Where is Today's Bonhoeffer?
alienfromzog
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Today (6th April), Radio 4's Sunday Worship is program dedicated to the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Link here for anyone interested: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0029q94
To me, he was a great theologian. His words on 'cheap grace' I think are especially important. His fame is - as shipmates know - is to a large extent due to the fact that he stood up to the Nazi's.
How much does the church and the Western World need a voice in wilderness right now?
AFZ
Link here for anyone interested: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0029q94
To me, he was a great theologian. His words on 'cheap grace' I think are especially important. His fame is - as shipmates know - is to a large extent due to the fact that he stood up to the Nazi's.
How much does the church and the Western World need a voice in wilderness right now?
AFZ
Comments
We need a new vision. But from whom? Are we listening? Is the church deaf? Am I deaf?
Reframing the questions can help us make what’s happening elsewhere part of our experience.
If it criticised the Western World, Western Christianity at all would it even get a hearing ? What if it was someone like Munther Isaac? What then?
As I say, the problem isn't that there aren't Christians speaking up. It's that they're not getting through or being heard.
I suspect most of the Hebrew prophets could relate to that problem. Jesus, too.
Yes, I think those in power have always turned a deaf ear. We remember the miracles in the bible, but maybe we also have to remember the bits where God says "I have heard my people crying out to me." Sometimes you're the people crying out not the prophet.
Which perhaps points up that we all need to listen to what the people we claim to be allies for actually want and have to say for themselves.
I think though that it's interesting to look at the forces in Christianity he opposed and to see if that gives us any clues.
As I understand it the a lot of German Christians bought into race theory - one aspect of which was selling out Christians who'd converted from Judaism on the grounds of their 'blood' to have an 'Aryan-pure church with membership based not on baptism but on “blood and race".'
https://jsr.shanti.virginia.edu/back-issues/7127670-2/the-legacy-of-anti-judaism-in-the-works-of-dietrich-bonhoeffer/
Now you would have thought nothing could have been more obviously wrong from a Christian perspective, even before we get to the state-backed murdering and persecution. Yet sizeable numbers of people swallowed it.
I think we see something similar in certain brands of Christianity in Trump's America and in other countries that have allied with the racist, misogynist, larcenous performatively-cruel far right.
I sometimes think of it as a kind of antinomianism - the idea that the elect cannot sin and that sins don't count if done by the elect - but for elect read 'rich white straight pro-patriarchal nominally conservative christian cis men who count themselves able bodied and their female / minority allies who assent to this and assist them' - for short - Fascists.
If you're part of that club, nothing you do is a sin and everything you do those you cast as your inferiors and enemies is righteous - so you get people who call themselves Christians attacking empathy, withdrawing needed mediine and support from the poor treating people of other races or origins cruelly and unjustly and glorying in it, stealing, lying etc.
Christianity becomes what the Elect say it is. What they do isn't a sin.
As the saying goes about that kind of politics it
'consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect'
This is also echoed in our English speaking media where enough media has been captured by members or allies of the cult that they have a lot of control over what people see and hear.
So America, for example, no doubt has loads and loads of Bonhoeffers but them getting platformed on a wide scale is a different matter.
Newspapers and TV stations can to a very large extent just not platform people who speak up against persecutions. Social media algorithms can choke their content and swamp people's timelines with far right material instead.
I don't think it's some 'great man' or 'great woman' or great person that's needed so much as the willingness of many of us to act against systematic injustice and that means tackling the media and those whose cosy relationship with it means they fail to regulate it or appropriately challenge it
There could be loads of new Bonhoeffers out there on Youtube but you'll never see them because the algorithm wont show them to you and you might not know where to start looking for them, and they're unlikely be getting a column in the Guardian or Washington Post any time soon, because those newspapers are very cosy with certain types of persecutor and certain kinds of persecution.
Another theologian my wife follows is Richard Rohr.
Here is also a list of contemporary female theologians that rise to Bonhoeffer's level.
Speaks to the types of extremist he has long been pally with, including them having speak at his conferences etc.
For that matter, what happened to Bonhoeffer? His plot failed and he was executed as a traitor.
It’s easy to lionise him now for his opposition to the Nazis, but we must also remember that it wasn’t his efforts, or indeed the efforts of any German, that brought down Hitler - it was allied troops in the form of the Red Army arriving in Berlin. Few people - especially outside Germany - had even heard of Bonhoeffer until the war was over.
The OP says we need a voice in the wilderness, but voices crying out in the wilderness more often than not end up with their heads on silver platters, and little else to show for their efforts. What we really need - what gets results - is competent, well-organised and effective opposition.
Christianity has spewed a lot of hate at various times and itself stirred up the whirlwind. That said, I have to acknowledge that the boycott of Target encouraged by Black ministers in the US for Lent appears to be driving down sales. I doubt I'd find their theology inspiring, but I'm totally on board with the boycott.
https://fortune.com/2025/03/21/target-easter-sales-boycotts/
In time our progeny or our progeny's progeny may be able to identify them. I'm not sure it's for us to say.
I'm not saying I see one. I'm saying if there is such a leader, we should be able to recognize that person. At least some of us. Maybe there isn't one right now. Maybe one will emerge soon. Believe me, I'd be making a lot of noise about it if I saw someone who I thought fit the bill.
