This address was delivered on Oct. 10, 2024, at Theology Matters’ fourth conference at Providence Presbyterian Church, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

Listen to this article | Produced by ElevenLabs with an AI voice.

Forty years ago, in 1984‒85, I had the remarkable experience of spending a year at a Protestant seminary in East Berlin. Those were still the days of communism. The regime was no longer sending Christians to prison camps, but it had pushed them to the margins of society, hoping that someday the church would just wither away. Christian parents knew that their children might be ridiculed by a schoolteacher. A Christian young person might not be admitted to university studies, even when he or she had the best grades. And wherever you turned ––whether to the newspapers, television, art museums, or scholarly journals––you encountered antireligious propaganda. There was only one right way to understand the world and society, an ideology called dialectical materialism or, simply, Marxism-Leninism.

Several years earlier, just before graduate school, I had spent a semester in West Germany. One weekend I travelled with a group of students to West Berlin. To get from West Germany to West Berlin, you had to travel through East Germany. Our bus was not allowed to make any stops, and East German soldiers checked our passports both as we entered and as we exited the country. One afternoon in West Berlin, our guides took us to the Wall. I climbed a wooden observation tower and looked over the Wall into East Berlin. The Wall was actually two walls, with a no-man’s land and guard towers in between. The streets of East Berlin looked grey and empty. But I noticed a church steeple against the horizon and wondered to myself: What is it like to be a Christian on the other side of the Wall?

Now, in the fall of 1984, I was there to find out, a guest student at what was only a half-legal theological school in an atheistic society. From the street, you pushed open two massive wooden doors and walked through a small dark passageway into a large courtyard. Around it was clustered a group of red brick buildings. They housed classrooms, a library, a dining hall, and dormitories. During breaks, students gathered under a tall elm tree in the courtyard. Here they chatted freely. They were not under the thumb of the ideological society. I wanted to know what that freedom was all about.

One of my first classes at the seminary was devoted to the Theological Declaration of Barmen. I learned that it had guided Christians during the darkest days of Nazi fascism, and that it was now a lodestar for the church under communism. In both situations, Barmen had taught Christians that they could be free even in a society that denied them freedom.

God calls his people to cultivate an inner, spiritual freedom that resists political and ideological manipulation. When I returned to the United States, I had become convinced that the Barmen Declaration has something to say also to Christians in America.

Who Is Your Lord, Really?

Now, let’s fast forward. Barmen had its ninetieth anniversary last year. In these forty years since my stay in East Berlin, I have learned a lot more German and a lot more about Barmen and its nuances, which easily get lost in translation. I have discovered that Barmen is posing nothing less than the question: Who will be your Lord? You will always serve some master, so which will it be?

Bob Dylan was just channeling Barmen when he sang:

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

And Barmen adds this: Only one Lord will set you free, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us begin with Barmen’s historical context. Germany had suffered a crushing defeat in World War I. A quarter of a generation of young men had been killed or maimed. In 1918, the German Kaiser abdicated. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles imposed massive reparation payments and the dismantling of Germany’s military. The following years brought hyperinflation and political paralysis; members of different political factions fought each other in the streets. Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist party began winning elections. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed the nation’s chancellor.  He immediately moved to control all areas of society, including the church.

Here, I will review not the Catholic Church but rather the Protestant Church, known in Germany as the Evangelical Church. The Evangelical Church was largely Lutheran but included Reformed and United congregations. A political ethic of the so-called two kingdoms doctrine guided the Lutherans. There was, on the one hand, a spiritual kingdom, for which the church was responsible; on the other, an earthly kingdom, in the hands of rulers, who had been appointed by God. Church and state had different commissions but were loyal to each other. When Hitler came to power, many Protestant Christians regarded him as the legitimate ruler, and he for his part assured the church that he would honor its ministry.

However, one group, which called itself the German Christians (die Deutschen Christen), went further. They argued that the church could be relevant to German society only if it fused the gospel and Nazi ideology. Hitler was not only a legitimate ruler; he was also a savior figure who was revealing God’s will to the German people. The church should join the state in preaching the natural and historical superiority of the German people, especially over Jews and Slavs. As one German Christian leader declared, “The God of love dwells as a sacred spirit among us and endows us with the power to believe in the freedom and honor of the German nation, the readiness to serve the worldview of blood and earth, and the will to be faithful to the Third Reich. Thus flows the spirit of Jesus through Germany. The kingdom of God is again to be experienced in the National Socialist movement.”

