In the aftermath of World War II, Christian leaders in Germany embraced the political ideology of Christian Democracy. Viewing Nazism as a form of materialism and atheism, which they blamed on the ongoing secularization and moral decay of German society, both Protestant and Catholic leaders argued that only the society-wide renewal of Christian faith and Christian values could provide a solid foundation for the future. Enjoying a privileged position in the eyes of the western Allies (particularly the Americans), the churches took on a leading role in the reconstruction of German society. And, working to overcome the postwar disillusionment of many of their members, church leaders urged their followers to take active, personal responsibility for political life in the new German states.Footnote ¹

During the early postwar years, this tendency was best exemplified by the cooperation of Protestant and Catholic leaders in the creation of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU)—interconfessional political parties dedicated to the reconstruction of German society on a foundation of Christian belief and Christian values. Despite their underlying agreement on the causes of Nazism and the need for religious renewal in postwar Germany, however, Protestant and Catholic leaders were slow to overcome deeply ingrained patterns of mutual distrust and suspicion. As Maria Mitchell has argued, interconfessional political cooperation in the CDU/CSU was a “marriage of convenience” that did not fully succeed in papering over a wide variety of religious and political differences between postwar Catholics and Protestants.Footnote ² Many Catholic voters distrusted Protestants, blaming Protestant nationalism and militarism (along with materialism and secularism) for the rise of the Nazis. And, while Catholic politicians hoped to benefit from the support of Protestant voters, they were wary of compromising the narrowly confessional elements of their political program. Protestants, for their part, were even more suspicious of the CDU/CSU. Especially in the West German state, where Catholics now enjoyed numerical parity with Protestants, many viewed Christian Democracy as a “Trojan horse” for Catholic political dominance.Footnote ³

On a more practical level, too, Catholics and Protestants in the early CDU/CSU often had widely divergent political priorities. Protestants were much less likely than Catholics to support and defend the privileges of confessional schools, one of the highest priorities of many Catholic politicians. They were more likely than Catholics to favor liberal or Christian socialist policies. And, even in circles where support for the CDU/CSU was strong, many Protestants were leery of the “C” in CDU and CSU, rejecting any claim that these parties' had a monopoly on Christian political activity. More than anything else, however, Protestants and Catholics in the early CDU/CSU differed in their attitudes toward nationalism, the German nation, and the postwar division of Germany. While many Catholics were glad to cut their ties to Prussia, which they blamed as the source of German authoritarian, nationalism, and militarism, Protestants had much closer personal, institutional, and emotional ties to the east. The territories lost in the east and those incorporated into the East German state represented the historical heartland of German Protestantism. Many German Protestants lived in the east. And most Protestant institutions, including the Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD), carried out their work in both parts of the divided nation.Footnote ⁴

In the immediate postwar years, these divisions between Protestants and Catholics in the CDU (and, to a lesser extent, also within each confessional camp) were downplayed in favor of the rhetoric of Christian unity. The re-Christianization of German society and the defense of Christian values were viewed by most Catholics and most religiously active Protestants as far more important than any underlying policy disagreements. This began to change in the early 1950s, however, as the CDU/CSU underwent a process of consolidation and transformation under the leadership of Germany's first chancellor Konrad Adenauer. While the CDU/CSU had previously been a broad umbrella party, uniting former members of the Catholic Center Party, Christian socialists, Weimar liberals, and national conservatives under a common religious-political ideology, it now faced the difficult task of moving beyond mere rhetoric to forge concrete political policy. While the rhetoric of re-Christianization and the defense of Christian values continued to play an important role in CDU/CSU circles, by the early 1950s these parties had become inescapably linked to other more controversial policies promoted by Adenauer: the implementation of the “social-market” economy, the attempt to regain full sovereignty for the West German state under the aegis of the Western Alliance, and the consequent western integration and remilitarization of the Federal Republic, despite the complications that these measures created for any attempt at German reunification.Footnote ⁵

This transformation of the CDU/CSU between the late 1940s and the early 1950s had several important consequences for the political beliefs and loyalties of West German Protestants. First, Adenauer's focus on sovereignty, western integration, and anti-Communism helped him consolidate support among the old Protestant Right, crowding out numerous competing nationalist and conservative parties, and helping the CDU/CSU to become the dominant Center-Right political party in Germany. Second, however, this shift in priorities also created tremendous disillusionment in left-wing Protestant circles, alienating many Protestant intellectuals and academics from the CDU/CSU and eventually driving them into the arms of the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD).Footnote ⁶

This Protestant disillusionment with Adeneuer and the policies of the CDU/CSU is most apparent in the debates over Adenauer's plans for West German rearmament that erupted in 1950 and continued, in one form or another, for most of the following decade. Since the vast majority of West Germans opposed these proposed rearmament measures, Adenauer's rearmament plans became a source of major political controversy, drawing considerable opposition not only from the SPD, but also from within the CDU/CSU itself.Footnote ⁷ Opposition to rearmament was especially prominent in Protestant circles, causing many Protestants to question their support for the CDU/CSU. At the same time, this controversy opened a sharp political rift within the Protestant churches themselves. Numerous prominent church leaders and theologians took strong public stands against rearmament. But others remained supporters of the government's priorities. Channeling existing theological and church-political divisions that had emerged from the churches' experiences under Nazism, this political divide shaped the contours for Protestant political thought and activity for most of the 1950s. Even after West German rearmament was carried out in 1955, this controversy spilled over into other areas, including debates over universal military service, the rights of conscientious objectors, the military chaplaincy, and nuclear arms.Footnote ⁸

This article will look at the long-term implications of the rearmament controversy of the 1950s on the political beliefs and political activity of West German Protestants. In particular, it will focus on manifestations of this controversy at the meetings of the German Protestant Kirchentag, the largest regular assembly of Protestant laity in Germany.Footnote ⁹ By focusing on political debates at the meetings of the Kirchentag, and not just at the national party-political level, it will show how this controversy not only helped to transform Protestant political affiliations and voting patterns, but also reshaped Protestant intellectual and cultural assumptions about the fundamental nature of political activity itself. While Protestants in the immediate postwar years often believed that political agreement was necessary if the churches were to play an important role in postwar politics, the divisions that emerged in the rearmament controversy forced them to rethink their approach. By the end of the 1950s, they were forced to come to terms with the real-existing political disagreements within the church, revising both their political ideas and their political practice in order to accept—even embrace—the liberal democratic value of political pluralism.

