When David French helped launch The Dispatch, it was obvious that this media company would be a mouthpiece for liberalism, especially on faith matters, whereby David French had a reputation for attacking Christians in his Sunday column. Carrying on the mantle this week are Paul Miller and Michael Reneau. Paul Miller is a Southern Baptist ERLC Fellow who wrote an anti-Christian Nationalist book. Reneau is the managing editor of The Dispatch and in charge of its faith division.
Together they pen an ahistorical ode to the so-called Confessing Church titled, A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment.
It’s worth noting that this rhetoric of comparing America to Weimar is meant to make Trump the Hitler. As Hitler is the ultimate evil under the Post-War Consensus, such comparisons inspire calls to leftwing political violence. Such was the case when a Ukraine simp attempted to assassinate Donald Trump.
He and a small number of other German Protestant leaders gathered, calling themselves the Confessing Church. They issued the Barmen Declaration in 1934, affirming the church’s independence from the Nazi government, which tried to force them to join an official “Reich Church.” They were right to do so, but by then the Nazis were too entrenched, too powerful, and too popular. Most of the Barmen leaders lost jobs, several spent time in the concentration camps, and many were executed for the principled stand against Nazi tyranny. Bonhoeffer himself took part in a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Tragically he was caught, imprisoned, and ultimately martyred in the waning days of World War II.
The dynamic duo start out with the historical mythos of Bonhoeffer being part of an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. This has never been proven, and Bonhoeffer was arrested long before Operation Valkyrie. The Barmen Declaration was mostly drafted by Karl Barth, a liberal theologian who insisted only Jesus was infallible in a juxtaposition against Scripture. This is textbook theological liberalism. And so, Barth is not a celebrated figure in Evangelicalism today despite being Bonhoeffer’s chief influence. The Confessing Church was a liberal schism from the German Christian Movement, not a return to orthodoxy.
We rightly applaud Bonhoeffer today. But, if we are allowed to critique our martyrs, can’t we say that heroic as they were, Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church were ultimately too late? Where were Bonhoeffer and the other leaders of the Confessing Church before the Nazis came to power in 1933? Where were they during the days of the Weimar Republic, when they might have made a difference? The answer is that most were members of various centrist political parties, completing their studies and establishing their careers. For all their later heroism, they failed to see the growing threat to the republic when it might still have been saved. By the time they took their principled stand, the die had been cast.
If the Confessing Church was right to assert its independence and public witness against the Nazis in the 1930s, it would have been even better to do so earlier, in the 1920s, before the Nazis came to power but while the republic was tottering under the onslaught of extremists from all sides. The principles of the Confessing Church were not valid only for their moment; they were timeless principles of political theology that should bind the universal church in all times and places.
The article dives into a requiem for the Weimar Republic which was degenerate and not worth saving.
It’s a relevant question for the American church in 2025. Whether you are on the left or the right, it is tempting to see ourselves as living through Germany in 1933, confronting the moral equivalent of the Nazis on the other side. There is a moral clarity to it, stark lines dividing the good guys from the bad. Our duty is obvious; the only question is whether we can muster the courage.
But the analogy can be misleading, and it excuses us from examining our own side. We should be able to spot injustices from both sides of the political aisle. It is harder, intellectually and spiritually, to confront a different historical analogy. Maybe we’re not living through the Nazi regime in 1933, but through the Weimar Republic of 1923.
The article attempts to compare America to Weimar but so far it focuses on political polarity rather than the degeneracy of Weimar that sprung up, much of it from a chosen group of people.
When the communists warned that the fascists were evil, they were right. But when the fascists warned of the communist menace, they were also right. What should a politically engaged Christian of good conscience do? There were middle-ground political parties they could join. A Social Democratic Party tried to hold the center-left against the communists and socialists. On the right, a variety of populist and nationalist parties gradually lost ground to the Nazis. But none of these were effective.
History teaches us that liberalism will slide into communism. The article goes on to fluff the Confessing Church before getting ton practical application.
Christians who vote for Republicans are called to be salt and light within the Republican Party. That means being a voice calling the Republican Party to obey the rule of law. Yours should be the loudest voice condemning Trump’s pardon for January 6 rioters and pushing against his challenge to the checks and balances that are supposed to constrain the executive . You should speak up in favor of the poor and powerless and against the culture of cruelty, spite, and vengefulness Trump cultivates. It corrodes our public square and demeans our shared citizenship even as it poses more specific dangers to those targeted by Trump’s weaponization of federal law enforcement. If you do not speak up, you are both credulous and culpable, complicit with the party’s sins—including those yet to come.
Miller and Reneau condemn Trump for pardoning J6ers and his opposition to district court rulings. They also presuppose Trump weaponizing law enforcement which broadly has not happened yet, but when it does, rest assured I will most likely support it.
The Democrats comparatively get off easy.
The secular left sometimes gives off an odor of being godless, rootless, power-hungry moral relativists.
