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Against The Stream, How Karl Barth Reframed Church-State Relations (Chapter 3 Of Keine Gewalt! No Violence!), Roger J. Newell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "Defenders of the Barmen Declaration's 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's views on church and state relations changed after Barmen; …