Representing the 37 national councils of the World Alliance for International Friendship throughout the civilized world, the International Executive Committee of the Alliance has sent to the Protestant General Synod and other synods representing the churches of Germany a formal protest against Germany’s ban against ministers and other church officers of non-Aryan birth. A copy of the resolution adopted by the Committee at its meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, on September 21, was received today by the New York office of the World Alliance. The resolution follows:
“The International Executive Committee of the World Alliance, meeting at Sofia (September 14-21, 1933) taking note of the fact that racial discrimination in any part of the world, whether because of color of on any other grounds, constitutes a great danger to peace and the welfare of humanity, considers necessary an emphatic declaration, in which the super-racial character of the Gospel is avowed.
“As members of many churches representing cultures and coming from many lands, but all united in a common allegiance to our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess with shame-our many sins of transgression against our brothers of other races and color. In a feeling of brotherhood and responsibility with all the churches of the world, the Alliance, while recognizing the right of every country to safeguard the integrity of its own national life, is nevertheless deeply concerned by the treatment inflicted upon persons of Jewish origin and connection in Germany.
“We especially protest against those measures taken by the state which bear so heavily upon large numbers of the German citizens, and put the Jews into an inferior class, of society.
“We deplore the fact that the ‘Aryan Paragraph’ has been indorsed and reenacted by vote of the Prussian General Synod and other synods representing the churches of Germany, and thus by this means serious disabilities have been put upon ministers and church officers who by chance of birth are non Aryan.
“Against these actions and measures we earnestly protest, believing them to be; in their conception of race and race relations, contrary to the explicit spirit and teaching of the Gospel of Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Dr. Henry A. Atkinson of New York, General Secretary of the World Alliance, now in Geneva, was instructed to present the viewpoint of the churches, as represented by the World Alliance, to the League Assembly, if and when the question of the persecution of the German Jews arises.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
