but I am saying it's very easy to see the stuff in somebody else's eye and not see it in your own. And

You know, I've had this conversation on several occasions. Which is better for me, reducing my taxes or doing what's in the best interest of my brothers and sisters in Christ in other parts of the world? Yeah. Yeah. How do I think about foreign policy? How do I think about economic policy? What is my priority? Is my priority the spread of the gospel or is my priority the spread of those things that benefit my pocketbook? Right. And I'm not going to listen. I don't like my answers. Okay. So I'm not sitting here saying, follow my example. But I'm simply saying, I think those are very deep issues that are very hard issues. And I'm not opposed to patriotism. Look, when I was a kid, I got kicked out of the house during the or kicked out of the living room during the Olympics. You know, all the bad Russian guys. And I think there's a place for that. But ultimately, if I'm reading the Bible correctly, who do I belong to? Yeah. Who's my ultimate allegiance to? Right. And I don't I'm not sure we ask those questions. I mean, I think those are at the core of what Barmen is sort of struggling with. Are we Christians or are we Germans? Because sometimes we have to decide we're going to be Christians rather than Germans. Yep. And sometimes we have to be Christians rather than whatever country you're part of. Because you cannot say my country right or wrong. Not if you're a Christian, you can never say that. Right. You have to say Jesus, period. End of conversation. I will not swear to Caesar. No, there are things I will not do. Yep. I will defy the Constitution if I need to. And I will not swear an oath. And I will not do this. And I don't care what the law says. Because I answer to Scripture and I answer to Jesus. And here I stand. I can do no other. God help me if I can take it back to the Reformation. And I think those are the lessons that are fun is the wrong word. But I think those are the lessons that you get to talk about when you tour Germany. Yeah. And you see these places. And you say, where was the church? And then you say, where are we? When should we be saying, no, I'm not going to do that. No, I'm not going to go along. No, I do not owe allegiance to this. Those to me are the hard questions. Yeah. No, and you're right. I mean, I think when we're over there in Germany and we're seeing some of these things, you know, I think about Nuremberg and all the various things we see there. The documentary museum, I love that place. Fantastic to go to. Such great history there. And you just start looking through this and you have to ask yourselves, how does the church, from a Christian perspective, and I think this is the real crucial point, it isn't about comparing the evils of one nation versus the evils of another. It's about asking ourselves, how is it that we, as the body of Christ, can serve as a living testimony to Jesus within the nations that we find ourselves? What does that look like for us and how is it that we are subtly splitting our allegiances, subtly or not so subtly, I suppose, splitting our allegiances between Jesus and nation? And I think one of the things I've often thought of, you have the order amoris. Augustine talks about this an awful lot, how to order your loves. He talks about sin as misdirected desire. And so I think it's just important as we close this out, you know, we've been going for almost an hour now, but just to say there is room for a love of nation here. There absolutely is. Yeah, it just has to sit underneath a love of Christ. Exactly. The love of God has to be all we are and all we have. And everything else, I love the picture Augustine uses to sort of describe this, is if you imagine a rushing river and he's saying this is your love for God. Anything you throw in there is going along with that current. It's not as if you get out of the water and go love something and then jump back in. There's never a time when there is any love that is separated from that love of God. It's complete, it's total, and it moves along with the current of that river. I love that picture. Yeah. It's very vivid. And so when we look at love of nation, what we're really doing is we're throwing it in the water and we're saying, We're going to put it in. As long as I'm loving God with all I am and have, there is absolutely a way for me to love my nation. This is not anti-America, anti-Germany, anti-anything. We can love our neighbor. We can love our nation. We can love any other number of things. But we can't swim against the current of the love of God. We can't separate ourselves from that. We cannot love our nation to the extent that we exempt it from the criticism that it rightly faces from the word of God. That's right. That's right. You can't do it. And, you know, Paul wasn't ashamed of identifying himself as a Roman citizen. No. But he was ultimately committed more to Jesus than Rome. Yeah. And when it was appropriate, I'm a Roman citizen. I'm proud to be a Roman citizen. I will claim my rights as a Roman citizen. I'm thankful for my rights as a Roman citizen. I acknowledge those rights as are legitimate things given to me as a Roman citizen from God. But at the end of the day, we must obey God rather than men. Yeah. I mean, I'll say, I mean, I love one of the people we'll talk about when we're over in Germany is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And Bonhoeffer has one of my favorite quotes. He's speaking to an ecumenical conference in the land. And he says, isn't it clear by what we've said here today that we have become more enamored with our own words than with the word of God? We need to be reading the Bible not for ourselves, but against ourselves. And I think that there's something to that, to really allowing the word of God to transform us means that we are absolutely willing to put our agendas aside as the word of God sort of changes and transforms us into the people who are going to be loyal to Christ 100%. And I think it was just in the ether of that time to have those kinds of messages out there because of the challenges that we're facing that nation and the Christians within that nation at the time. And you know what? We may have some very hard days ahead of us in the United States. That's entirely possible. We may have some very hard days ahead of us. We're moving into turbulent times and nobody knows where all of this is going. Yeah. It's been, it's going to be interesting to see how uncomfortable we actually get. Yep. And so I'm not looking forward to discomfort, but I'm with you. It's not comfortable right now. No. It's a much more difficult life than I would have anticipated living at this point. And it's much more challenging for my kids, you know. It is. It's very different than when I was their age. So, well, anyway, these are the kind of conversations hopefully we'll have as we kind of mosey through Germany. And just encourage everybody listening to check out the link to the tour. It'll be in the show notes. I'd really encourage you to go. It's the best trip I ever go on. And that's not an over-exaggeration. I love doing this trip. And so just encourage you to go. And Greg, thanks for being here to talk about the Barman Declaration. Really appreciate it. Hey, thanks for having me, James. Hopefully I'll get to meet a bunch of you people that are listening in Germany. Absolutely. All right, everybody. Well, take care, and we'll see you on the next episode.

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