Karl Barth's most famous protest against the German Christians and the Nazi takeover of the German Evangelical Church was the Theological Declaration of Barmen (1934), but a year before Barmen, Barth wrote another similar important protest titled Theological Existence To-Day! (A Plea for Theological Freedom). 

In 1933, the German Christians in Nazi Germany reorganized the separate 29 State Churches (Landes-Kirche) in Germany into a single German Evangelical Church (or Reich Church); Each of the state churches were assigned a bishop, and one National bishop was appointed to rule them all, so that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government may control of all of the Protestant churches in Germany. The reorganization was modeled upon Hitler's leadership principles, not upon the traditional models for episcopal government, and allowed Nazis known as the "German Christian" to conform the German Evangelical Church according to their Nazi political ideology. The reorganization was celebrated as a victory for Nationalism, that is loud warning to the church today of the dangers of Nationalism in the church.   

Karl Barth was in Bonn, Germany when he heard the reorganization announced, he was alarmed that the Nationalizing of the Church and the subjection of it to Nazi control was heralded as a victory for the Church, and described it with the following examples:

As one example out of the many I cite the Appeal of the so-called "Committee of Three" of date April 28th, 1933:

"A mighty National Movement has captured and exalted our German Nation. An all-embracing reorganisation of the State is taking place within the awakened German people. We give our hearty assent to this turning-point of history. God has given us this: to Him be the glory." 

"Bound unitedly in God's Word, we recognise in the great events of our day a new commission of our Lord to His Churches." [1]

Barth was also dismayed that the church believed the words of Hitler that the reorganization was a benign change and would not do what it precisely did, that is that it subdued the church to the will of Nazi political control. Karl Barth writes:

The new government, by the mouth of the Reichs-Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, declared on March 23rd:

"The rights of the Churches will not be diminished, nor their position as regards the State be altered." [2]

Karl Barth wrote the his Theological Existence To-Day! (A Plea for Theological Freedom) in a single day's time, which is less time that I took to read it! He sat down at his desk in the evening of July 24th, 1933 and by the next day he had completed his first edition of Theologische Existenz heute (as it was titled in German).

Barth's Protest in Theological Existence Today!

Karl Barth defines "theological existence" as the vocation of a minister, who concerns him or herself with the Word of God alone. A theologian or minister abandons their vocation when they enter the political sphere, and allow political ideologies to determine what they speak in the Church. All christians are theologians, and it's fine for a Christian to be politician or a Church politician, but Christians in the Church are specifically called to be ministers of the Word of God, and it is the Word of God alone that is the word of the Church alone. Specially this Word of God preaches it that of Jesus Christ crucified.  

Barth defines "theological existence" in this way:

And this is what is meant by what we term our "Theological existence," viz. that in the midst of our life in other aspects, as, say, men, fathers and sons, as Germans, as citizens, thinkers, as having hearts ever in unrest, etc., the Word of God may be what it simply is, and only can be to us, and taxes our powers, particularly as preachers and teachers, to the full as the Word alone can and must do. [3]

Barth is not opposing politics or politicians, but instead he is is asserting that it is the Word of God alone that is normative in the Church's talk, and it is not political ideologies (especially in this case of the Nazi propaganda) that may control the church. Barth says that ministers are theologians, and theologians must not exchange the Word of God (as witnessed in the Holy Scriptures) for political agenda such as the Nationalism of the German Christians (or other forms of Nationalism in America today and elsewhere). 

It is no disgrace to be a politician or even a Church politician; it holds a special esteem: but it is something else to be a theologian. It can always denote damage to the theologian's existence as such, when he becomes a politician or a Church politician. To-day this seems to be pre-eminently the case. And therefore it is time to say, that under no circumstances should we, as theologians, forsake our theological existence and exchange our rights as "first-born" for "a mess of pottage." Or, said positively, that now, one and all, within the Church as she has borne us by means of the Word, and within the incomparable sphere of our vacation we must abide, or (if we have left it) turn back into the Church and into the sphere of our vocation, at all costs, by putting all regards and concerns behind. [4]

Barth is not arguing that the Church should be walled off from the political world, or that it should not engage in public theology or political theology. Barth famously said that we must read the Bible in one hand and hold the news paper in the other hand. Barth means that the Church is instructed by the Word of God alone, but as the Church preaches the Word of God, it may and must preach this Word to the situations of today. Barth explains this as follows:

If, dear friends at home and abroad, I have now been persuaded to speak "to the present situation," as it is expected of me, it can only be in the form of a question. The question is: "Would it not be better if one did not speak 'to the situation,' but, each one within the limits of his vocation, if he spoke 'ad rem' [to the point]?" In other words, to consider and work out the presuppositions needed every day for speaking "ad rem," as it is needed today—not today for the first time—and yet it is needed today! A slight elucidation of this question can alone be my theme, if so be anyone wants to hear me on the stirrings now afoot. [5]

In Eberhard Busch's biography of Karl Barth, he says that Karl Barth sent a copy of Theological Existence Today to Adolf Hitler, exemplifying his point that the Word of God is the only word of the Church, and this word may not be controlled or made subservient to the will of any agenda of Nationalism, or any political ruler, no matter how dangerous or powerful, including Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Even if this places our lives in danger. 

"On 1 July, Barth also sent a copy of his work to Adolf Hitler with the declaration: 'This is a word to the German Evangelical pastors. I am recommending that they should reflect on their special position and their particular work in the light of the most recent events in church politics.' The pamphlet had a tremendous effect. Christian Kaiser Verlag worked flat out to distribute it. A second edition had to be printed as early as 8 July. It was banned on 28 July 1934, but by then no less than 37,000 copies had been printed." [6]

Barth's bold protest of Adolf Hitler, the German Christians and the other Nazis was not ignored, and lead to Barth's expulsion from Nazi Germany, when Barth refused to find a statement of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Very few theologians preached the Word of God in the face of Nazi Germany as here exemplified by Karl Barth in Theological Existence Today! 

Sources:

1. Karl Barth, Theological Existence To-Day! (A Plea for Theological Freedom), trans. R. Birch Hoyle, (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011), p. 23. 

2. Ibid. 24.

3. Ibid. 14. 

4. Ibid. 16-17.

5. Ibid. 10-11.

6. Busch, Eberhard. Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts. W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1994. Print. 227.

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