Thursday, September 4, 2025

It is the 4th of September 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

There are a few things that excite me more than the convergence of many of my personal and professional interests coalesce as they did on the evening of this, the 4th of September in 1989 in Leipzig in what was then “East Germany” or the “Deutsche Demokratische Republik” or “DDR”.

“East Germany” and the eastern section of Berlin within East Germany had come under the umbrella of the Soviet Union since the end of the Second World War. Stalinisation had left much of the Soviet Union and its satellites officially atheist- but what a state is “officially” is rarely representative of what it is on the streets, sometimes for good or ill.

The German church had already been through the ringer- from unification between Lutheran and Reformed in the 1800s (ask a friend in the Missouri Synod how this led their ancestors to flee to America) and then the Reichskirche- Hitler and all that…. To now an officially atheist state. The Christian Democratic Union had ceased to be either Christian or Democratic, and one of the last vestiges of the church in the land of Luther was the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Some had claimed that it was hopelessly liberal, but it had tried to retain its position as a church “within socialism”- a prophetic voice against the state, to whatever extent that was possible.

Enter a man with a prophetic call and name- he was Christian Führer, a Saxon Lutheran minister called to the famous Nikolaikirche in Leipzig in 1980. Even in the “godless” East, a church like this had cache- it was one of the region's oldest and largest and had once been the parish for Johann Sebastian Bach, whose St. John’s Passion debuted here when he was church organist and cantor.

Pastor Führer began to lead peace prayers on Monday nights in the eighties from his Nikolai Church. Part of his rationale was to open the famous church to anyone who wanted to pray for peace, including radicals, Christians, and non-Christians alike— he recounted:

I suddenly realized that if we were to open our doors for these types, the communists would no longer be able to say the church was a museum, a place for old ladies to die. The church could again become a grassroots counter-movement.”

The movement, like many anti-Soviet movements in the East during the 80s, both picked up momentum and were throttled. Things would be under scrutiny as the 80s came to a close and the 40th Anniversary of the DDR brought attention to the East.

Early in 1989, to keep foot traffic from the Nikolaikirche and the Monday prayer services, the Stasi (German secret police) erected barriers. They had the opposite effect, however, as the people decided to go precisely where they were told not to go.

Monday evenings at Nickolaikirche for the Friedensgebete (peace prayers) became a flashpoint. Later in 1989, Western journalists and cameras were allowed in to film at the Leipzig Summer Festival. It was on this, the 4th of September, that two women at the prayer service, in front of the western cameras, decided to unfurl their contraband sign calling for a free country for a free people. This was the beginning of the Montagsdemonstrationen in der DDR- the Monday Demonstrations, which grew out of the prayer service at the Nikolaikirche.  

You can find footage of this on YouTube- you can see this and then the events at the church one month later. The 7th of October marked the 40th anniversary of the DDR, and that Monday, the 9th, there were plans to continue the Montagsdemonstrationen, but the government had threatened, according to one source, to put down the protests by any means necessary. And it was just months earlier in June that the world had seen such threats come to fruition at Tiananmen Square.  Despite being warned not to show up, thousands came to the church. Then tens of thousands began to march in Leipzig, while Hundreds of Thousands joined them across Germany. Within a month, the wall came down and unification was on its way- the Cold War would be over and could thank a prayer service at the Nikolaikirche  

 The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and a well-known praise of our Creator from Psalm 139:

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!

    How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,

    they would outnumber the grains of sand—

    when I awake, I am still with you.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 4th of September 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by the Christian Führer of St John’s Lutheran UAC in Random Lake; he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who always says “DDR” and “Wittenberg,” and it feels weird not to, but you don’t have to… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.