The ultimatum by the Obama Administration's Department of Health and Human Services to Christian church groups (and by implication Christian medical personal) to abandon their faith exposes further its increasingly totalitarian pagan character ("Fight over birth control," Jan. 26).
This state-against-the-church conflict increasingly resembles aspects of German church history of the 1930s. Until 1934, most German churches supported Chancellor Adolf Hitler'spromise to restore Germany'seconomy and honor. Soon, however, it became apparent that the state through its "leadership principle" was demanding that churches compromise their faith. Thus, on April 22, 1934, 5,000 pastors and laypeople gathered to form the "Confessing Church." The resulting Barmen Declaration authorized open resistance to the idolatrous state. From 1934 to the end of the war, a divisive church-state conflict ensued culminating in civil disobedience and the martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Politicians in both Annapolis and Washington should review history before mindlessly waging war upon the very groups that have endeavored to live in accordance with true social justice and charity.
Charles A Clough, Bel Air