Making Sense of Postwar Protestantism

While there is a vast amount of literature on the Protestant churches in the Third Reich and in the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), relatively little work has been done on their role in the transformation of West German society.Footnote ¹⁰ Accounts of Protestant politics in West Germany tend to downplay the diversity of political beliefs within the churches, focusing on only one aspect while missing the larger whole. Historians whose primary interest lies in the actions of the church under National Socialism have drawn attention to the many important continuities between the pre- and post-1945 churches, demonstrating the slowness of most individuals and institutions to learn the lessons of the war and Holocaust.Footnote ¹¹ With their focus on continuities, however, these accounts sometimes overlook the subtler and more gradual changes that were occurring in the churches. Protestants in the 1950s are also often identified with the chastened nationalism of figures such as the historian Gerhard Ritter, who hoped to save the “good” parts of the German tradition from their association with the Nazis.Footnote ¹² Like Ritter, many prominent Protestant political figures in the early postwar years were intellectually shaped by their experiences in the conservative resistance to National Socialism, and these ideas were an important source for their postwar politics.Footnote ¹³ Even many who shared this underlying worldview recognized, however, the need to look forward into the future, changing and adapting to the modern world, rather than remaining fixated on the past. In their work on the ideology of the Christian Abendland, other historians have shown the affinity of many Protestants for the anticommunism and cultural conservatism of the CDU/CSU.Footnote ¹⁴ Like their Catholic counterparts, most postwar Protestants agreed that Europe needed to return to its Christian roots, rejecting the godless ideologies of the modern world. Many had deep-seated reservations about social and cultural modernization, which they often associated with the breakdown of moral values and the collapse of the traditional family. And, as can be seen in the policies of East German church leaders such as Bishop Otto Dibelius, many—though certainly not all—adopted an adversarial posture toward the communist government of the German Democratic Republic.Footnote ¹⁵ This focus on the most conservative elements within the Protestant churches, while useful up to a point, provides little insight into the important changes that were underway in postwar Protestant culture.

Church historians have also tended to focus on the conservatism of the Protestant churches during the 1950s, drawing a sharp dichotomy between the dominant forces of “restoration” and the small minority of progressive reformers associated with the radical wing of the confessing church. These accounts—originating in the frustrations of progressive Protestants in the 1940s and 1950s, who failed in their attempts to reform the churches thoroughly from below—typically focus on the intellectual legacies of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and on the work of their postwar disciples such as Martin Niemöller, Hans-Joachim Iwand, and Helmut Gollwitzer.Footnote ¹⁶ Showing how the ideas of the most radical faction of the confessing church struggled to gain a foothold in the 1950s, these studies culminate in the period between the 1960s and 1980s with the movement's success in fostering Jewish-Christian and inter-German dialogue, peace theology, and growing interest in the developing world.Footnote ¹⁷ By acknowledging the work of Protestant progressives, these accounts capture an important aspect of the church's postwar transformation; however, they often fail to acknowledge reformers and reform movements that were not rooted in this progressive tradition.

Since the early 1990s, this one-sided perspective has begun to come under attack. Highlighting the complexity of Protestant politics in the 1950s, Martin Greschat has argued that this period represents “neither a new beginning nor a restoration.” More recently, Thomas Sauer has begun the work of breaking down this dichotomy in his study of the political activity of the Kronberger Kreis of conservative and moderate Protestant leaders. By drawing attention to the westernizing liberal democratic (albeit quite conservative) beliefs of these Protestant figures, Sauer offers a much broader perspective on liberalizing and democratizing trends within the churches.Footnote ¹⁸

This article will build on the work of Greschat and Sauer to paint a more complex and inclusive picture of postwar Protestant politics. It will demonstrate that the liberalization and democratization of Protestant political attitudes was not the monopoly of any one movement within the churches. Instead, postwar Protestantism was marked by a multiplicity of different reform efforts, rooted in different conceptions of the relationship between faith and politics. It will argue, further, that one important element in the political transformation of the churches—namely the acceptance of political pluralism—was not the work of any one faction, but arose out of their competition and confrontation with each other.

Embracing Public Responsibility

Even before the rise of Nazism, Germany's Protestant churches were bastions of conservative, nationalist, and authoritarian political thought. Protestants belonged to a variety of political parties, and the churches might claim to be politically neutral, but they remained confessional state churches entrenched in an alliance of throne and altar dating back to the time of the Reformation. Despite the presence of a few deeply conservative social reformers such as Adolf Stoecker, the volatile court preacher of the 1870s and 1880s, the Protestant churches were rooted in a highly reactionary form of politics.Footnote ¹⁹ The churches preached nearly unquestioning obedience to state authority. They promoted a theologically and politically nationalist agenda, identifying the Protestant tradition with the German nation and opposing the political influence of Catholics, Jews, socialists, and liberals.Footnote ²⁰ And, as the teachings of Stoecker's Protestant Social Party suggest, they also remained bastions of religious and economic anti-Semitism. While a few Protestant leaders tried to challenge this perspective, their efforts were severely constrained by the churches' overall conservatism. As recently as the late Empire, Prussian pastors such as Paul Göhre and Friedrich Naumann had been formally censured for their efforts to work with members of the SPD. Even political liberals such as Naumann embraced a form of nationalist theology that proclaimed the unique God-given mission of the German people.Footnote ²¹

During World War I, this national political sentiment was strengthened, as even moderate preachers used their positions to promote the war effort. The experiences of the Weimar Republic pushed the Protestant churches even further to the Right. To many Protestants, unhappy with the national humiliation and the moral licentiousness of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi party seemed to offer a clear solution. Protestant voters occupied an important place in the Nazi coalition. And the Protestant-dominated German National People's Party played a key role in enabling Hitler's rise to power. Indeed, the churches welcomed the Nazi rule. The 1933 Easter message that was read in all of the congregations of the large Prussian State Church proclaimed:

Disillusionment set in only gradually as the Nazis attempted to “coordinate” the churches themselves, as they engaged in the anti-Christian campaigns of the late 1930s, and as the churches experienced the devastation and defeat of World War II. In the church struggle (Kirchenkampf) of the early 1930s, Protestant leaders were forced to defend their own autonomy, authority, and traditional teachings against encroachments from the rabidly pro-Nazi German Christian Movement.Footnote ²³ With their own rights and privileges under attack, many began to question their earlier political assumptions. But this was a gradual process. As late as 1939, with the outbreak of the war, Martin Niemöller, a leader of the radical wing of the confessing church, could still express his loyalty to the German nation, volunteering for service from his cell in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.Footnote ²⁴ The moderate bishops of the “intact” Lutheran State churches of Württemberg, Hanover, and Bavaria were generally even more conservative, working selectively with both the confessing church and with the pro-Nazi German Christian movement. At key moments—for example during the Nazi “euthanasia” campaign—some of these leaders took bold stands against the actions of the regime. But this was the exception rather than the rule.

