Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche) was a Christian resistance movement in Nazi Germany. In 1933 the Gleichschaltung forced protestant churches to merge into the Protestant Reich Church and support Nazi ideology. Opposition was forced to go "underground" to meet. In 1934, a group of pastors and congregations re-affirmed in the Barmen declaration the focus of the church on Christ and their opposition against Nazi ideology.
Many of the leaders of the Confessing Church, such as Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were sent to concentration camps, and some died there. Christians who did not agree with the Nazis thus were without leadership, and were forced to worship much as they did in the early days of the Roman Empire. The Confessing Church engaged in various forms of resistance, notably hiding Jews from the Nazi regime.
The Confessing Church should not be confused with the Confessing Movement in present-day North America.
