The parish church

The parish church was a series of publications published by Hans Harder Verlag in Altona in 1934 and edited by the theologian Hans Asmussen and the architect Rudolf Jäger . Co-editor was temporarily also the Germanist Fritz Collatz .

Purpose and aim

Hans Asmussen wrote in the introduction to the first issue:

“This series is intended to serve the Church . It assumes that there is only one way that leads to the church: the church . There is a church only as far as there is an address and an answer. Without pastor and non-pastor coming to action together, there is no speech and counter-speech, no address and answer. ... For this reason, the editors of this series of publications do not all belong to the church profession. A pastor unites with a humanities representative and these two with a technician . They think they have something to say to each other. They believe that it applies to the entire area of ​​the Church that the various professions have something to say to one another in the Church. Your series therefore wants to be an appeal through its existence. One should check back and forth in the country whether it is not the same there, that one has something to say to one another. ... But we take up all the work in the belief that God is calling us to build his kingdom . He may decide whether he wants to build something through us. "

Contemporary history background

The first issue of the series of publications Die Gemeindekirche was published on January 5, 1934 in Altona as a reaction to the “many aberrations of human wickedness and weakness that became evident in our church last summer and which we saw as a result of apostasy from the true gospel must recognize ".

On January 16, 1934, Hans Asmussen was suspended from service by his now German-Christian- dominated Schleswig-Holstein regional church , and with a letter of January 30, 1934 he was retired on February 15, 1934, “because after his previous activities he was not able to guarantee it offers that he will stand up unreservedly for the German Evangelical Church at any time ”. Asmussen replied on February 2, 1934 as "pastor and theologian":

“Since it is about faith and teaching, for which I suffer, I now learn, with thanks to God, to respect this for vain joy. I know that the lawgiver has secured himself against any objection ... But before God and his word we are equal. But it is about him and his word. "

When Asmussen was expelled from his home church, he was not only here, but also widely recognized as a competent pastor and theological teacher in circles of German Protestantism. Professors Kurt Dietrich Schmidt and Karl Barth were full of praise for the 35-year-old pastor from Altona. In Schmidt's assessment he was “the most capable theologian that the Schleswig-Holstein Church has, as his writings show and has proven himself in every respect in the practical pastoral office, but also a man who does not fear any offense that the honest preaching of the Gospel might bring about could".

When “lawyer” August Jäger started to integrate the Württemberg regional church in mid-April, the denominational community turned on April 22nd in the Ulm Declaration as the “legitimate Evangelical Church in Germany” against the violations of the church regiment under Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller . Asmussen also belonged to many others, later e.g. Some of the leading people of the Confessing Church were among the signatories of this declaration, read out by the Bavarian regional bishop Hans Meiser in Ulm Minster , in which the church opposition for the first time protested in its entirety and expressed its great concern about the acute endangerment of the confession within the German Evangelicals Church expressed.

On May 2, 1934, the Nuremberg Committee decided in Berlin to prepare a Synod of the Confession of the Reich in order to come to a joint, coherent deal with the German Christians . A theological committee should do the preparatory work. The casting proposals made it clear what a high reputation Asmussen had meanwhile enjoyed: alongside Barth and the Munich church councilor Thomas Breit, this honorable appointment fell to him.

Before this theological commission met on 15./16. May 1934 arrived in Frankfurt hotel "Basler Hof" and there the Barmen Declaration drafted, held Asmussen on 13 May 1934 "on occasion of the Silesian Church Conference" in Wroclaw his lecture Lutheran confession today that as No. 4 in the series The parish church was printed. A continuation of the series was announced, but did not take place because of Asmussen's further personal and church-political developments.

Order of the booklets

• Issue 1 (January 5, 1934):
  • Rudolf Jäger / Fritz Collatz, Altona: The parish church as the meaning and goal of our work
  • Johannes Tonnesen , Altona: The parish church as the hope of the pastors
• Issue 2 (February 14, 1934):
  • Hans Asmussen: Confession and Synod
• Issue 3 (April 7, 1934):
  • Hans Asmussen: The bishop of the community
• Issue 4 (May 13, 1934):
  • Hans Asmussen: Lutheran Confession Today

Topics and priorities

Confession and Synod

On the subject of "Confession and Synod", Asmussen wrote:

“In Germany, on the occasion of the great upheaval in the Church, there are various endeavors underway which aim to work in a confessional way. If these strivings have inner strength, then they will take shape in the form of synods , and it is good to call out that all those who are driven by the spirit want to get together for common work. Then it would soon become apparent how strong God's power still is in the church.

