Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung
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in light of the gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God. The socialist’s concern is in line with what Jesus wanted to do. “Leave the superficiality and the hatred, the spirit of mammon and the self-seeking, which also exists among your ranks, behind. . . . Let the faithfulness and energy, the sense of community and the courage for sacrifice found in Jesus be effective among you, in your whole life; then you will be true socialists.”97 As a pastor, Barth had to stand in the forefront of the class struggle. These writings reflect a belief that theology and social questions are not in conflict, but complement each other in light of the gospel. Theology and national economy, sermons and politics, are not separated from each other but belong together. Barth’s sense of the identification of God’s kingdom with true socialism—“real socialism is real Christianity in our time”—does not mean at this time that we can strictly identify our socialism with God’s kingdom through our utilization of God to serve human interests or to exploit God for human purposes. Rather we follow the movement of the kingdom of God, serving, believing, and obeying its promise for the poor, alienated and wrecked.98 “Jesus is more socialist than the socialist.” Seen from the divine side, the gospel is “wholly and completely a movement from above to below. It is not that we go to heaven, but that heaven comes to us.”99 For this reason, Barth did not agree with the manner in which socialists acted to attain their goal.
After this socialist speech, Barth was ridiculed and attacked sharply as an ignorant idealist by the manufacturer, Walter Hüssy, a nephew of the Safenwil church board president. His “Open Letter” (February 1, 1912) was printed on February 3 in the Zofinger Tagblatt. It declared Barth’s lecture to be “a long rabble-rousing speech, garnished with an incredible number of religious quotations,” and he heard from it the demand “Private property must fall—not private property in general, but private property as a means of production.”100 According to Walter Hüssy, what Barth wants is his ideal of a future state!101
Barth responded in “Answer to the open letter of Herr W. Hüssy of Aarburg on February 6, 1912,” by arguing that Hüssy’s response was a fundamental misunderstanding of his speech. Barth would carry on the fight with Hüssy stating, “despite the prevailing coldness, I enter the fray in my shirt sleeves rather than my frock coat and reply with equal clarity.”102 Against the charge that his lecture was “a ‘rabble-rousing speech’ with the purpose of ‘sowing discord between employer and employee,’” Barth clarified that his speech was directed objectively about capitalism as such, and it did not refer to specific capitalists.103 Barth’s response sounds harsh because he regarded Hüssy’s protest as “pathetically naïve.”104
Regarding the problem of private property, Barth’s idea was in line with the official program of the Swiss Social Democratic Party even although he was not yet a member. Barth explained that what led him, as a pastor, to the side of socialism lay “in the idea of a socialist state of the future.”105 His concise definition of capitalism reads: “The net profits of the common work of the entrepreneur and the worker now become the private property of the former, because he is the private owner of the means of production. This is the essence of the capitalist economic system.”106 Socialism fights against this economic system on grounds of inequality and dependence. The private profit that Hüssy stands for is opposed to the justice of socialism and the Bible.
Barth also wrote a letter to the father of Mr. Hüssy, Mr. Hüssy-Juri in Safenwil. In it Barth announced that his sharp response was not directed personally to either the father or the son. Barth was seeking to attack the economic system of capitalism objectively, not its particular, individualistic expressions. In the interest of the congregation, Barth hoped that his speech would not cause any disturbance to friendly relations between the pastorate of Safenwil and the house of Hüssy. Barth’s official answer was one of the clearest texts using Marxist argumentation emerging from a biblical paradigm. In protest of Barth’s attitude, the president of the Safenwil church board, Gustav Hüssy-Zuber, who was a cousin of Walter Hüssy, resigned.107
A number of attacks poured upon Barth in the Zofinger Tagblatt. The first “letter to the editor” (on February 12) was under the polemical headline “Concerning the Red Danger in Safenwil.” The writer sought “to catch Barth in the fly of his pants,” insulted him as “a Red Doctrinaire,” as “a Red Messiah,” as “the Messiah from Safenwil,” as “a combative little pope,” as “Mr. Trade Pastor,” and as “an Ivory Tower Wise Man.” The second anonymous letter (on February 14) with a more moderate tone was sent to the editors of the Zofinger Tagblatt.108 There was also criticism from Marburg about Barth’s lecture as “the superficiality of Barth’s theology!”109 However, Barth did not abandon his conviction that socialistic demands were to be understood as an indispensable part of the gospel and are completely dependent on the gospel for their realization.
Karl Barth and Socialist Activities
Barth’s Sunday sermon was attacked by the newspaper (in its edition of July 15, 1912), under the title “Pastoral Agitation: A sermon held this past Sunday in a congregation in our district.” The article states, “A certain pastor seeks to bring to life once again the times of the religious upheavals, even though in a modern, social-political dress.” “Finally, we would like to ask whether the church is the proper place for the pastor to express his political views. The great majority of our church-goers, free-thinkers alongside the social democrats . . . seek on this day, with more reason than their Shepherd demonstrates, an hour of edification and meditation. That is true worship, Dear Pastor, and not what you dare to offer us!”110
This attack of the Zofinger Tagblatt was echoed by the Aargauer Volksblatt which was close to the Catholic–conservative People’s Party. Under the title “A Terrible Crime” (in the edition of July 16, 1912) it reads: “In the district of Zofingen a reformed Pastor gave a sermon last Sunday, in which he, referring to the Sunday Gospel of the Reformed Lectionary (Matthew 5, about the self-righteousness of the Pharisee), castigated the pharisaic in political life, and illustrated it by pointing to the hollowness, half-heartedness and inconsequentiality of certain people, whose greatest lie is their claim that they are ‘free-thinkers.’”111
In the spring of 1913 there occurred a conflict with the owner of the textile firm Hochuli and Co. in Safenwil. In the minutes from a meeting on February 6, 1913, we read: “The firm of Hochuli and Co. complains in a letter of Jan. 28 about the scheduling of the confirmation classes in the last three months of the instruction year . . . The secretary is asked to give the Firm Hochuli and Co. written information, with reference to 44 of the Aargau Church Order, which prescribes for the Summer 2-3 hours and for the Winter 3-4 hours per week.” However, Hochuli responded that he would no longer accept any more confirmation youth in his factory. Barth proposed, for the sake of peace, that during the final three month, the three hours per week be one and a half hours twice. The church board adopted the provision extending from May to New Year’s twice a week an hour-and-a-half session. And the factory was notified of this regulation. We shall deal with this affair in more detail later because this conflict accompanied the whole period of Barth’s pastorate.
In a sermon on the cleansing