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June 25
The Augsburg Confession, the Diary of a Young Girl, and the rainbow flag
David Barnhart
June 25, 2025
Augsburg, Germany, 2022. Own photo.
Today in 1530, church and political leaders in Germany presented the Augsburg Confession to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was the leader of German states. The Augsburg Confession was an attempt to codify the beliefs and practices of the new Protestant church, which would go on to become the Lutheran Church. The Augsburg Confession emphasized justification by grace through faith.
Today in 1947, the Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl was published.
And in 1978, the rainbow flag was first flown during the Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco. Here is a bonus photo: a bunch of stickers that we found in Germany three years ago during Pride month:
Reflection:
Article 27 of the Augsburg Confession states that “ungodly men and the devils [God] will condemn to be tormented without end.” The article also manages to include some antisemitic language and a repudiation of Anabaptists, for good measure. It’s as if we can’t talk about the God of Love without managing to squeeze in some hatred, just to be safe.
It’s worth noting that this confession was submitted to win political approval from a monarch. It’s almost as if aligning with political power automatically bends the church toward a violent and coercive god.
I’m not a fan of the doctrine of hell. I think it’s a monstrous idea that a loving God would punish finite sins with infinite torture, essentially making God into a devil. At the same time, I’ve heard enough stories that I do believe in a finite hell—on earth. Addiction is hell. Grief can be hell. Systemic oppression is hell. In my theology, Jesus’s objective was to save us from all of that. In That All Shall Be Saved, David Bentley Hart writes:
“Hell appears in the shadow of the cross as what has always already been conquered, as what Easter leaves in ruins, to which we may flee from the transfiguring light of God if we so wish, but where we can never finally come to rest—for, being only a shadow, it provides nothing to cling to (as Gregory of Nyssa so acutely observes). Hell exists, so long as it exists, only as the last terrible residue of a fallen creation’s enmity to God, the lingering effects of a condition of slavery that God has conquered universally in Christ and will ultimately conquer individually in every soul. This age has passed away already, however long it lingers on in its own aftermath, and thus in the Age to come, and beyond all ages, all shall come home to the Kingdom prepared for them from before the foundation of the world.”
Prayer: Liberating Christ, you went through hell to free us from the self-imposed hells and the suffering we manufacture. Bring healing and hope to this world and conquer hell completely in us, and through us. Amen.