Читать книгу Blessed Peacemakers - Robin Jarrell - Страница 48

13 May 1874—13 February 1971

Accepting the Challenge of Peace

In June 1953, East Berlin exploded. A couple of months earlier, Communist Party leader Walter Ulbricht, under pressure from the Kremlin, had announced an acceleration of the “Sovietization” of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Higher taxes would be levied, heavy industry would be promoted at the expense of food and consumer goods, and electricity would be rationed. East Berliners, already stretched to the breaking point by poverty, took to the streets in protest.

Ulbricht’s response was to declare martial law and crack down on dissident groups already under suspicion. One of them was the Young Congregations, a Christian evangelical organization. Clergy members were arrested, churches associated with the group were closed down, and affiliated students were expelled from schools. It was obvious to everyone that Ulbricht, an outspoken atheist, was using the riots as an opportunity to attack religious faith.

One man publicly protested the persecution. Emil Fuchs, a Lutheran pastor turned Quaker, lifelong Christian socialist and pacifist, and loyal (even if sometimes reluctant) supporter of the GDR, bucked the government line by defending the Young Congregations. Even more, he pled—fruitlessly, as it turned out—for a reversal of Ulbricht’s Sovietization agenda. A few years later, Fuchs, ever the gadfly, was more successful in his efforts to convince the GDR to allow young pacifists eligible for military conscription to perform alternative forms of nonviolent service.

Unusual for an East German socialist, Fuchs was convinced that the message of Jesus, if taken seriously, led to the establishment of an economically just social order and a world free of violence. He knew all too well the horror of warfare, having lived through both world wars as well as the crushing poverty that both caused and followed wars. He also knew about political persecution: he was imprisoned by the Nazis for helping refugees flee Germany, and he was always regarded with suspicion by the Stalinist leaders of the GDR. But through it all he never allowed his own misfortunes to blind him to the suffering of others. “Do not close your eyes before the sufferings of your neighbors,” he wrote. “Do not fear that it will destroy your happiness if you live in sympathy with them. No. Hold it [sympathy] fast; take it into your life.”

In fact, Fuchs believed that suffering for peace and justice is the challenge every Christian must face. Servility in the face of tyranny or oppression is never an option. “Let us hear the challenge of Christ. There may be hard disappointment and bitter suffering on the road he points to. He never promised quick or easy victory. Only by our suffering can we overcome prejudices bred in millions of people by the inability of Christians to speak to their times. Mahatma Gandhi led a great nation along his way of truth and came to a great creative success. When will the Christian conscience be strong enough to unite those who call themselves after Jesus in the building of a world of brotherhood? When will we be ashamed to call Christian those who trust in the sword?”