Despite this mixed track record, however, the experiences of the church struggle and the actions of the confessing church became an important foundation for postwar political activity. Glossing over its general conservatism and passivity, postwar Protestant leaders promoted a myth of the confessing church as a source of more widespread and general resistance. Blurring the line between the defense of traditional theological positions and active resistance, for example, Franz Reinhold Hildebrandt, the president of the Evangelische Kirche der Union, could argue in 1954 that the confessing church had been at the center of resistance to the Nazis. This was because, he elaborated, “The confession and defense of the Gospel is at the same time the defense of humanity, human rights, and human freedom.”Footnote ²⁵

Drawing on the legacy of the confessing church and enjoying a privileged position in the eyes of the Western Allies, Protestant leaders entered the postwar period convinced of their moral and spiritual duty to play an active part in the political process. Despite their theological disagreements, Protestants on both the Left and Right of the church-political spectrum accepted many of the same underlying beliefs of Christian Democratic ideology. They saw Nazism as a form of atheism and nihilism, arising out of the breakdown of the old social and religious order.Footnote ²⁶ And they believed that Christian faith and Christian political activity represented the only way forward for the German nation. As Protestant leaders wrote in the “Word on the Responsibility of the Church for Public Life,” circulated by the church chancellery in late 1945, “The terrible outcome of the past twelve years has opened the eyes of wide circles inside and outside the church to the fact that the political community is safe from demonic degeneration only where the principles of Christian order make themselves felt in public life.”Footnote ²⁷ Hans Meiser, the conservative bishop of Bavaria, expressed these sentiments even more bluntly in a speech at the 1952 Kirchentag in Stuttgart: “Where Christ does not reign, things cannot help but fall apart.”Footnote ²⁸

Given these political assumptions, it is hardly surprising that the vast majority of religiously active Protestants supported the work of the early CDU/CSU. Meiser was only one of several Protestant bishops to lend official church support to the creation of the new interconfessional Christian party. Protestants from the conservative resistance circles saw it as their natural political home. And even many members of the radical Barthian faction of the confessing church, including Emmi Bonhoeffer, initially joined the CDU and CSU.Footnote ²⁹

Despite their broad agreement on the importance of Christian political activity, however, leading Protestants were divided over how this activity should be carried out. While the writers of the “Word on the Responsibility of the Church for Public Life,” envisioned an active form of Christian politics, “welcoming with goodwill the creation of a political party that is itself committed to Christian principles,” others were more cautious.Footnote ³⁰ Members of the radical faction of the confessing church, in particular, had come out of the church struggle with a deeply anti-hierarchical and anti-institutional view of the church. The confessing church had been founded on the belief that the only solid foundation for Christian association and activity was the “Word” and the person of Jesus Christ. As Karl Barth, the leading theologian of the confessing church, argued, building the church on any other foundation—whether nation, class, race, or political philosophy—was a form of idolatry.Footnote ³¹ Taken to its logical conclusion, this suggested that the Catholic political theology of the CDU/CSU, and its major Protestant equivalents, were flawed in the same way as the racist and nationalist theology of the German Christian movement. While the immediate demands of rebuilding caused even most Barthians to overlook these concerns at first, they continued to serve as a source of misgivings toward the religious politics of Christian Democracy.

These early misgivings are most apparent in the 1947 Darmstadt Word on the Political Course of Our People, drafted by members of the church's Brethren Council, which sought to keep alive the lessons of the church struggle. The signatories of the Darmstadt Word (a small minority even within the church's radical wing) expressed their frustration with the tacit acceptance of German division and the church's supposed identification of Christianity and the Christian tradition with the political forces of the United States and western Europe. At the same time, they also rejected the atheism and materialism of East German communism, calling for the church to find a religious and political “third way” between the forces of the Cold War. A few of the most radical members of the council, most notably the theologian Hans-Joachim Iwand, went so far as to suggest that the proper political role of the Christian churches was one of continual opposition to every party, system, and government.Footnote ³² Most, however, were unwilling to accept fully the anti-political implications of this way of thinking. Despite his focus on the dangers of political idolatry, even Iwand accepted several of the basic premises of Christian Democracy, elsewhere calling on German Protestants to take an active role in the faith-inspired transformation of German society.Footnote ³³

Despite these incipient disagreements, the immediate postwar years saw an explosion of public activity in the Protestant churches. While many church members, disillusioned by the experiences of dictatorship, war, and defeat, were inclined to withdraw from public life altogether, leaders from both sides of the church-political spectrum worked to combat this tendency. Traditional Lutherans and radical Barthians shared a broad agreement on the need for the churches to become more politically active, overcoming the supposed passivity of the past and embracing their public responsibility for social and political life in Germany.

Convinced that “without the activation of the laity, the Protestant church in Germany has no future,” one lay leader, Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff, took it upon himself to coordinate these efforts to strengthen the faith and public responsibility of German Protestants.Footnote ³⁴ In 1949, after several months of working with the church's lay organizations, he organized the first meeting of the German Protestant Kirchentag, with the goal of bringing together Protestants from all of the different theological and church political factions to cooperate in this task. As he explained to an April 1949 meeting of the Brethren Council:

Thadden's plans would grow into the largest public forum for Protestant Christians in Germany, and indeed one of the largest public gatherings of any kind during the 1950s, attracting tens and even hundreds of thousands to its annual (and later biannual) meetings.Footnote ³⁶

The need for a new kind of public and political activity in the churches was already a major point of emphasis at the first Kirchentag meeting held in late July and early August 1949. Partly, this was a matter of encouraging German Protestants to take their faith seriously in their personal and professional lives. In a meeting for Protestant lawyers, for example, the state prosecutor Hans Dombois spoke on the religious foundations of justice. Justice, he argued, was not something created by the state and its laws, but something created by God and made known to all people through natural revelation. In their traditional political teachings, German Lutherans had lost sight of this truth, letting the state decide what was just and what was not. This political passivity had led directly to the events of the Third Reich—including the attempted murder of an entire people. Now, Dombois argued, Christians needed to learn from their mistakes, holding the state accountable to God's higher law.Footnote ³⁷ Speakers made similar arguments in numerous other gatherings of Protestant professionals. Doctors were reminded that the Ten Commandments—and especially the injunction against murder—needed to be at the center of their professional identity. Teachers were urged to defend the important role of the churches in education. Business leaders were reminded of the relevance of Christian morality to social and economic policy. And engineers were warned to resist the loss of the human being through technology.Footnote ³⁸

