Barmen Declaration

The Barmen Declaration or the Theological Declaration of Barmen 1934 (German: Die Barmer Theologische Erklärung) was a document adopted by Christians in Nazi Germany who opposed the German Christian movement.

In the view of the delegates to the Synod that met in the city of Wuppertal-Barmen in May 1934, the German Christians had corrupted church government by making it subservient to the state and had introduced Nazi ideology into the German Protestant churches that contradicted the Christian gospel.

The Barmen Declaration includes six theses: "8.27 We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church in human arrogance could place the Word and work of the Lord in the service of any arbitrarily chosen desires, purposes, and plans."

(8.17) Rejecting domestication of the Word in the Church, the Declaration points to the inalienable Lordship of Jesus Christ by the Spirit and to the external character of church unity which "can come only from the Word of God in faith through the Holy Spirit.

One of the main purposes of the Declaration was to establish a three-church confessional consensus opposing pro-Nazi "German Christianity".