 Although there was no top-down official directive to revoke church membership, some Nazi Party members started doing so voluntarily and put other members under pressure to follow their example.Those who left the churches were designated as "Gottgläubige" ("believers in God"), a term officially recognised by the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick on 26 November 1936.He stressed that the term signified political disassociation from the churches, not an act of religious apostasy.