As Hitler moved to put the Evangelical Church under control of the German Christians, an opposition group arose, which called itself the Confessing Church. Led by the pastor Martin Niemöller, the Confessing Church asserted that the German Christians were guilty of deep theological errors––indeed, errors that threatened the very existence of the church. In 1934, 139 represent-atives of the Confessing Church met in the town of Barmen. Fifty-three were laymen. A small committee that included the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth drafted a Theological Declaration. On May 31^st, the synod adopted the Declaration by acclamation. Barth later called its adoption a miracle, a turning point in German theology.

The Theological Structure of Christ’s Lordship

The Theological Declaration consists of a brief introduction, six theses, and a short conclusion. The introduction clarifies that the Declaration is directed against the theological errors of the German Christians; it is not addressed directly to Hitler. The six theses have an identical structure: short biblical citations that point us to Christ, a positive theological affirmation drawn from these Scriptures, and a corresponding negation of false teaching. The Declaration’s brief conclusion calls the church back to theological unity.

Barmen’s cornerstone is its first thesis. Two of Jesus’ sayings from the Gospel of John stand at its head. The penultimate draft of the Declaration had placed the words, “Jesus Christ says,” prior to these verses. Even though those prefatory words disappeared from the final draft, Barmen wants to make clear that the Jesus who once spoke to his disciples is the resurrected Christ who still speaks to us today. Scripture is not just ancient history; it is God’s living Word. The thesis then draws out a positive affirmation: “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”

The corresponding negation speaks directly to the German Christians: “We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.” In other words, those who proclaim that Hitler reveals God’s will are committing a theological crime; their equation of National Socialist ideology and the gospel is a heresy. The church’s ultimate loyalty is to Jesus Christ alone.

Barmen’s second thesis is directed against the Lutheran two-kingdoms doctrine. The opening scriptural passage from Colossians points us to Christ, as did the first thesis. He is our wisdom, righteousness, justification, and sanctification. What follows, the theological affirmation, clarifies that Christ is both the “assurance” of our forgiveness (justification) and the “mighty claim” by which we grow in holy living (sanctification).

Here, however, an English translation does not capture the nuances of the German. “Assurance” and “claim” have the same German root: sprechen, “to speak,” or Spruch, “saying.” The one living Word who is Jesus Christ (thesis one) speaks to us both with an assuring Word (Zuspruch) and with a demanding Word, a “mighty claim” (Anspruch). The corresponding negation, like that of the first thesis, makes clear that we belong to this Word, Jesus Christ, alone. Indeed, every part of our life belongs to him––our religious life, our political life, our sexual life, our family life, our work life. The world is not composed of many different kingdoms, each with its own little lord. Nor are there two kingdoms, one that is spiritual, and another that is earthly. Rather, God has established one kingdom over which the one Lord Jesus Christ reigns.

This theme of lordship resounds throughout the rest of Barmen. The third thesis for the first time in the Declaration explicitly calls Jesus Christ “the Lord.” Christ asks the church to witness to him in two ways: through its message and through the way it orders its life together. The corresponding negation warns the church against replacing Christ with “prevailing” ideological and political convictions—translating more literally, we could say, ideological and political convictions that “lord it over” us.

The fourth thesis then speaks to the question of just how the church will order its life. The opening biblical citations note that political life is characterized inevitably by the principle of some “lording it” (exercising dominating power) over others through the use of force. But church leaders will not exercise “dominion” over others––the German word for “dominion” is, more literally, “lordship.” A variation on “lording it” and “lordship” comes up again in the sixth thesis, which rejects human “arrogance.” The German here for “arrogance” is, literally, “making ourselves lords”––as though we could lord it over the Word of God, rather than submitting gratefully to it.

Barmen uses several key words to indicate how we faithfully respond to the Word who is the Lord Jesus Christ: hear, trust, obey, and make witness. But the word that Barmen uses more than any other is “serve.” The emphasis on serving becomes even stronger when we understand that the standard English translation sometimes substitutes “ministry” for “service.” If we translate consistently, we find that Barmen mentions service or serving six times. And this serving has two aspects: that we serve one another in the church, and that we freely serve the gospel. Thesis four, in particular, makes clear that the church is based on the principle of serving others rather than “lording it over” them.

Other theses lift up the relationship between service and freedom. In the third part of the third thesis, the negation, Barmen warns the church against ideological and political convictions that try to prevail [“lord it”] over us. Barmen notes––and we know from our own experience––that ideological and political programs are constantly changing and finding new ways to try to seduce us. That is why the Theological Declaration of Barmen was so important to Christians in Nazi Germany and communist East Germany. In both cases, the rulers tried to impose an ideology on its citizens.

The Nazis and their German Christian supporters propagated an ideology of German superiority and Aryan purity. In the struggle for survival, the German people would prove themselves to be, by nature, the fittest. The communists and their Christian supporters promoted an ideology that makes history our God. History, they claimed, is inexorably developing to save us from capitalism, which exploits the working class, and to rescue us from religion, which Marx calls opium.