As a Christian in America, I have neither the desire nor the capability to emulate the Confessing Church and its communist sympathies. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was too liberal even for them and should be considered a villain in Evangelicalism for his influence in syncretizing Christianity with the world, religionless Christianity. It’s unsurprising that liberals see Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Chruch as failed heroes because they were martyrs for a liberal cause, not Christ’s kingdom.
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A large part of this border-line apostlization of Bonhoeffer has to do with historical ignorance, and propaganda. The National Socialists have been portrayed as much more viciously anti-Christian than they could have plausibly been (most of them, including Hitler,may not have really been anti-Christian at all, whatever else may be true of them,) and many people do not realize that the Soviets were no better than Hitler, and in some ways, including their treatment of Christians, much worse. Also, Bultmann, who was one of the most liberal theologians in Germany, was part of the Confessing church, which, on the whole, seems to be more liberal than the average German Christian of the time, including those who were very pro-Hitler, and Hitler himself may have believed more of the gospel than Bultmann did, whatever else was wrong with him. And yes, the Weimar republic was degenerate, and not worth saving. If someone had clamped down on the immorality there early on, it might have prevented Hitler from gaining power, because no one would have felt like they needed him. But those who think the ultimate good is democracy will never understand.
All their theological heroes are from that era of Germany. Barth, Bonghoffer, Boltmann, Kung, Nieber. Why are they so fixated on German theology? and from one tiny period?
Bonhoeffer was a disgusting, repulsive, evil traitor.
While Germany was busy fighting desperately for survival against the (((forces of evil))), the traitor Bonhoeffer was busy passing classified information to the (((enemy))), and embezzling money from the German military and giving it to the jews.
THAT is what Bonhoeffer was arrested (and ultimately executed) for.
Bonhoeffer’s execution had nothing to do with Christianity, especially since Bonhoeffer wasn’t really a Christian anyway. Bonhoeffer was a liberal globalist who cloaked his liberalism in “Christian” sounding rhetoric.
The only thing Bonhoeffer was a martyr for is anti-White, liberal, globohomo, jewish supremacy.
In a war between good and (((evil))), Bonhoeffer chose to side with (((evil))).
Bonhoeffer was motivated by his liberal cultural marxist beliefs, NOT by Christianity.
The Germans did humanity a huge favor by getting rid of the disgusting traitor Bonhoeffer.
If Bonhoeffer had survived the war, he undoubtedly would have been gloating over the subjugation of the German people, and manipulatively telling the Germans that they have to brainwash their daughters into marrying Africans, in order to atone for the “holocaust” or whatever.
Undoubtedly, Bonhoeffer would have eagerly used his status as a so-called “pastor” to deceive and gaslight the German people into wrongly believing LIES such as “god hates racism” and “god will send you to hell if you oppose race-mixing” and “god demands that you worship the evil jews.”
Bonhoeffer was a lying, evil, manipulative cultural marxist false teacher, masquerading as a “pastor.”
Bonhoeffer betrayed his people and his country, and he got exactly what he deserved.
Regarding Karl Barth: in addition to being a traitorous heretic and shill for the evil antichrist jews, Barth was also a notorious adulterer.
Barth moved his mistress into his family house, and put his mistress in a bedroom that was accessible only through Barth’s study.
Barth forced his wife to tolerate Barth’s mistress living in the same house with the family, eating meals with the family, etc.
Barth was an immoral evil piece of slime, so it’s no surprise that Barth was also a shill for the wicked antichrist jews.
In fact, it seems like most (if not all) of the traitorous subversive judaizers within Christianity, are total pieces of scum.
The sex offenders Robert Morris, Mike Bickle, Ravi Zacharias, George Bell, etc come to mind, but there are plenty of others.
In fact, it seems like a lot of the leading anti-Nazis were evil monsters.
Winston Churchill’s sidekick Sir Robert Boothby was a pedophile who liked raping little boys. Boothby was also a friend of jewish organized crime. Boothby was also close friends with (((Tom Driberg))), a jewish pedophile and fellow member of parliament.
Churchill’s other sidekick Brendan Bracken was a pedophile who owned a school for young boys. Bracken would show up at the school, and the teachers (on Bracken’s orders) would pretend that Bracken was a young boy who had a medical condition that made him appear to be a grown man. The teachers would then order the small boys at the school to spank Bracken and engage in other sexual activities with Bracken.
Then there was the Earl Mountbatten, commander of British forces in Southeast Asia. Mountbatten was a pedophile.
Then there was the famous Field Marshal Sir William Slim, one of the top officers in the British Army (and later, Chief of the Imperial General Staff). Sir William Slim was a pedophile too.
Then there was Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, another top British commander. He was a pedophile too.
It seems like there is a pattern here.
And of course the USA and Britain allied with the Bolshevik monster Josef Stalin, whose chief of police Lavrenty Beria was a pedophile, rapist, and serial killer.
But the History Channel wants you to believe that these were the good guys in World War 2!