In this crisp volume, we find a focused, careful account of Barmen in its historical context and a circumspect parsing of what the Barmen Declaration can and cannot promise us today. . . . As I read this volume explicating Barmen, this lesson stands up most of all: Barmen is inspiring, but it is also a slow work, enabled by decades of faithful training and ministry before the time of crisis. Apart from that, Barmen would have remained simply a whisper floating on the Rhine.

Center for Barth Studies

As a rule Christians seldom know they are in trouble until it is too late to know the trouble they are in. That is why it is so important we have this book on the process that led Christians in Germany to the Barmen Declaration. From Barmen we learn how to discern pathologies that can only be diagnosed from a Christological perspective. This is a book we have long needed because it helps us see how difficult the process was that resulted in this extraordinary text. May it help us see where we are today.

Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University Divinity School

Bravo! These insightful, interrelated essays shed new light on the Barmen Declaration and its underlying, once-again urgent issue: how do we sustain independent, challenging interactions between the churches and the state, between true faith and patriotism?

Robert A. Krieg, author of Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany

[T]his volume provokes Christians and other people of good will to be inspired by the example of those who gathered in Barmen to counter all-too-comfortable religious accommodations to dictatorship.

John Francis Burke, Journal of Church and State