Barmen’s second thesis tells us that Christ “delivers” us from the godless fetters of this world. Translating again more literally, God “frees” us from these fetters. But, according to Barmen, freedom is never simply freedom from an enslaving power; rather, freedom is also always for a positive purpose. So, after telling us that we are free from false lords, the second thesis proceeds to tell us that Christ frees us for “a free grateful service to his creatures.” Here, Barmen is surely alluding to Galatians 5:1: “For freedom God has set you free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” When we are free from the ideological and political programs that try to manipulate and control us, we are free to see humans as they really are, children of God who, like we, are lost but whom God calls back to himself. God sets us free to tell others the good news of Jesus Christ.

Barmen’s sixth and last thesis confirms this point. One of the opening biblical quotations is 2 Timothy 2:9, “The Word of God is not fettered.” Christ is able to set us free from the godless fetters of this world (thesis two), because Christ himself, the living Word, is free from these fetters (thesis six). He is the one Lord over all other so-called lords. The last part of the sixth thesis, the negation, admonishes us not to try to fetter Christ, as though we could lord it over him by making him serve our own “desires, purposes, and plans.”

If we turn ourselves into little lords, we simply enslave ourselves to our own egos. As the central part of the sixth thesis, the positive theological affirmation, makes clear, the church’s freedom is founded on proclaiming “the free grace of God to all people.” To put it simply, we as Christians are most truly free when we serve the gospel. And we serve the gospel most truly when we proclaim it to others both through our words and through the way we order our lives together (referring back to the third thesis). God calls us to set forth his free and freeing grace both within and beyond the church.

Christian Freedom in an Age of Ideologies

I hope that this detailed explication of the Barmen Declaration helps you understand how carefully Barmen constructs its theology. Its references to lords, lordship, lording, and the Lord are a steady drumbeat. Who is our Lord, really? I have asserted that the Declaration is calling us to be free in the One who is the only true Lord. I have mentioned along the way how much Barmen meant to Christians in Nazi Germany and communist East Germany. Even when they were not free politically, even when they experienced social opposition and hardship, they knew that they were still free spiritually. The gospel had set them free from the principalities and powers of this world and had set them free for declaring the gospel. And, as I said, I came home from that year in East Germany convinced that Barmen has something to say also to us.

So, let’s turn to that question: Just what does Christ set us free from in twenty-first-century America, and how specifically will we American Christians be free for the gospel? Some Christians worry that the day is coming, or perhaps has already come too close, when our government or other social authorities will persecute us for our beliefs and moral values. But I think the more likely scenario is what Christians experienced in East Germany in the 1990s: not arrest or imprisonment but rather indifference and marginalization. Presbyterians were once accustomed to thinking of themselves as the center of society. Reports about our General Assemblies once appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Our moderators and stated clerks met with the President, and many of our congressional and government leaders were themselves Presbyterian. We did not need a Presbyterian parochial school system; we Presbyterians sat on the school boards that controlled public education. For better or worse, those days are gone. As some sociologists now say, not entirely in jest, the mainline has become the sideline.

We Americans do not live in a totalitarian society such as Nazi Germany or communist East Germany. Whatever the deficits of our democracy, it still has checks and balances for which the Nazis and the communists had no place. But that does not mean that we Americans are free. Totalizing ideologies and political programs compete for our loyalty: “wokeism,” xenophobic nationalism, anticolonialism, American isolationism, and more. Some Christians are seduced. They equate their political values, whether conservative or liberal, with the gospel. Liberals like to accuse evangelicals of Christian nationalism, but a wise mentor of mine, himself a political progressive, once criticized his denomination, the United Church of Christ, for being nothing more than “the Democratic Party at prayer”—and it seems to me that the PCUSA is subject to the same temptation.

Other Christians just feel disoriented. In a world in which politics and the media thrive on exaggeration and distortion, we are not sure what to believe or whom to trust. Society seems to reduce our religious commit-ments to matters of personal taste, and personal taste is unstable, always subject to the latest social cause or publicity campaign. We live in a time of many gods, but where there are many gods, we soon wonder whether there is any God at all. We become nihilistic.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche embraced this nihilism. He thought that “the death of God” was good news. Humans could finally determine their own destiny. But Barmen warns us that neither the many gods nor a dead God set us free. The nihilism of our time leaves us with nothing more than what the sixth thesis calls our own “arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans.” When that happens, we end up just trying to make ourselves God––and that is the deepest form of enslavement, the condition that the Scriptures call sin.

