The Protestants - An appeal issued in 1935 to the congregations of Prussia by the Confessing Church.
Source: J. Remak (ed.), The Nazi Years: A Documentary History, (Prentice - Hall, 1969), pp.99-101.
We see our people threatened by a mortal danger. The danger is that of a new religion. By the Lord's command, it is the church's task to see that our people render unto Christ that honour which is due to the judge of the world. The church knows that it will have to account before God if the German people, un-warned, should turn away from Christ.
I.
The first commandment reads: "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me." We obey this law by our faith in the one Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected for our sakes. The new religion is a rebellion against the first commandment.
1. In it, the racial and folkish ideology becomes a myth. In it, blood and race, nationality, honour, and freedom become idols.
2. The faith in an "eternal Germany" demanded by this religion, replaces the faith in the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
3. This false faith creates its god in man's image and essence. In it, man honours, justifies, and redeems himself. Such idolatry has nothing in common with positive Christianity. It is the expression of the Anti-Christ.
II.
In view of the temptation and the danger of this religion, we must, obedient to our ecclesiastical mission, bear this witness before State and Nation:
1.The state receives its sovereignty and power by the command of God, as part of his gracious order. It is this alone, which creates and limits human authority. He who would let blood, race, and nationality take the place of God as the creator and master of political authority, undermines the state.
2. Earthly law fails to recognise its heavenly judge and guardian, and the state loses its authority, if it allows itself to be clothed in the dignity of the eternal kingdom, and raises the State's authority to be the highest and ultimate in all fields of life.
3. In obedience and gratitude does the Church recognise the authority of the State, which is founded and limited by God's word. Therefore it must not bow to the claim of totality, binding the individual conscience, which the new religion ascribes to the State. Bound by God's word, the Church is obliged, before State and people, to bear witness to the sole kingship of Jesus Christ. He alone can bind and loosen a man's conscience. His is all power in heaven and on earth.
III.
By the Lord's command, the church is to teach to one and all the gospel of the grace and the splendour of Jesus Christ.
1.Therefore it must not allow itself to be pushed from the public market-place into some quiet corner of private piety, where, self-satisfied, it would betray its mission.
2. In all its words and actions, it must honour God alone. Hence it must resist the secularisation of its customs, the desecration of the Sunday, the de-Christianisation of its holy days.
3. The mission given to it by Jesus Christ obliges the Church, in its responsibility before this and future generations, to see that youth is instructed in scripture, and educated in its spirit. It must protect its members, baptised in the name of the God of the Holy Trinity, from an ideological and religious instruction, which maims and removes the sacred writings of the Old and the New Testament, and preaches a faith in a new myth.
4. The church prays that God's name be hallowed among us, that his kingdom come to us, that his good and gracious will be done in our State and Nation too. In its faith in the forgiveness of sins, the Church begs the blessings of God - father of Jesus Christ, who has mercy on those who fear him - on Nation and government. Hence the Church must be certain that its prayers and its offerings of thanksgiving for any authority, which are commanded by God's word, are given in all truth, and do not turn into a religious glorification and consecration of earthly power and events. Every oath is given before God, and places the obligation assumed in it under the responsibility before God. What limits each oath is that God's word alone obliges us without reservations. Bound by God's word, the church calls its members to willing obedience, service, and sacrifice for state and people. It warns against the surrender to an idolatry, which will bring upon us God's wrath and God's judgement. "We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things."