Other parts of the program looked more directly at “high” politics. Speaking on “The Foundations of Protestant Activity,” the church superintendent Heinrich Held encouraged his listeners to reject the “pious” tendency toward political resignation, proclaiming, “[Jesus] is not just Lord of the church, he is also Lord of the world.”Footnote ³⁹ But he also cautioned against any kind of triumphalistic Christian politics. Political activity, he argued, was not a matter of pursuing one's own goals in the name of Christ, but of following God's prompting in the political realm.Footnote ⁴⁰ In a more concrete discussion of political principles, the CDU politician Paul Seeger called for Protestants to cooperate with Catholics in the defense of the Christian west against the threat of communism. But he also conceded that the goal of Protestant political activity was to train and equip Christian leaders in every political party. And Gustav Heinemann, at the time the Federal Interior Minister and a leading member of the CDU, argued that Protestants needed to move beyond their monarchical and authoritarian leanings, embracing democratic politics. While he believed that Christian principles should serve as the foundation of Germany's new political system, he also warned his listeners to guard against the abuses of state power.Footnote ⁴¹

Although these speakers had different political priorities, they all shared certain foundational assumptions about Christian political activity. Regardless of their attitude toward the politics of the CDU/CSU, all assumed that there were, in fact, universal theological and moral principles upon which all Protestants (and even all Christians) should be able to agree. They viewed Christian political activity as the straightforward task of putting these universal principles into practice. The early Kirchentag program reinforced this emphasis on unity and agreement, attempting to steer clear of divisive issues. When political disagreements did emerge, however, Protestants on both sides of the divide tended to view them in moral and theological terms, accusing their opponents of misunderstanding or betraying the Christian faith.

Rearmament Debates

This sense of political unity was fractured in late 1950 when Chancellor Konrad Adenauer publicly announced his plans for West German remilitarization. While some Protestant politicians, such as the Bundestag president Hermann Ehlers and Eugen Gerstenmaier, the vice chair of the Foreign Affairs committee, strongly supported these plans, others harbored deep misgivings. Members of the church's Barthian faction, including the Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann, prominent church leaders such as Martin Niemöller, and theologians such as Hans-Joachim Iwand and Helmut Gollwitzer, opposed these steps for a variety of overlapping reasons. On one level, they feared that West German rearmament represented a failure to learn the lessons of the Nazi past. Rather than rearming and integrating themselves into a new Western Alliance, they believed that Germans should be focusing on repentance for their crimes and reconciliation with their enemies. With their deep distrust of all political ideologies, many Barthians also believed that it was inappropriate for Germans to take sides in the emerging Cold War. They rejected the conservative ideology of the Christian west, which sought to identify Christianity with anticommunism. And—with a great deal of popular support—they argued that rearmament reinforced German division, making reunification much less likely, while contributing to the likelihood of a new world war on German soil.Footnote ⁴²

The leaders of the Kirchentag sought to downplay these disagreements in their meetings, focusing instead on the ideas that continued to unite German Protestants. In the charged political atmosphere that followed Adeneauer's rearmament announcement, however, they could not entirely avoid controversy. Their plans for the second annual Kirchentag, to be held in Essen in August 1950, emphasized the importance of Christian community and social integration, focusing especially on the plight of refugees and expellees from the east. While most discussions centered on the need for the churches to provide a new spiritual “Heimat” for the German people and on the concrete ways in which Protestants could provide social help to the displaced and marginalized, the Kirchentag leaders were not able to prevent the rearmament controversy from rearing its head. This was especially true since the 1950 Kirchentag in Essen followed immediately on the heels of a conference of the leadership of the EKD, also held in Essen, where the Protestant response to Adenauer's rearmament proposals was the main topic of discussion. To those who expected the conference to take an unequivocal stance against rearmament, a realistic possibility given the views of most of the Protestant public, this meeting was a major disappointment. While the leaders of the church affirmed the rights of conscientious objectors to avoid military service, they refused to adopt any unified position on the main rearmament issue. Frustrated by their failure to win the support of the church leadership, the opponents of rearmament took advantage of the Kirchentag to take their position directly to the public.Footnote ⁴³

Speaking at the Kirchentag on the integration of expellees and refugees into West German society, Heinrich Albertz, the Refugee Minister of Lower Saxony (and one of the few prominent Protestants in the SPD), lashed out at the government's plans for a West German military, contrasting defense spending with social welfare and the pursuit of security with the pursuit of social justice. Albertz argued that remilitarization would heighten the tensions between the east and west, making reunification less likely. And he concluded, “Germany can in no way be defended by a security budget, rearmament, or similar measures; on the contrary, it can only be defended through social justice.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Later in the same work group, Klaus von Bismarck, the social director for the Westphalian State Church, offered a brief response. Agreeing on the importance of social justice, Bismarck nevertheless minimized the threat posed by rearmament. “I am personally convinced,” he argued, “that if we soberly contemplate our situation, we Christians have no reason to speak fearfully of the threat of the coming German rearmament.” And he cautioned against letting the rearmament debate get in the way of more important priorities, such as Protestant political cooperation for the creation of a better society.Footnote ⁴⁵

In order to provide political balance to Albertz's attacks on the government, the Kirchentag president Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff—himself a supporter of the government's plans—also invited the CDU politician Eugen Gerstenmaier to give a last-minute response. In his presentation, Gerstenmaier defended rearmament as a necessary, defensive measure. It was not an act of aggression, but a defense of “Christian values” against the threat posed by communist aggression.Footnote ⁴⁶ Popular sentiment at the Kirchentag meeting was clearly closer to the position of Albertz than to Gerstenmaier. According to the latter's recollections, his efforts to defend the government's rearmament policies were met with a “shocked” response by members of the audience.Footnote ⁴⁷

Just weeks after the 1950 Kirchentag, the rearmament controversy became much more heated. Over the previous year, the highest-ranking Protestant in the government, Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann, had clashed with the chancellor on numerous occasions on issues related to inter-German policy. Now angered by Adenauer's failure to consult with the cabinet regarding the rearmament process, convinced that remilitarization represented a failure to learn the lessons of the Nazi past, and afraid of its ramifications for inter-German relations, Heinemann threatened to resign his position if Adenauer went ahead with his plans for rearmament.Footnote ⁴⁸ Since the CDU was scheduled to hold its first national party congress in October 1950, and the appearance of interconfessional unity was imperative, Adenauer tried to forestall a public break with Heinemann. The activities of leading Protestant opponents of rearmament made this difficult, however. On October 4, Martin Niemöller, the de facto leader of the church's Barthian faction, sent a letter to the chancellor, signed by thirty-eight other veterans of the Confessing Church, in which he accused the government of engaging in a conspiracy with the Americans to force immediate West German rearmament, a process that he characterized as the “rape of our people.” When Heinemann refused to repudiate this letter, Adenauer accepted his resignation, effective October 10, 1950.Footnote ⁴⁹

