Anathema

We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.

-The Theological Declaration of Barmen, 1934

"The false doctrine," was the acceptance of Hitler's Nazism by German Christians.  The Barmen Declaration has made its way into The Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (USA), because it represents a moment in time when the church stood up and said enough.  Obviously, Karl Barth and the German Pastors that convened the in the Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church in Barmen in May of 1934 lost the battle.  Hitler got to do what Hitler wanted to do, but these words have made it through.  They have outlasted the Third Reich by over half a century and they will continue to travel with us as Confessing Church through the ages.

In the face of a challenge like Nazism the church sometimes stumbles, because we are sinners prone to the same fear and hatred as anyone else.  We do not always listen to the voice of Jesus of Nazareth or heed the movement of the Holy Spirit, or even simply act with compassion towards our fellow humans.

This is a description of the German context in 1933 provided as background to the Barmen Declaration by the Book of Confessions:

In January 1933, after frustrating years in which no government in Germany was able to solve problems of economic depression and mass unemployment, Adolph Hitler was named chancellor.  By playing on people's fear of communism and Bolshevism, he was able to persuade Parliament to allow him to rule by edict.

You know what happened next.  Notice the words in this description: "frustrating," "economic depression," "unemployment," "playing on people's fear" of others with different ideologies.  It's chilling, because it sounds so cussedly familiar.
Anathematizing is a cool word, it means you name what is wrong and you agree it is wrong.  Sometimes that comes long before ever figuring out what is right.  Often, great theological and cultural debates and movements begin with a complaint against something.  Martin Luther's 99 theses were essentially complaints about what needed fixed in the Roman Catholic church. Martin Luther King Jr's I Have a Dream, speech named segregation, inequality and racism as anathema to a truly just society.
Unfortunately, the naming of anathema in recent years has not been a unified activity in the church of Jesus Christ.  We have often engaged in internecine arguments, accusing one another of this heresy or that heresy.  Differing positions on moral issues like abortion, on social issues like homosexuality and marriage equality, on political issues like gun control or healthcare, have all distracted us from recognizing an evil that is now rearing it's head. We have been on and on about the symptoms and we have missed the underlying disease.
I am not dismissing the importance or the nuanced reality of any of the above debates, but there is something deeper and more sinister that we must rise up to call Anathema: the rule of Greed and Violence.
Without question people have differing opinions on how best to manage these idols, but the fact remains that they are, in fact, idols and they are the dominant idols of our age.  Their tools are dissociated individualism, the illusion of security, and most of all fear.
We are so fragmented by our differences of opinion that we cannot do what is needed in the hour of crisis: name the enemy.  The enemy hides and lets us take out our rage on its puppets: fundamentalists, terrorists, bigots, as the kids today say: Haters.  And in the long run we become what we fear, because we don't recognize the darkness in ourselves and confess.
We have this hope: that love casts out fear.  And this is where the church needs to stand right now: with love, because God is love.  We need to hear that Jesus is the example of how God loves the world, and we need to pay attention closely to his example.  The Barmen Declaration uses Scripture to call the church to this task, it refers to them as "evangelical truths," using the word evangelical in it's proper sense rather than as a pseudo-religious political descriptor.  One of these "good news" truths is Ephesians 4: 15-16:

Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body is joined and knit together.

This is who we need to be in such a time as this. This is the "form of our message" to follow the way of the cross and not the empire, to seek mercy and not vengeance, to love and not fear. To understand that Christ has conquered death and sin, and we are heirs to that victory. which gives us little excuse to be fearful, hateful and violent people defending against the infidel.  To be as such is to join the idolatry.
We have been here before.
We have actually lost a very similar battle to the one that is now raging through our national culture and politics.  Losing the battle to Hitler was disastrous and painful, but it was not the end.  The words of those who "rejected the false doctrine" named the evil anathema, even if they seemed futile in 1934, are now helpful to those who face the fear once again.  Have you ears to hear?