Dietrich Bonhoeffer composed a number of talking points to refute what was known as the “Aryan Paragraph” in September of 1933. The paragraph excluded non-Aryans from civil service which was beginning to be adopted by German churches.

Currently reading: The Bonhoeffer Reader by Michael P. DeJonge 📚

The German Christians say: The church is not allowed to undo or to disregard God’s orders, and race is one of them, so the church must be racially constituted. We answer: The given order of race is misjudged just as little as that of gender, status in society, etc. . . . In the church, a Jew is still a Jew, a Gentile a Gentile, a man a man, a capitalist a capitalist, etc., etc. But God calls and gathers them all together into one people, the people of God, the church, and they all belong to it in the same way, one with another. The church is not a community of people who are all the same but precisely one of people foreign to one another who are called by God’s Word. The people of God is an order over and above all other orders. “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? . . . whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” [Matt. 12:48, 50]. Race and blood are one order among those who enter into the church, but it must never become a criterion for belonging to the church; the only criterion is the Word of God and faith. &10; &10;DeJonge, Michael P.; Green, Clifford J.. The Bonhoeffer Reader (Function). Kindle Edition.