Karl Barth and the Barmen Declaration: A Theologian's Resistance

Rev. C•D•F• Warrington, M.Div.
By Rev. C•D•F• Warrington, M.Div.

Ordained Minister, M.Div.

May 16, 2026

2 min read

barth
Oil painting of Karl Barth writing the Barmen Declaration by candlelight with shadows of the Nazi regime looming outside the window

In May 1934, Reformed and Lutheran pastors gathered in the German city of Wuppertal-Barmen. They came not for a conference but for a confrontation - with a church that had, in their view, surrendered its soul to Adolf Hitler. The document they produced, the Theological Declaration of Barmen, was drafted almost entirely by one man: Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed theologian who had already been fighting German Protestant capitulation to National Socialism for years.

The German Christian Movement

By 1933, a movement called the Deutsche Christen (German Christians) had gained control of major Protestant church bodies in Germany. They combined nationalist politics with liberal Protestant theology and explicit Nazi ideology. They sought to purge the Old Testament from Christian Bibles, remove Jewish elements from the liturgy, apply the Aryan Paragraph to the church (excluding Christians of Jewish descent from ministry), and subordinate the church's message to the Nazi state's demands.

Barth's Theological Preparation

Barth had spent the previous fifteen years arguing against natural theology - the idea that human reason or cultural experience can provide an independent foundation for Christian knowledge of God. For Barth, God is known only through God's own self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This was not an academic position. It was, in 1934, a political one: if the church's theology is grounded in a 'word of God' that includes the Fuhrer's voice alongside Scripture, the church has no principled basis to resist.

Writing the Declaration

Barth drafted the Declaration's six theses the night before it was to be adopted, reportedly completing the final version at 2:00 in the morning. Each thesis pairs a positive affirmation drawn from Scripture with a rejection of a specific German Christian error. The structure was both theological and polemical: we confess this; we reject that. There was no room for ambiguity.

Barth was expelled from his professorship at the University of Bonn in 1935 and returned to Basel, where he taught until his death in 1968. But Barmen lived on - as a model of confessional resistance for churches facing political pressure in the decades that followed, and as a permanent reminder that the church's faithfulness requires not only piety but also the courage to say no.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What role did Karl Barth play in writing the Barmen Declaration?

Karl Barth was the primary author of the Barmen Declaration's six theological theses. When the Confessing Church synod met at Barmen in May 1934, Barth drafted the core text overnight. His theological framework — especially his insistence that Jesus Christ alone is the Word of God and that no political authority can claim the church's ultimate loyalty — shaped every thesis.

What was the Barmen Declaration responding to?

The Barmen Declaration was a response to the German Christian movement, which supported the Nazi regime and sought to align the German Protestant church with National Socialist ideology. The German Christians accepted Hitler's authority over the church, advocated excluding Jewish Christians from ministry, and accommodated Nazi racial theology. Barmen said no.

What is the central theological claim of the Barmen Declaration?

The central claim is that Jesus Christ, as attested in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God that the church must hear, trust, and obey in life and in death. No other source of revelation, no political leader, and no national identity can claim the church's ultimate loyalty. This is stated in the first thesis and underlies all the others.

Did Karl Barth suffer consequences for his role at Barmen?

Yes. Barth was a professor at the University of Bonn when he co-authored and signed the Barmen Declaration. He refused to take a civil servant's oath of loyalty to Hitler and was suspended from his professorship in 1934. He was expelled from Germany in 1935 and returned to Switzerland, where he continued to write and teach for the rest of his life.

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