Following this break, both government supporters and opponents sought to mobilize the Protestant public behind their positions. Recognizing the risk that Heinemann's resignation posed to CDU unity, Adenauer launched an immediate public relations campaign designed to rally Protestant support for the government by characterizing his critics as communist sympathizers. In late October, for example, at the first national Party Congress of the CDU, he suggested that Niemöller's actions were making the western Allies uncomfortable, but had doubtless been greeted “with massive acclaim by the SED.”Footnote ⁵⁰ And he rallied Protestant delegates at the party congress to declare their unanimous condemnation of Niemöller's statements.Footnote ⁵¹ Protestant politicians, such as Hermann Ehlers and Eugen Gerstenmaier, began to make a more concerted effort to organize Protestant support behind the government, taking the first steps that would lead to the creation of a Protestant Working Group (Evangelische Arbeitskreis) within the CDU. Over the next year, leading Protestant clergy and lay leaders who supported the government's position (or, at least, opposed the positions of Niemöller and Heinemann) also began to organize, with Kirchentag president Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff; Hanoverian State Bishop Hanns Lilje; and Eberhard Müller, the director of the Protestant Academy at Bad Boll, founding the Kronberger Kreis in fall 1951 as a counterweight to the influence of the Niemöller faction.Footnote ⁵²

Protestant opponents of rearmament also sought to rally support for their position. In late October 1950, Niemöller met with SPD Chairman Kurt Schumacher to discuss the possibility of coordinating their efforts against rearmament. While Niemöller and Schumacher opposed rearmament for quite different reasons (Schumacher's opposition was much more qualified and tactical than Niemöller's), they did agree that the government was acting irresponsibly and undemocratically by embarking on such a massive policy change without holding new elections. They also agreed to cooperate in mobilizing the public against rearmament in a massive grassroots campaign involving not only the SPD and churches, but also the trade unions, veterans' associations, and expellee and refugee organizations. At this point, however, the SPD remained focused on electoral politics rather than grassroots organizing efforts, a strategy that seemed to be vindicated by their significant gains in the state elections of late 1950.Footnote ⁵³

This controversy quickly spilled over from national politics into church politics, threatening the efforts of church leaders to maintain the common Protestant front that had emerged in the immediate postwar years. In the midst of this growing controversy the church leadership remained divided. In its November 1950 meeting, the council of the EKD affirmed the importance of the rearmament debate and declared its respect for Heinemann's decision to resign his position while “regretting” the tone and sharpness of Protestant attacks on the government and its policies. Officially, they maintained a position of neutrality, refusing to offer church sanction to either political faction.Footnote ⁵⁴ In this atmosphere both opponents and supporters of the government's policies continued to carry out their debate in the press and public forums such as the Kirchentag. To many Protestant leaders, this atmosphere of political divisiveness posed a serious threat to the overriding mission of the churches in postwar German society. Rather than promoting public responsibility and Christian unity for the transformation of German society, the churches were instead tearing themselves apart. As the Kirchentag president Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff wrote to Klaus von Bismarck shortly after Heinemann's resignation, the church now needed to engage in “extensive foundational deliberations” about its relationship to national politics. Thadden went on to express his fear that ordinary church members would become politically confused without a unified leadership, ultimately choosing to withdraw from the political sphere altogether.Footnote ⁵⁵

Since the Kirchentag was dedicated to building bridges between the different factions within the Protestant church and between Protestants in the two German states, the rearmament controversy provided a constant subtext for its meetings during the 1950s. As a gesture of German Protestant unity across the iron curtain, the 1951 Kirchentag was held on both sides of the divided city of Berlin. To gain permission from the East German regime to hold this meeting, Kirchentag leaders had to agree to give anti-rearmament speakers such as Heinemann and Martin Niemöller prominent places on the program. Indeed, East German officials hoped that the Berlin Kirchentag would provide them with a major propaganda victory, highlighting the aggressive militarism of the West German state and the “peaceful” nature of the GDR. Fearing this outcome, the West German regime also offered behind-the-scenes financial support, hoping to ensure a balanced political program. Sharing these fears, more conservative Protestant leaders such as Eugen Gerstenmaier and Hans Asmussen criticized the politicization of what ought to be a purely religious gathering.Footnote ⁵⁶

At the Berlin Kirchentag, Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff and the other Kirchentag leaders went out of their way to downplay any political significance that the meeting might have. Speaking at a press reception before the Kirchentag, Thadden admitted, “We are also clear that the Kirchentag will bring us into dangerous proximity with various propagandistic tendencies and that, perhaps, there will be attempts here and there to see political direction in words and thought processes that are intended to be understood in decidedly Christian terms.”Footnote ⁵⁷ He went on to urge reporters to resist this temptation, asking them to focus on the Kirchentag's role in mobilizing Protestants and equipping them for public service, not on the divisive political issues that were dividing the church.

Other speakers followed this lead. Instead of addressing the rearmament debate directly, its opponents couched their misgivings in theological language, taking aim at the Christian political ideology upon which the CDU/CSU had based its policies. In his opening sermon, for example, Martin Niemöller attacked the “propaganda” of the Christian west, arguing that a true Christian politics would be based on the “brotherhood” of all peoples, classes, and nations. Rejecting the idea that Christianity offered a comprehensive social model, he argued, “The current conditions in the so-called ‘Christian world’ are just as grim as in the rest of humanity, at least as grim…. We have no formula and no program at our disposal, and here at the Kirchentag we must not engage in propaganda for ourselves and our concerns.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Speaking in another work group on common misconceptions of the church, Gustav Heinemann was even more direct. “We hear a lot of talk,” he argued, “about the ‘Christian west’ and the need for defense against ‘anti-Christian powers’ … But what stands behind these slogans? A Christian vocabulary by itself is not binding on us.”Footnote ⁵⁹ The same theological perspective dominated at a Kirchentag meeting sponsored by the Protestant Men's Work, where Heinemann and Niemöller spoke side by side with their political opponent, the CDU Bundestag President Hermann Ehlers. Here Heinemann and Niemöller emphasized the Christian duty to promote reconciliation between all enemies. Ehlers agreed in principle, arguing against giving in to hate and propaganda in both foreign and domestic political disputes, and encouraging enemies to resolve their differences without resorting to violence. But he also called for an honest appraisal of contemporary conditions that did not whitewash the abuses of the East German state or simply push them aside.Footnote ⁶⁰

