Church Secession in Germany
DESPATCHES from Berlin state that in that city alone 25,000 people withdrew their membership from the national Protestant state church during the month of December. In most of the German states, leaving the church is a somewhat difficult matter, since legal procedure is necessary in order for it to be accomplished, and any one in an official position is almost sure to lose his occupation by taking such a course. At the Berlin office where this business of secession is receiving attention, about fifty had to be added to the staff of officers and clerks in order to attend to the extra business. The church authorities are at their wit's end to know how to deal with the movement, and are arranging for meetings to protest against it. Among the causes assigned for the movement is the burden of church taxes, which in some instances amount to sixty per cent of the state income tax. In order to escape this, persons must be registered as "dissident" or "agnostic." The main reason, however, is a general dissatisfaction with the church itself and a series of quarrels over points of doctrine. It is held by many that the church's theory of life is absolutely antiquated, and that it pursues reactionary politics. In the month of November a number of meetings to forward the secession in Berlin were prohibited by the police. The religious world is coming to be agitated quite as strongly as the political and social world. In all of these movements there is an intensity that foreshadows something great and decisive. This unrest in the Protestant state church of Germany furnishes occasion for the papacy to point out the need there is for a great central governing body in religious affairs. The prophetic Word says conditions will finally reach the place where for a brief time all the world will wonder after the beast, and all will worship him, whose names are not written in the Lamb's book of life. When Christianity reasserted itself in the sixteenth century, it was based upon the Bible, and the Bible was believed and taught from Genesis to Revelation. Protestantism to-day, instead of affirming the complete Bible, is quibbling over it, and seeking to dissect it. And while in a political way it may at times appear to rise up strongly against Catholicism, yet it is destined eventually to be swept off its feet by the great Catholic power, and this surrender to Catholicism will be for no other reason than that the great mass of Protestants have lost their hold upon the definite Word and are not standing strongly by the great principles of its living text.