The Barmen Declaration: The Church's Stand Against False Teaching

The Crisis Behind Barmen

In the early 1930s, a movement called the “German Christians” sought to merge National Socialist ideology with Christianity — adopting Aryan racial laws, rejecting the Old Testament, and celebrating Hitler as a gift of God. Many German churches were pressured to go along. A courageous group of pastors and theologians refused.

The Confessing Church

The Barmen Declaration was adopted on May 31, 1934, at a synod of what became known as the Confessing Church — a movement of evangelical resistance within German Protestantism. Key figures included Karl Barth (the Declaration’s primary drafter), Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Niemöller.

The Six Theses

The Declaration consists of six theses, each following a pattern: a Scripture passage, a positive confession, and a rejection. The first and most famous thesis declares: “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.”

The Church Has One Lord

Thesis one rejects “the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.” No political ideology, however powerful, can claim the authority of Christ over the church.

A Model for Every Age

The Barmen Declaration is not merely a historical document. It models how the church must confess the lordship of Christ when that lordship is challenged — by ideology, culture, or political pressure. It is a call to confessional courage in every generation.

Read the Declaration

Explore the full text of the Barmen Declaration at BarmenDeclaration.com.