Religion: Better Without Principles?

Martin Niemöller began as a fighting man. After serving as a U-boat commander in World War I, he became a popular Lutheran minister at Berlin’s fashionable Jesus Christus Kirche. The Nazis found him cooperative at first, but by 1937 he was arrested for his stubborn refusal to knuckle under to their church-control regulations. He was kept in concentration camp for eight years.

Politically, Pastor Niemöller has always been an ardent nationalist, in favor of a strong, united Germany. In recent months, he has been preaching a brand of religion that some Christians have found puzzling. One of his speeches, condensed in last week’s Christian Century, is based on the proposition that modern war is something no Christian should support. The church, he says, should proclaim the words of Jesus, “He that would save his life shall lose it,” instead of “remaining silent when the tempters try to bait poor human victims for their bloody business by suggesting that it is the church that must be defended, or Christianity, or the Christian Occident.”

Last week, in Manhattan, where he is lecturing, 58-year-old Pastor Niemöller elaborated his new views. Though he no longer believes that anything can be achieved by violence, he said, he does not want to be considered a pacifist, because pacifism is a principle.

“I don’t believe in acting according to principles,” he said, “but in meeting each specific situation in the presence and love of Jesus Christ. Principles cannot guard you against lack of love. They are more likely to do just the opposite, and give you a false sense of righteousness.

“The idealists with their ‘higher reasons’ commit more sins against men than the materialists. I believed in these ‘higher reasons’ as a young man; but there are no such things . . .”

Fear of Communism? “Communism has every reason to fear the Christian church. The church . . . should always be on the attack against secular society—under capitalism as well as under Communism or Naziism. If Communism comes, we Christians shall just continue to be on the offensive. They may put us in jail, or kill us, but the church—as long as it is faithful—is in God’s hands. The only thing that can do away with the church is the church itself, by its unfaithfulness.”