Like Christians in Nazi Germany and communist East Germany, we American Christians need Barmen’s first thesis: Jesus Christ alone is the source of the church’s proclamation. The church does not preach salvation through politics. The church does not regard military or economic superiority as a sure sign of God’s grace. And today Barmen’s first thesis will teach us to resist nihilism. God is not dead, he reveals himself, and he still comes to us as the living, resurrected Jesus Christ.

East German Christians also taught me how important the third thesis is: The church “is solely [Christ’s] property” and lives “solely from [Christ’s] comfort and [Christ’s] direction in the expectation of his appearance.” As the opening biblical passage, Ephesians 4:15‒16, tells us, “We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, Jesus Christ, from whom the whole body is joined and knit together.” Barmen is telling us that only when we are certain that we belong to Christ and to him alone, will we be truly free, free from and free for: free from the world’s “events and powers, figures and truths” that want to capture and enslave us, free from our own “arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans,” and free for the gospel, free to serve God’s creatures.

The seminary in communist East Berlin taught me about this kind of freedom. The students and professors gathered as brothers and sisters beneath the Word of God. They worshipped together, lived together, and studied together. In every other school and university in East Germany, you were required to receive instruction in Marxism-Leninism. If you studied physics or art or history, you were supposed to start from the foundations of Marxism-Leninism. But you never learned why. You just accepted it. You did not question it. The seminary was the only exception in the whole country, the only place where you were not forced to learn Marxism-Leninism.

So, I was astonished when I learned that the seminary freely chose to offer instruction about Marxism-Leninism––but in a totally different way. You learned about Marx and Lenin, where their ideas came from, how their followers invented an ideology, and how they used it for social control. The gospel set the seminarians free to think clearly and critically about the ideology that pervaded their society and to imagine a democratic alternative. Can you believe it? The freest place in communist East Germany to study Marxism-Leninism was in a Christian seminary.

But the seminarians learned not only to be free from ideology. They also learned to be free for the gospel, the gospel that calls people to trust in Jesus Christ and to care for one another. As social discontent with the communist government grew in the late 1980s, seminary students helped organize prayer services in churches. Many of the people who came were not believers, but they listened to the prayers––and perhaps learned to pray––lit candles, marched into the streets, and peaceably called for political reform. The church was there for them. It told them that God wanted their society to be more humane.

This witness, grounded in the gospel, helped to bring down the Wall on November 9, 1989. In the next months, pastors who had been educated at the seminary took a leading role in guiding the country into a new future. What impressed me most was their sense of hope. They were certain that Christ is living. He is breaking down the Wall between God and sinners, and the walls between us.

The Congregation’s Freedom to Break Down Walls

Let us unpack Barmen’s third thesis just a little more. It tells us that the Christian church is “the congregation of “the brethren” [“brothers and sisters”]. In other words, the church is not a denominational structure, not a General Assembly, but rather the local gathering of people who love and care for one another because Christ has made them one. Further, the congregation is the place whereby the power of the Holy Spirit, the living Jesus Christ comes back into focus. You see, for Barmen, so much depends on our congregations. Is the congregation a place of freedom in the Lord? In the congregation do Word and sacrament free people from ideologies and enslaving political programs? In the congregation do people learn freedom for the gospel and live out that freedom in word and deed?

When a congregation lives in freedom, it brings people together and gives them hope. Whites and blacks engage in the hard work of understanding what justice requires. Democrats and Republicans and Independents hold to their convictions but refuse to divide the body of Christ. Wealthy and poor people stand side by side to worship God. Men and women serve each other gladly. Together, we listen for God’s living Word. And, then, we turn to the folks in our neighborhoods, because God offers his free grace to them, too. This is the freedom the world needs, the freedom that God alone can give.

Recall Bob Dylan’s song. No matter who you are,

You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

And, says Barmen, if you want to be free, you’re gonna have to serve the one true Lord, Jesus Christ. Yes, it is a strange, wondrous, and paradoxical freedom. You belong to the Lord, but this Lord does not lord it over others. In Jesus Christ, you are free from the world in order to offer freedom to the world.

If you ever visit Berlin, please visit what is left of the Wall. It is now a memorial site. Tourists stroll quietly through what was once that no-man’s land of barbed wire and armed guards. In the middle of that former death strip a church has been built. One of my East German classmates from forty years ago is its pastor. Behind the church, the congregation keeps a garden. People from sixteen different countries tend its flowers and vegetables, fruit trees and beehives: refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine; old and new immigrants from Turkey and Syria; longtime East and West German Berliners. It is a glimpse of Eden, a foretaste of the New Jerusalem––in the place where people once died trying to get to freedom. The name of that congregation is the Church of Reconciliation.

May every American congregation also bring people together and give them hope: to be free from ideology, and to be free for the gospel of Jesus Christ. May we honor the Barmen Declaration and pass on its promise of freedom to the next generations.