Karl Barth. Paul S. Chung

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Karl Barth - Paul S. Chung


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The church retreat movement was carried out among Prussian social democrats on October 28, 1913. In all, 1,328 social democrats removed themselves from the Prussian Landes church. For Barth, the church as the state church was without a doubt a disadvantage compared with the watchman office of the old prophets. In his sermon of August 31, he even praised August Bebel, the chairman of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) who had died in Passugs, Switzerland, on August 13, 1913. According to Barth, if we regard a man like Bebel from a Christian standpoint, we must say that he gripped important points about what Jesus wanted much better, and followed Jesus more passionately, than most so-called Christians. Although Bebel made errors, Barth did not hesitate to declare that through him “a voice of God, an announcement of the coming Kingdom of God” could be heard.126

      Here Barth showed his interest in the history of two important industry plants, namely, the firm C. F. Bally in Schönenward and that of the Sulzer Brothers in Winterthur, both of which are still today considered great Swiss enterprises. Through collecting data, Barth became concerned about the life circumstances and conditions of his parishioners and comrades. Barth’s “Workers Question” was used already in winter 1913–1914 in Safenwil or in Aargau before his entrance to the party in 1915. We shall deal with Barth’s dossier later in more detail. In 1914 Barth spoke on “The Gospel and Socialism” and “The New Factory Act.” In a sermon in June 1914 about the Berne Exhibition (published in Neue Wege), Barth declared that “the evil of capitalism was the consequence of a world without God.” The Christian hope of a new world is to be brought into being by the living God. At the same time, Barth was critical of Friedrich Naumann. (Naumann was an important representative of social democracy in the German Protestant context. Early on, Barth was impressed by Naumann’s social activity. However, as Naumann became associated with the war policy of the German empire, Barth grew dismayed.) In Barth’s view, Naumann had made a political compromise and so no longer looked for something better beyond war and capitalism. For Barth, however, the sentence “God is” amounted to a revolution. Socialism was, therefore, a very important and necessary application of the gospel.

      Karl Barth and Die Hilfe

      With an invitation from Rade, Barth wrote a review of Die Hilfe which was published in Die Christliche Welt. Barth recognized the great service Die Hilfe had provided over the years with respect to practical social progress, unemployment insurance, trade unions, land, and housing reform. However, Barth noticed that Naumann was no longer capable of bringing to the fore the relevance of Christianity for political life.


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