Broadcasting Law and Gospel: Paul Tillich's Wartime Ministry to Nazi Germany

Abstract

During World War II, the German theologian Paul Tillich, then a professor at Union Theological Seminary, partnered with the United States’ organization Voice of America to deliver over 100 religious addresses in the German language into his homeland. In these broadcasts, Tillich utilized the Lutheran categories of Law and Gospel to identify and discuss the sins of the Nazis (and Hitler in particular) and to remind the German population that there was still hope in redemption. Remarkably, well before the war's end, Tillich argued for German collective guilt and the need for the atonement and expiation of the German people. He continually warned them of impending judgment and inescapable punishment – both human and divine – as the Allies advanced on the battlefield in a race toward Berlin. Yet Tillich often tempered this focus on judgment with an emphasis on the Gospel, the certain hope Germans have in God's salvation. This prism of Law and Gospel pervades the religious addresses. I will place these broadcasts in the context of the war, the wartime work of Voice in America, and what we know of other religious addresses delivered over the airwaves to Nazi Germany, to reveal how Tillich preached resistance to Nazi Germany.