The rearmament debate within the churches was addressed much more explicitly at the 1952 Kirchentag in Stuttgart. In part this was a response to Stalin's overtures during the previous year, which suggested that German reunification might be possible if the West German state could avoid becoming entangled in the Western Alliance. To many Protestants, the government's rejection of this possibility only confirmed Adenauer's lack of seriousness on the issue of German reunification; however, the earnest moral tone of the anti-rearmament speeches at the 1952 Kirchentag was also a result of Stuttgart's symbolic resonance for members of the Protestant Left. In 1945 in Stuttgart, at the second meeting of the provisional council of the EKD, Protestant leaders had shocked their constituents by issuing a bold statement in which they recognized the churches' own guilt for the crimes of the Nazis. To members of the Barthian faction, who had been the driving force behind this declaration, the parallels between this Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt and the rearmament debate were clear. Whereas the churches had been willing to take a bold, unpopular moral stance in 1945, they now seemed to have lost their nerve.

Speaking before an audience of 200,000 people at the Kirchentag's main assembly in Stuttgart, Gustav Heinemann made this parallel explicit, equating opposition to rearmament with repentance for the crimes of the Third Reich. In the same way, he argued, that the church's 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt had taken a clear stance in favor of repentance, rejecting self-justification and defensiveness, the church was now called to speak with one voice on the issue of West German rearmament. Unfortunately, the church was too internally divided to offer this unified witness. “But this,” Heinemann argued, “binds us even more strongly to take personal responsibility. For my part, for a variety of reasons, and with many of you, I say: No to rearmament in Germany!”Footnote ⁶¹ In another speech to an audience of 8,000 in the Kirchentag's political work group, the theologian Helmut Gollwitzer reiterated this argument. Affirming the responsibility of all Christians to be politically active citizens, Gollwitzer rejected the Catholic political tendency to submit to the political opinions of the church authorities. And he called attention to the horrible crimes and atrocities that Germans had committed under the Third Reich, arguing that German guilt could not be separated from the question of rearmament. “Shouldn't we be concerned,” he asked, “that with uniforms and weapons, our people, still deeply sick, will once again be vulnerable to the lurking dangers of revenge, megalomania, the lust for power, the violation of peoples, bondage, and inhumanity?”Footnote ⁶² While Gollwitzer also acknowledged that church leaders were divided on this question, he argued that repentance and reconciliation, not national self-assertion, had to be at the center of any Christian foreign policy.Footnote ⁶³

Later in the same work group, the CDU Bundestag president Hermann Ehlers responded by laying out the foundational principles of Christian political “realism,” contrasting the concrete responsibilities of government with the critical agenda of the anti-rearmament movement. Because all human endeavors were temporary and provisional, he argued, people sometimes needed to accept provisional political solutions, such as German division. The state and its representatives had a duty to act, even in the midst of controversy. Christian politicians had a duty to scrutinize their own opinions and actions carefully and to listen to their opponents, but they also had an obligation to do what they believed was right. No Christian could impose the dictates of his or her own conscience on another. Christians had to be realistic in their assessment of their political circumstances, recognizing important differences between the systems of the west and east. And, although they were called to reject hatred and unnecessary violence, they also needed to avoid confusing theological principles with policy prescriptions. In short: West German rearmament was not motivated by a hatred of the communist east or the desire to wield geopolitical power, it was a reasonable response to the basic political realities in which West Germany found itself.Footnote ⁶⁴

The rearmament controversy within the Protestant churches reached its crescendo in 1953. Having finally resigned from the CDU, Gustav Heinemann ran in the 1953 Bundestag elections at the head of the new All German People's Party (Gesamtdeutche Volkspartei, GVP) on a platform devoted almost exclusively to the anti-rearmament position. Enjoying considerable support from the anti-rearmament faction in the Protestant churches, this new party seemed to pose a serious threat to the CDU's grip on the Protestant electorate. The SPD continued to campaign in 1953 on the anti-rearmament platform, although some reformers made efforts to moderate the party's stance. The CDU and CSU, for their part, tried to frame the election as a choice between naïve neutralism and clear-sighted political realism. On the one hand, they trumpeted the government's success in acquiring greater national sovereignty through their cooperation with the western Allies. On the other hand, they attacked their opponents as pure obstructionists at best and as communist sympathizers at worst.Footnote ⁶⁵ The 1953 Kirchentag, held in Hamburg just weeks before the elections, took place in a charged political environment. To deescalate the tensions within the church, regular speakers such as Heinemann and Ehlers were intentionally left off the program. But, even so, members of the Kirchentag leadership worried that Heinemann's political allies such as Niemöller and Gollwitzer would engage in inappropriate political activity.Footnote ⁶⁶

Indeed, while Niemöller avoided direct agitation in his speech to the political work group, he made his preferences abundantly clear. Speaking on the topic of “Our Nation among the Nations,” he opened by reminding his listeners of their own guilt for the activities of the Nazis and their own complicity in Germany's long tradition of dangerous nationalism. Describing their postwar suffering and division as God's punishment against the German nation, he called on his listeners to embrace a wholly different form of national identity.

Voters in 1953 faced a clear choice between the neutralism of the GVP, the more qualified anti-rearmament position of the SPD, and the continuing anti-communism and western integration policies of the CDU/CSU. Despite the impassioned appeals of church leaders such as Niemöller, they decided overwhelmingly for the CDU/CSU and the policies of the government. With 45.2 percent of the vote, the CDU dramatically expanded upon its majority. Just as important, with the addition of the CDU/CSU's coalition partners the government had attained the two-thirds majority necessary to amend the Basic Law, clearing up the last remaining legal hurdles to rearmament. The SPD, by contrast, was reduced to only 28.8 percent of the vote, while Heinemann's GVP attained a miniscule 1.2 percent. Although it would take until 1955 to work out all of the details, West German rearmament was now a foregone conclusion.Footnote ⁶⁸