Indeed, it is not true that the work on the confession and the creation of the synod are two different acts, but the confession is only genuine if it is made together with the synod, and a synod is only Christian if it is in the confession it grows. It is a fundamental pity of our church that these two things are treated separately from one another. For if the synod is to be communion in the Holy Spirit, then it can only be communion in confession. Because the confession of a community shows whether it has heard the word of God. Because confession is the answer to God's speaking. And if the confession is genuine, then it arises in the synod because God's speaking takes place in the community and because the answer to the confession grows out of the community. Because it is about faith, because it is about the word of God, because it is about confession, because it is about spiritual office, that is what synod is about! "

People's Mission

Asmussen wrote on the subject of " People's Mission ":

“And which of us would not have been tempted to combine the church task with the political one ?! How nice it would be to work if National Socialist propaganda and Christian witness were one and the same! When we do popular missions, the spirit leaves us as soon as we slide into agitation! The Spirit that drives us allows us only one thing: the preaching of the gospel! This sermon makes Christ great and all people small! One can only praise the greatness of Christ if at the same time one says to the listeners: The ax has already been laid at the roots of the trees! If you do not do righteous fruits of repentance, you will be cut off and thrown into the fire. If you are not doing righteous fruits of repentance, please do not participate in church matters. A hooting crowd is very favorable in terms of agitation, but in the popular mission it drives away the blessing. That is why the parish church must separate itself from all spirits that can combine popular mission and agitation. "

Church order versus church constitution

Asmussen wrote on the controversial question of the church's "attempts at constitution":

“The current 'constitutional attempts' are the legitimate successors of the church policy of the previous century. We still have not learned that constitutions are organized death for the church. Church order and not church constitution, that is our watchword! We oppose the pretense that a dead congregation in Eiderstedt , where the service is canceled on many Sundays due to lack of participation, is packed into the same constitution as a living congregation in the Rhineland , where people read the Bible, wherever has judgment on the pastor's sermons and teachings. We object to the fact that Bavaria and Hamburg are lumped together as if both were “church” in the same sense. It is the same error with the opposite sign when, according to the old 'constitution' in Dithmarschen, the 'Christian community' could choose its pastor just as it was in Westphalia , although there was probably no community in Dithmarschen - and if today again, regardless of the spiritual one Could the living church be forced to have its pastor just like the dead. May church lawyers judge the beautiful constitutions as a foreground, we want an orderly church in which faith is asked. We fight for the right of the church - when the church is there. We fight for the rights of the pastor and the bishop when it comes to mission areas. Because we fight for faith. For the Church, we are heartily indifferent to democratic and leadership ideology. Because in the church neither the leader ideology nor the law of the community counts, but the preaching of the word, which happens in faith and is heard by faith. What this proclamation requires is law in the Church, nothing else. "

Church understanding

Asmussen wrote on the subject of "understanding the church":

“The fact that the previous church took paths which did not have the promise of the presence of Christ has long shown us the need for an ecclesial change, as all our writings show. Out of this concern, we would be able to propose many fundamental reforms. But us [sc. Lutherans and Reformed] what separates in common is that this concern was not the movens of the church revolution of 1933.

The gift of Christ's presence in his church would lead us to constitutional changes that would be an established sign in the world of how we value the church, how worthy of word and sacrament , how far our work is from it, in space of the law to promote morality and idealism.

In practical terms this means: We confess the church as the place of Christ's presence. Wherever Christ is not present among men, there is no church. All ordinances in the church must therefore serve to ensure that word and sacrament have free space. For word and sacrament are the preconditions to which the promise of the present applies. Neither parallelism to the prevailing order nor the pleasure of people are essential points of orientation for the church. Only the relationship to word and sacrament qualifies for ecclesiastical office, otherwise neither political, artistic, social nor economic qualification. ...

