"the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world"

     Update, 13 August 2019:  I now think this (below) very likely to be an obviously accurate report, given the posthumously published fragments of CD IV/4, i.e. §78 as reproduced in The Christian life:  Church dogmatics IV,4:  Lecture fragments, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1981) =Das christliche Leben:  Die kirchliche Dogmatik IV/4, Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, Vorlesungen 1959-1961 (Zürich:  Theologischer Verlag, 1976).  The title of this section (governed by the command to call upon or invoke God), is "Revolt against Disorder" ("Der Aufstand gegen die Unordung"), and there are, not surprisingly, references to (the Lord's) prayer scattered throughout.  Cf. Donald K. McKim, "Karl Barth on the Lord's Prayer," in Karl Barth, Prayer:  50th anniversary edition (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 114-134, which, returning hits on "disorder" (though not "uprising"), was the work that directed me to this passage.  Meanwhile, Kait Dugan, of the Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, indicated to me in a note date 26 August 2019 that §78, of the (fragmentary) CD IV/4, is the closest that the CBS has come to this as well.
     That said, the phrase "Hände falten" (at least) is missing, and, indeed, occurs no more than eight times in the whole of the Digital Karl Barth Library, none of them closely relevant.


"The older Karl Barth used to say that 'to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world'."

     Jan Milič Lochman, "Towards an ecumenical account of hope," The ecumenical review 31, no. 1 (January 1979): 18 (13-30) = Mid-stream 18, no. 1 (January 1979): 30 (24-34).  Cf. Jan Milič Lochman, "The Lord's Prayer in our time: praying and drumming," The Princeton Seminary bulletin n.s. 13 (1992) Suppl.: 18-19 (5-19), and in The Lord's Prayer: perspectives for reclaiming Christian prayer, ed. Daniel L. Migliore (Eerdmans, 1993), 18-19:

"There is another saying of Karl Barth in my grateful memory.  In his later years we heard from him again and again:  'To fold one’s hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.'"

In German:  Jan Milič Lochman, "Beten und trommeln:  Das Gebet in einer säkularisierten Zeit," in Basileia:  Festschrift für Eduard Buess, ed. Hans Dürr and Christoph Ramstein (Basel:  Edition Mitenand, 1993), 249 (233-251):

Ein anderes Wort Karl Barths habe ich dankbar in Erinnerung:  In seinem alter hörten wir ihn immer wider sagen:  'Hände falten in Gebet ist der Anfang des Aufstandes gegen die Unordnung diser Welt.'

And then again in 2002, Jan Milič Lochman, "Theology and cultural contexts," in Theology between east and west:  a radical heritage:  essays in honor of Jan Milič Lochman (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2002), 15 (5-20):

"I often recall words I heard Karl Barth speak when I was his student:  'Hands folded in prayer are the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.''"

Lochman, who appears to be the primary source of the saying, began teaching in Basel the year Barth died, and undoubtedly knew and interacted with him before that, as the reference to his having been a student makes clear.

Musimbi Kanyoro says her "former professor in undergraduate studies", Micere Mugo, used to attribute this ("to clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world") to Karl Barth.  See "The shape of God to come and the future of humanity," Concilium 2004/5 =A different world is possible, ed. Luiz Carlos Susin, Jon Sobrino, and Felix Wilfred (London:  SCM Press, 2004):  53 (53-61), which appeared first in that same issue in German.

Ashley Cocksworth quotes this at the top of p. 114 of her book Karl Barth on prayer, T&T Clark studies in systematic theology 26 (Bloomsbury, 2015), but then says in footnote 144, "Regrettably, I have yet to find the source of this oft-cited remark."  To me it would be odd if Lochman and other students of Barth "heard [(did any other late students of Barth hear?) this] from him again and again", and yet it never made it into any of Barth's published work.  And so far I have searched the Digital Karl Barth Library in vain, in both English and German.  German versions of this online, like Lochman's German and English versions (above), understandably vary somewhat:

'Hände falten im Gebet ist der Anfang des Aufstandes gegen die Unordnung der Welt!' 

Barth erklärt dies so:  'Mit dem Falten unserer Hände zum Gebet beginnt unser Aufstand gegen das Unrecht in dieser Welt.'

(By the way, I scanned the whole of Karl Barth, Prayer and preaching, translated for the American edition of 1953 by Sara F. Terrien and then revised for this British edition by B. E. Hooke (London:  SCM Press Ltd, 1964, from the French (La prière) of 1953, itself rooted in shorthand transcriptions of the seminars Barth delivered in Neuchâtel between 1947 and 1949 that were first edited by "André Perret under the supervision of A. Roulin"), and then enabled text recognition.  Nowhere in that book do the words "uprising" and "disorder" appear, let alone on p. 22, as cited by, for example, Andre van Oudtshoorn at International journal of practical theology 16, no. 2 (2012):  298, though "prayer" appears (of course) 240 times.)