The Church and the War. Karl Barth

of Martin Niemöller, first the “Pastors’ Notbund” (Emergency Union), and then, on a wider base, the “Confessional Church” (Bekennende Kirche). They attempted quite simply to defend the basic essentials of Christianity, the preaching of the Word and the order of the Church, against the strange new faith which was being imposed on them but which they could not accept as Christian. This gave their movement an essentially conservative character. That, we see now, was their limitation: they concentrated solely on one specific phase of Nazi religious and church policy.