Excerpt: Defenders of the Barmen Declaration\u27s apolitical tone remind us that it was never intended to establish a program of political protest, that Karl Barth and the others were pastors not politicians; that the goal was to reassert the integrity of the gospel in the face of the attempted subversion by the German Christians. On the one hand, the soundness of this interpretation is self-evident. And yet it should surprise no one that an apolitical strategy would have little political impact on the German state. It is also true that Barth\u27s views on church and state relations changed after Barmen; that afterward he expressed remorse over his own sins of omission. If we explore Barth\u27s writings over a twenty-year period, the change will become evident and so also his impact on the emerging political theology in Eastern Europe. The next two chapters will chronicle this development