Toward Pluralism

The 1953 election was an important turning point in West German politics, with significant implications for the political attitudes of the Protestant public. Before 1953 the CDU/CSU had been forced to compete for the loyalties of Center-Right voters (and especially conservative Protestants) with a wide variety of smaller conservative and nationalist parties. In the elections of 1953, however, most of the CDU/CSU's gains came at the expense of these smaller right-wing parties. With his focus on anticommunism and his push for West German sovereignty, Adenauer had finally succeeded in winning over the bulk of these conservative, middle-class Protestants who had previously kept their distance from the CDU.Footnote ⁶⁹ This political achievement was confirmed in 1957 when the CDU/CSU, campaigning on the legacy of Adenauer's accomplishments, achieved the first absolute majority in postwar West German history. Stunned by these defeats and forced to fight a rear-guard battle, the opponents of rearmament were now divided. Should they campaign to reverse Adenauer's increasingly popular rearmament policies, or should they work within the existing framework to ensure that a remilitarized West Germany would not repeat the mistakes of earlier German history? Within the SPD, a group of moderates such as Max Brauer, the mayor of Hamburg; Georg August Zinn, the Minister President of Hessen; and the Bundestag deputy Fritz Erler pushed for the latter course of action. At the same time, however, other party members committed to a principled pacifist position continued their stiff opposition to the government's foreign policy.Footnote ⁷⁰

Over the course of the late 1950s, Protestants unhappy with the government's positions began to develop contacts with both of these factions in the SPD. This would have been unthinkable in the late 1940s or early 1950s when even most left-leaning Protestants remained committed to the basic premises of Christian Democracy, including the re-Christianization of German society and the rejection of the “materialism” and “atheism” of both the Nazis and the SPD. By the late 1950s, however, the success of the CDU/CSU in consolidating its support on the German Right had begun to generate a backlash. Alienated from an increasingly conservative CDU/CSU and working more and more closely with the SPD Left to organize grassroots opposition, it is relatively unsurprising that left-wing Protestants such as Heinemann and Gollwitzer eventually found their way to the SPD.Footnote ⁷¹ Many liberal and moderately conservative Protestants also began to find common ground with members of the SPD's moderate, reformist faction. This was especially true as West Germany's foreign policy debates shifted from the broad question of whether rearmament was acceptable to narrower questions about the nature of West German military policy. In debates over the rights of conscientious objectors and the possibility of the Bundeswehr acquiring nuclear arms, even many otherwise conservative Protestants found themselves closer to the positions of moderate voices in the SPD than to those of conservative Protestant ministers in the CDU/CSU.

At the same time, this growing political pluralism forced West German Protestants to confront a host of fundamental political questions. Political discussions in the early postwar period, as seen, for example, at the first several Kirchentag meetings, had focused on principles on which all Protestant leaders could agree, especially on the need for Christians to overcome their politically passive tradition, taking an active role in public life. As political divisions within the church hardened, however, and as some Protestant leaders began to forge closer ties to the SPD, Protestants were forced to rethink some of their basic assumptions. If there was no one Christian political ideology, for example, then what would Protestant politics look like? At the Kirchentag meetings of the early 1950s, most Protestant leaders responded to emerging political divisions by working to downplay their differences and avoid controversy. Many responded to the heated debates over rearmament and other issues by longing for an earlier and simpler time before the age of mass politics, when political leaders could work out their differences in private. But, over time, they came to see open political disagreement as a necessary, even healthy aspect of a functioning democratic system.

Several of the first Kirchentag discussions to look explicitly at the questions of political disagreement and pluralism took place in the charged political atmosphere of 1953. Speaking at the press reception at the beginning of the 1953 Kirchentag, Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff emphasized the fact that German Protestants were not wedded to any one political party. He affirmed, however, that whatever their political views, they did have a duty as citizens to take part in the upcoming elections.Footnote ⁷² A more pluralist perspective was also apparent in the prominent role given to Max Brauer, the mayor of Hamburg and a member of the SPD's moderate Bürgermeister wing, who spoke at both the Kirchentag reception for politicians and at the opening youth rally. Delivering his remarks to 19,000 young Protestants, Brauer advocated respectful relations between church and state, premised on the idea that they operated within separate spheres of life. Brauer also took care in his remarks to differentiate his views strongly from the East German church policy of the SED, warning that the state had no right to regulate religious worship and assembly.Footnote ⁷³ The Kirchentag's political reception also featured the reading of greetings from President Theodor Heuß, who could not be present, but who emphasized Protestants' unity in religious faith, whatever their disunity at the polls. And CDU Interior Minister Robert Lehr, who had replaced Heinemann, spoke on the importance of Catholic-Protestant cooperation, especially in crafting social and family policy.Footnote ⁷⁴

At the suggestion of Klaus von Bismarck, the political work group of the 1953 Kirchentag was also devoted explicitly to the question of political disagreement in the Federal Republic. Reflecting the struggle of German Protestants to come to terms with modern democratic politics, this discussion, entitled “What Can Decontaminate Our Communal Life?,” was marked by two quite different approaches to political conflict and pluralism. Speaking first, Theodor Paul Pfizer, the mayor of Ulm, blamed the breakdown of the old middle-class political tradition for the divisiveness of present-day politics. Unlike this older form of politics, carried out by educated elites, modern politics was being destroyed by the influence of mass parties and interest groups that only cared about the advancement of their own agendas. In a society that was no longer organically grown, he argued, “people thrown together by fate have increasingly little sense of what connects them, of their common responsibility.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Divided into these groups, they were no longer capable of making fine political distinctions, instead seeing the whole world in black and white. And this led them to prioritize the good of their own political party over the common good, opening the door to a whole array of lies, tricks, and political deception. Since parties thought of nothing except winning the next election, they abandoned any sense of civil courage in favor of pure political calculation, making real compromises and agreements impossible. Instead of this competitive system, Pfizer argued that political problems could be solved if the representatives of different interest groups could only be made to sit down and rationally work out their differences together.Footnote ⁷⁶

In the next presentation, the journalist and CDU politician Ernst Lemmer addressed many of the same issues, but instead of calling for a return to the elite politics of the past, he called upon his listeners inwardly to embrace modern democracy, with its liberal, pluralistic values. Lemmer began by defending democracy itself, arguing that although elections were unpleasant and messy, seemingly conducted to appeal to the lowest common denominator, they were the byproducts of valuable freedoms such as the freedom of speech and the freedom of thought. However unpleasant they might find some aspects of this system, he warned his listeners that it was better than the alternatives.Footnote ⁷⁷

Lemmer went on to argue that the basic problem of all modern politics was intolerance toward other peoples' opinions. This intolerance, he continued, referencing the activities of the U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, led to the politics of character assassination and defamation. Political intolerance also led to a breakdown in communication, as party members refused to listen to the representatives of other perspectives. And it caused party leaders to act more like functionaries than like democratic representatives of the people.Footnote ⁷⁸ If they wanted to overcome these problems, Germans needed to mature politically. This would require them to change their political attitudes fundamentally, becoming active citizens who embraced the new democratic system. “Even in a democracy,” he argued, “freedom and human rights are not just given out, picked up off the streets. They must be worked for at all times, and their realization must be vigilantly guarded.”Footnote ⁷⁹ To function, he continued, democracy required “inwardly free democrats,” who would not embrace mass politics, trampling minorities underfoot as conservatives had done during the 1920s, but would instead defend the rights of every citizen.Footnote ⁸⁰

The political work group returned to this theme for the next West German Kirchentag, meeting in Frankfurt in 1956.Footnote ⁸¹ Bringing together the topics of east-west relations and domestic political division, work group leaders selected the overarching theme of “coexistence.”

