Reviewed Book: Baum, Gregory. The church for others: Protestant theology in communist East Germany. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996

Donner, Henriette T.

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 24Issue 1 Leadership into the 21st Century Article 165-1-1998The church for others: Protestant theology incommunist East GermanyHenriette T. DonnerFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationDonner, Henriette T. (1998) "The church for others: Protestant theology in communist East Germany," Consensus: Vol. 24 : Iss. 1 ,Article 16.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol24/iss1/16Book Reviews 151The Church for Others: Protestant Theology in Com-munist East GermanyGregory BaumGrand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996173 pp. $22.25At the end of the Second World War, East Germany became a soviet-occupied territory. During those Babylonian years, the protestant church(the Lutheran churches representing about 87% of the population) stillbelonged to the German church, the Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands(EKD). In 1954, the political creation of the German Democratic Republic(GDR) as an autonomous but communist state remade East Germany intoa new, separate country. This event automatically placed the leadership ofthe East German church in exile. Gregory Baum wonders: what kind oftheology motivated and allowed the East German Protestant Churches torelinquish their organizational link with the West, and eventually declarethemselves as a church—defined as “a community of witness and service”—in a socialist state?In 1990, the two Germanies were reunited. The Anschluss^ as Baumcalls the subsequent dismantling of communist institutions, ended the sep-arate existence of the East German Lutheran Church, that is to say, itsorganizational expression, the Federation of Churches or the Kirchenbund.The myth that this church had been revolutionary and crucial to the peo-ple’s uprising against the communist regime, was short lived. A new myth,that it cooperated and even spied for the former regime, was spread by thenews media.Neither myth was justified. The Church existed in the narrow spacebetween endorsement and rejection of the GDR, where “the atheist world-view is the foundation of society and imposed in dictatorial fashion upon allcitizens” (Werner Krusche, 1991). Extreme positions existed: pastors whoendorsed Marxist-Leninism, and pastors who refused to accept the GDR.However, the Kirchenbund’s motto became “Neither total refusal nor totalaccommodation”.The motto surfaced in the next three decades as “Not beside, not op-posed to, but inside a Socialist State”, “Life in a socialist country withoutoffended conscience”, and, “Neither a global Yes, nor a global No”. Thisstance of neither for nor completely against did not mean paralysis. Thechurch walked “the narrow ridge between total assimilation and total repu-diation”, with all the excitement a ridge suggests (64). Indeed, the narrowridge became wider and wider. Raising the question of “space” for itselfand its work, the church became creative in finding and using it.Sympathetic to the just economic order implied by socialism, Baumclaims that the East German church developed “a brilliant contextual the-ology”, that it reached a new height of Christian spirituality. Since onlythree of the regional Churches were confessional Lutherans, and the re-maining five were Union (Reformed-Lutheran), the Bund had to reconcile152 Consensustwo traditions concerning the church’s cooperation with the political order:Luther’s Two Kingdoms, and the Calvinist, “Kingship of Christ”. Thislegacy of pluralism served the Kirchenhund well. It enabled a tolerantconsensus in its theological practice, especially on the question of “disciple-ship”, Nachfolge.According to Baum, several factors made Protestant theology in theGDR contextual. 1) The past, especially Weimar, the Third Reich, andAuschwitz, placed an historic responsibility on the Church. This responsi-bility was spelled out in the “Theological Declaration of the ConfessionalSynod of Barmen” (1934). Barmen, an example of theological unity, re-jected faith as a private matter. 2) The spirit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, par-ticularly his call to the mature modern individual to realize his or herfaith through “action” spoke through Berlin-Brandenburg Bishop AlbrechtSchoenherr, through Heino Falcke, chair of the “Our Congregation andTheir Groups” Commission, and through various documents produced bythe East German church. 3) Bonhoeffer’s spirit influenced the decision notto respond to socialist theory, but to a socialist society.The East German church’s self-definition, being and acting as a “com-munity of witness and service”, inevitably brought it into conflict with thestate. Government was offended by the idea of a “reformable socialism”that dialogue between church and state implied. The claim of “being alearning church” was seen as a reprimand to the state for blotting out reli-gion in the state schools. The engagement of youth in peace activism, thememorial dedicated to honour the victims of Krystallnacht^ the demand fordebate about Chernobyl—each decision to “walk along” with co-citizens ofthe GDR became political opposition. Yet, had the church decided to donothing but to contemplate its own piety, the non-action would have fur-thered the aims of the GDR against its citizens. (Indeed, the success ofactive state attack on Christian thinking is revealed in a 1990 survey whichshows that only 20% of East Germans believe in God or a creating Spirit,contrasted with 97% Canadians.)Simply holding on to the Christian belief that all areas of life needJesus’ justification and sanctification put the East German faith communityagainst an order that, although it had emerged from biblical roots, nowclaimed its ideology to be a sufficient explanation of all reality. Baum’sbook leads us to realize that this conflict exists for Lutheran churches notonly in the former GDR, but in all modern states.Henriette T. DonnerWaterloo, Ontario

The church for others: Protestant theology in communist East Germany

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The church for others: Protestant theology in communist East Germany

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