We confess - and intend to corroborate it from Scripture - that in the church as the place of Christ's presence the right of the believing community to free confession in word and deed, taking place at a decisive point, cannot be canceled. We confess that in the Church the office of proclamation rests in Christ's commission. We confess that ministry and community are bound to one another. We believe that, above all, the different status of the congregations, as well as other reasons, mean that orders and ceremonies can be different without violating ecumenical unity. "

epilogue

The epilogue of the fourth volume “Lutheran Confession Today” was probably unintentionally a swan song for the entire series. Asmussen wrote:

“... We are seeing today that the DC suddenly take away a remarkable interest in the Lutheran creed that was completely foreign to them. Everything indicates that it would not be unpleasant for them if they succeeded in having the Lutheran circles of the Confessional Front allied with them in opposition to both the Reformed and the German Faith Movement on the basis of this interest they showed . All that can be said about this is that negotiations of this kind can only be viewed as serious at the moment, blown peace tricks can only be taken seriously at the moment when the DC have made it clear in word and deed that their actions and theirs are not just tactical considerations has grown tired of heresy that has been expressed and pronounced for a year. ... But do they want in all these things [sc. Doctrinal utterances or doctrinal toleration, church organization and constitution, reprimanding official brothers and insulting accusations] allow a change visible to the world to occur, then we would like to be the very bottom. We are only concerned with the word that redeems and sanctifies us. If it turns out from the ecclesiastical political actions that we consider to be right that the word and its strength suffer as a result of these actions, then we will be the first to openly confess that they have made mistakes. ... "

See also

• Publication series Confessing Church
• Series Breklum books
• Series of publications Theological Existence Today
• Young Church magazine

Web links

• http://d-nb.info/579040968
• http://www.geschichte-bk-sh.de/index.php?id=409

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://d-nb.info/gnd/105824992
2. ↑ The parish church. Issue 1, 1934, p. 3 f.
3. ↑ Collatz / Jäger: The parish church as the meaning and goal of our work. In: The parish church. Issue 1, 1934, p. 5.
4. ↑ Quoted from Enno Konukiewitz: Hans Asmussen. A Lutheran theologian in the church struggle. Gütersloh 1984, p. 87.
5. ↑ Quoted from Enno Konukiewitz: Hans Asmussen. A Lutheran theologian in the church struggle. Gütersloh 1984, p. 88.
6. ↑ Quoted from Enno Konukiewitz: Hans Asmussen. A Lutheran theologian in the church fight , Gütersloh 1984, p. 91.
7. ↑ The suggestion to make use of this predication "legitimate DEK" came from Hans Asmussen . (Kurt Dietrich Schmidt: Questions about the structure of the Confessing Church (1962) , in: ders .: Collected essays . Ed. By Manfred Jacobs, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1967, pp. 267–293, here p. 268)
8. ↑ Formed as a forerunner of the Reich Brotherhood Council on April 11, 1934 under the chairmanship of the Westphalian President D. Karl Koch .
9. ↑ Enno Konukiewitz: Hans Asmussen. A Lutheran theologian in the church struggle. Gütersloh 1984, p. 92 ff.
10. ↑ Since November 1934, Hans Asmussen published his theological and ecclesiastical contributions in the series Theological Existence Today, edited by Karl Barth and Eduard Thurneysen :
    • 1934, issue 16: Church of Augsburg Confession!
    • 1935, issue 24: Barmen!
    • 1935, Issue 31: Theology and Church Leadership Johs. 15.3
    • 1936, Issue 41: God's Law and Human Law
    • 1937, issue 49: Sola Fide - that is Lutheran! I.
    • 1937, volume 50: Sola Fide - that's Lutheran! II
    • 1938, No. 56: The simplicity and the church
11. ↑ The parish church. Volume 2, 1934, p. 15.
12. ↑ The parish church. Volume 3, 1934, p. 6.
13. ↑ The parish church. Volume 3, 1934, p. 18.
14. ↑ The parish church. Volume 4, 1934, p. 17 f. 20th
15. ↑ The parish church. Volume 4, 1934, p. 22 f.