The Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche) constitutes a movement (from September 1933 onward) mainly within the German Protestant Church, whose very existence helped discredit the doctrinally liberal, extremely nationalistic, and racist anti-Semitic efforts of the “German Christians” (with roots in Prussia and Thuringia) and the associated totalitarian state under Hitler. In the initial phase the Confessing Church was unanimously committed to the Reformation confessions, upholding true faith, Protestant preaching, and the confession that Jesus is supreme Lord of all—essentials being compromised by the German Christians. Among the major theologians influencing the Confessing Church were K. Barth and D. Bonhoeffer, while Berlin pastor M. Niemöller, H. Lilje, and others led the movement organizationally. In the beginning of 1934 representatives of 170 Reformed churches met at Barmen for a “free” synod. This precipitated the now famous May 1934 gathering of 139 Reformed, Lutheran, and Union representatives from eighteen territorial churches. The Barmen Confessional Synod (May 29–30, 1934, under H. Asmussen’s coordination), which issued the Barmen Declaration (BD), formally condemned the establishment of the exclusive and centralized rule of the Nazi-German Christians within the Protestant state-church. It established a Provisional Church Administration for pockets of the Confessing Church within the parochial administrations of the German Christians. It insisted on the distinct sovereignties of state and church (BD articles 1 and 5).
The Confessing Church had partial roots in the confessional revival of the nineteenth century (with conservative and nationalistic tendencies) and was also strongly influenced by those who stressed the need for “confessing Christ” in the contemporary political and ecclesiastical situation (e.g., Jesus as supreme ruler over all of life [BD articles 2 and 3]; opposition to euthanasia and anti-Semitism; refusal to accept the Nazi Führer Prinzip [“leader principle”] [BD article 4]; rejection of the totalitarian state as opposing the scriptural mandate [BD article 5]). Internally, however, the Confessing Church was not unified for very long. Its self-understanding and legal status ranged from cooperation (mostly in the south) with the German Christians and state agencies to viewing itself as a separate (“true” [Niemöller]) church body (mostly in the north and northeast [especially Prussia and Saxony], where the German Christians had more influence). From 1936 onward the Confessing Church lost much of its involvement in the Lutheran state church in the south, which reinforced its internal rift.
Prior to and during World War II the Confessing Church underwent much harassment by the Gestapo, the German secret police (e.g., arrest of Niemöller and other pastors as early as 1937; drafting of nearly half of all clergy; barring of paper for printing Bibles). There also existed two distinct branches: one following the union of Lutheran and Reformed churches, the other pursuing exclusively Lutheran state-church purposes.
Hans F. Bayer, “Confessing Church,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell (Baker Academic, 2017), 203–04.
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