In the year leading up to the Frankfurt gathering, members of the Kirchentag leadership put these ideas into practice, working to forge better contacts with leaders of the regional and national SPD.Footnote ⁸³ And this rapprochement was clearly visible in several speeches at the Kirchentag itself. Speaking at the Kirchentag's political reception, the SPD Minister President of Hessen, Georg August Zinn defended the principles of religious tolerance for all people. But he also lavishly praised the work of the churches in promoting freedom and democracy, and he called on Protestants to work with the SPD to build a “united, free, and social Germany.”Footnote ⁸⁴ The SPD mayor of Frankfurt, Walter Kolb, also praised the Protestant churches for their role in promoting east-west reconciliation and opposing the government's plans to acquire nuclear arms.Footnote ⁸⁵

In the Kirchentag political work group, the liberal (FDP) politician and diplomat Karl Georg Pfleiderer offered a sharp critique of Adenauer's eastern policy, anticipating key elements of West Germany's later Ostpolitik in his calls for acceptance of German division and Polish-German reconciliation.Footnote ⁸⁶ And the legal theorist Theodor Eschenburg offered a qualified defense of the multiplication of political interest groups in a liberal democratic society. While Eschenburg faulted these groups for their narrow-mindedness and egotism, he argued that they played an important role in protecting individual freedoms. He also warned against giving in to the “discomfort” caused by “this disorienting abundance of overlapping organizations, with their more or less one-sided demands.” This, he argued, is what had led to the demise of the Weimar Republic: “They let their organizational freedom be taken away,” he argued, “and thereby lost their political and personal freedom as well.” Responding to Eschenburg, several conservative politicians were even more vehement in their defense of interest groups and political pluralism. As CDU Bundestag Deputy Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt argued, the existence of multiple interest groups was necessary “in a democracy, where the people are sovereign.” These groups occupied a “pre-political space, where discussion and opinion-forming are weighted more heavily than the representation of interests.” They needed to be encouraged, since they promoted individuality, not the subordination of the individual to the masses.Footnote ⁸⁷

By the end of the 1950s, political pluralism had become deeply entrenched in both the theory and practice of the Kirchentag. At the 1958 Kirchentag Congress—a smaller gathering of leaders and intellectuals designed to develop new themes and perspectives for future meetings—the SPD politician Adolf Arndt was selected to give the keynote address in the political work group. With the government's attempts to acquire nuclear arms as his backdrop, Arndt addressed the broader topic of “political illusions.” While members of the Protestant Right had earlier declared themselves political “realists,” disparaging their opponents in the rearmament debate as utopians or “enthusiasts” (Schwärmer), the tables had now been turned. The ideals of the “free world” and even “Christian responsibility,” Arndt argued, were blinding the government to the destructive implications of its defense policies. In a world threatened by nuclear annihilation, the de-escalation of conflict and opposition toward nuclear arms were the truly realistic policies. Following up on Arndt's presentation, other members of the work group defended the government's plans, arguing that the possession of nuclear arms (though not their use) might be acceptable as a form of deterrence. The group concluded, however, by recognizing the legitimacy of different opinions within the churches, affirming the responsibility of mature Christians to make up their own minds on contentious political issues, listening to their own consciences.Footnote ⁸⁸

This basic acceptance of political pluralism was even more central and more explicit in the program of the 1959 Kirchentag in Munich. Speaking in a work group devoted to clarifying the relationship between the church and state, for example, both Heinrich Lades, the CSU mayor of Erlangen, and Joachim Beckmann, the president of the Church of the Rhineland, were careful to limit the church's direct political role. While Lades focused much of his attention on the need for the church to provide spiritual leadership and moral guidance in the political sphere, he criticized the exclusive identification of the church with any one political party or movement, rejected any direct political role for the churches, and cautioned against seeing practical political disputes as matters of dogma.Footnote ⁸⁹ Beckmann went even further, emphasizing the spiritual rather than the political function of the church on earth. Naturally, he conceded, the church did have an indirect political responsibility, rooted in its spiritual task. But he sharply contrasted this legitimate function with the more robust Catholic conception of Christian politics:

Christian politics, then, would be as diverse as the church's membership itself. In their attempts to follow Christian principles, individual believers would come to different political conclusions. Apart from clearly immoral policies, such as those of the Nazis, the church had no right to impose a political agenda on its members.Footnote ⁹¹

This acceptance and, indeed, advocacy of political pluralism at the 1959 Kirchentag was driven home in another work group presentation entitled “When Christians are Political Opponents,” featuring the leading SPD member Fritz Erler and the CDU politician Edo Osterloh. Erler began his presentation by arguing that “the struggle between opinions” was the cornerstone of modern democracy. Under normal circumstances, political unanimity and consensus were neither attainable nor desirable. Instead, in a democracy, problems were worked out in the competition and interplay between competing parties. For too long the Protestant churches had failed to recognize this fact, seeking to create one unified Christian political ideology. But this approach was based on a fundamental confusion over the differences between dictates of conscience and mere opinions. “A well-founded opinion is still not a dictate of conscience,” he argued, “Opinions can be influenced and changed by arguments. Between different opinions there can be compromises. Conscience, by contrast, requires obedience, allowing no discussion or compromise.”Footnote ⁹²

Agreeing that every West German party contained Christians—and that no one party could speak exclusively on their behalf—Osterloh also called for Christian politicians to embrace humility. Attacking those who confused their own personal political views with underlying religious principles, he argued, “Faith does not lend us omniscience, and the Bible contains no formula for individual political behavior. Until the last day, even we Christians must wrestle over the correct path, recognizing that we all can err, as long as we live.” In the discussion period that followed their speeches, Erler concurred. In a joking reference to the circle of earnest Protestant politicians surrounding Gustav Heinemann, he proclaimed that he opposed the idea of “Christian parties” even against those who sought to create one out of the SPD. Despite the moralistic rhetoric of these Protestant socialists, he conceded, “it is still all right for Christians to vote for the CDU.”Footnote ⁹³