*I think your “at least some of us” is a key qualification. We have to make space for the possibility that some will recognize the emergence of a new Bonhoeffer, while others are ignorant of that new Bonhoeffer’s existence, or at least of his or her significance. And that latter group might include all of us on the Ship.
The thing is Bonhoeffer was not the voice in the Wilderness. The voice that catalysed the resistance in the Protestant church in Germany was Karl Barth, to whom Bonhoeffer responded! Nor was Bonhoeffer, a marginal voice, he was a respected theologian in the church and part of the establishment in Germany at the time. A marginal voice simply could not have been part of the type of plot to kill Hitler that was planned.
Now Karl Barth is not nearly the same poster boy of liberal Christians today but he was the established voice that used his authority to organise a resistance to Nazism and found the Confessing Church movement within the Protestant Church in Germany. What we dislike about him is almost the one thing that made him stand up to Hitler and that is his absolute sense that God was sovereign. When he saw Nazism challenge the sovereignity of Christ he was prepared to draw the line. The issues were not human rights but the Churches ability to proclaim the Gospel as handed down. There were edicts that demanded that the church preach the gospel in a form that was compatible with Nazism. This was a no go for Barth and so he stood up.
I do not see us in a similar siyuation. There has been no sudden breach of the defenses of the dikes. The breach has not been broached by edict or sudden demand of the state or those seeking power. The defences has been eroded by tides of times over generations so we no longer know where they were built. We wake up to find ourselves drowning on an incoming tide.
We first need to find what we, the Church, are about and the place for that is the desert and to do so we need to loose status, wealth and power, and be prepared for old fashioned bloody martyrs. Pray to God, no unnecessary deaths.
Could i ask why you said “we” disliked Barth for being concerned about the Nazis encroaching on God’s kingship? Or did i misunderstand?
I say that as one who has been very much formed by ideas from Barth, and who shares his absolute sense that God is sovereign.
(I may be pushing on an open door here.)
Infamous, some might say.
That's what I've heard. He was quite unpopular when he died, and it took a few decades for him to become the hero we all learned he was in grade school.
That said, I could probably soften that previous post if I were wiser.
I’m certainly not saying he was without flaws. We all are. But it’s just not as simple as “he was quite unpopular when he died.” Whether that was true would completely depend on who you asked.
It is one thing we have figures for, though your points about demographics and the ability of his critics to affect coverage are well made. Nevertheless it does seem that his popularity fell as the scope of his actions widened and there was a net negative view of him prior to to his death
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/how-public-attitudes-toward-martin-luther-king-jr-have-changed-since-the-1960s/
https://history.uga.edu/news/stories/2018/essay-why-martin-luther-king-had-75-percent-disapproval-rating-year-his-death
As I understand it - and I could be completely wrong here - Bonhoeffer's role in the plot to assassinate Hitler has been hugely overblown. "Peripheral" is a word I have commonly come across.
History never exactly repeats but there are echoes. There are parts of the US churches which have gone full-MAGA in a way that resonates with how the Nazi party deliberately sought to nazify the German church. The differences are interesting, of course. But the similarities drive me to think that voices that speak up for the Gospel are desperately needed.
My OP was a little provocative as I can name a few voices that could fit the bill. If I did a little work, I could probably make it more than a few. But the radio program on Sunday inspired me to think about this some more.
I have never read Bonhoeffer systematically but there are certainly bits of his writing with which I am familiar and find really inciteful and helpful. He remains a very well respected theologian but he was no ivory tower academic as his activities and death clearly show, he lived out what he believed in a brave way.
I hoped that the OP would spark some interesting discussion. I think it has.
AFZ
Certainly. and let it be really clear that if he was unpopular (so the polls read) that highlights flaws in America, not in him.
The steady rehabilitation and manipulation of his posthumous image is kinda fascinating, as I've read about it. I'm glad he's remembered well, but I think there's some distortion in some circles that emphasize the "he was really a good guy" over the political controversies he righteously instigated.
I've read that it's questionable that he was involved at all. I'm pretty sure he'd written that he was against assassination as a Christian, and so highlighting that as the peak of his career is rather nastily ironic.
That said, he was also someone who felt that vocation meant overriding principles as needed.
I agree that the assassination plot was probably among the least important things of his career, and his involvement therein was possibly exaggerated by the Nazis as an excuse to imprison him.
Like many saints, I think his political efficacy has also been overstated, but he was a very bright example for telling the truth. This makes him a tragic hero, and I think people who highlight the heroism while eliding the tragedy of his failures are misrepresenting his legacy. He was a very good man and a model, but "triumphant" wasn't his style.
ETA: the point I'm trying to make is that many potential post-war Bonhoeffers have been passed over in favour of the return of the comfort of the establishment.
Was Bonhoeffer that respected in his own time? I recall him being a prolific writer and being involved in various anti-Nazi efforts, many unsuccessful, but I don't recall reading that he was ever wildly popular when he was alive. He's mostly remembered for being a very articulate martyr, and one of those rare figures who resisted the Nazis when it would have been very easy not to.
I'm not sure guys like him are ever that famous while they're alive, though I'll take correction. As noted, MLK was not that well regarded in his lifetime, which is no insult to him, either.
And I think you're right that liberationism had a moment in the 1960s. My current read is that at least in Latin America it's being supplanted by evangelical prosperity gospel. People just want to get rich. It's all rather sad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOWDtDUKz-U&t=5s