The journey inward: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s opposition to anti-semitism

By Dr. John Campbell

Anyone who gave their life in opposition to the regime of Adolf Hitler attracts my attention. Theologian, pastor, Christian activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of these people.

Bonhoeffer scholar Mark Thiesen Nation suggests the narrative that most people are familiar with is the one highlighted by bestselling author Eric Metaxas in his book about Bonhoeffer: “As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe, a small number of dissidents and saboteurs worked to dismantle the Third Reich from the inside. One of these was Dietrich Bonhoeffer-a pastor and author known as much for his spiritual classics ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ and ‘Life Together’ as for his part in the plot to assassinate Hitler.”

That is the popular narrative. Less known is his opposition to the brutal treatment of Jews in Germany and how that contributed to Bonhoeffer’s death.

By way of review, Hitler’s rise to power took place in the backdrop of German deterioration after the First World War. Germany had been defeated. Afterwards, the Versailles Treaty had strapped the German economy and the German people resented the reparations imposed on them.

On Jan. 30, 1933, Hitler was legally appointed as Reich chancellor by the aging President Hindenburg. Hitler addressed the nation instilling hope where none had existed before. In his address to the nation Hitler declared: “The national government sees as its first and foremost task the restoration of the unity of spirit and will of our people. It will preserve and protect the fundamentals on which the strength of our nation rests. It will preserve and protect Christianity, which is the basis of our system of morality, and the family, which is the germination cell of the body of the people and the state.”

He concluded: “We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our people.”

Understandably, this young, energetic leader, who came from the working class and was a veteran of World War One, could rouse Germans from their despair. Little did they know that his tyrannical grip on Germany would lead to destruction once again.

According to Nation in his book, “Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis,” after the burning of the Reichstag, Hitler issued the “Protection of People and the State” which in essence became the fundamental law during his regime. There was restriction of the press, the right to assemble, voter suppression and provisions for property search and seizure.

For all intents and purposes Hitler was freed from any obligation to uphold parliamentary and constitutional regulations. In essence, the chancellor claimed unlimited power. Germany was no longer a democracy.

By April of 1933 there was a state sponsored boycott of Jewish shops throughout the country. Hitler wanted to revive the glory of the Aryan race.

Seeing Hitler’s militaristic style and blatant antisemitism, Bonhoeffer did not want to be part of a military build-up. He believed that war was immoral and he was becoming aware of the repressive tactics of the Hitler regime.

Authorities turned down his offer to become a military chaplain. Since he came from an upper middle-class family with many connections in government, his brother-in-law was able to get him a position in the Reich Ministry of Justice. This afforded him an insider’s view of the working of government.

Not long after Hitler assumed power, Bonhoeffer asked the question in a radio address: “To what extent is leading and being led healthy and genuine, and when does it become pathological and excessive.”

As early as 1933, he felt that the Protestant Church was mistaken when they aligned themselves with Nazi political agenda. He eventually took part in a dissenting church and even prepared seminarians for pastorates in the Confessing Church, so called.

Bonhoeffer had grown up among ethnically Jewish children. His sister Sabine had married a Jew; Dietrich’s brother-in law was warmly accepted in the family circle. Dietrich had a deep-felt empathy for the plight of German Jews.

His early essay on “The Church and the Jewish Question” shows how he was trying to gain some clarity of thought about what response Christians should take regarding their Jewish brothers and sisters. He begins the essay with a typical Martin Luther understanding that the state is independent from the church. When the state forms policies discriminating against Jews, this does not mean individual Christians should remain silent about state immorality.

For the rest of the post…

From Sin to Saint: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Episode 3

From Sin to Saint

This is From Sin to Saint, a podcast from Patheos. In each season, we will look at the true stories of redemption of saintly figures from all faiths. Our goal is to to understand the passions that drove them and the challenges they overcame on the journey.

To watch on YouTube

It’s time to listen to Bonhoeffer’s prophetic message

• Apr 7th, 2022

---

As the humanitarian crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine worsens, and evidence mounts of the widespread abuse of human rights and multiple breaches of international law, a charity dedicated to promoting the contemporary relevance of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) is calling for the churches to learn the lessons of the 1930s. Project Bonhoeffer supports all efforts by Christians to stand up against this war of aggression, and to speak out against those who attempt to justify it in the name of Christianity.

In the 1930s Bonhoeffer, together with other members of the German churches, put forward a strong critique of those church leaders who supported the Nazis’ aggressive nationalist ideology. Anti-Nazi Protestant leaders put together the ‘Barmen Declaration’, which has become a touchstone for Christian resistance to state co-options of church authority. Bonhoeffer drew attention to the error of ‘an alien ideology concealed in a Church seal.’ Today, in response to the call from Patriarch Kirill for God to bless ‘Holy Rus’ and so put a stamp of approval on the actions of the Russian military, Orthodox theologians have revisited the Barmen Declaration to produce a powerful critique of Kirill and the Russian hierarchy.

A spokesperson for Project Bonhoeffer said: “The Barmen declaration clearly rebuffed the notion put forward by ‘German Christians’ that the Church and its message should be become the cultural property of the nation. In contrast to the notion that the war is blessed by God, the declaration emphasised that the word of God is and must be separate from the word of a civil power. We stand in solidarity with Orthodox theologians and clergy, particularly those within Russia, who are speaking out against this inexcusable war and the complicity of Kirill. We call on Orthodox and other Faith Communities to bear witness to the message of Bonhoeffer for our times – that wars of aggression and the Christian message are incompatible”.

Project Bonhoeffer seeks to raise awareness of the prophetic witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in dark times.

For the rest of the post…

The ‘freedom convoy,’ the anti-vaxx movement and why a minister murdered by the Nazis thought evil wasn’t the worst thing

John Stoehr

Truckers protesting against Covid health rules continued Wednesday to occupy the capital Ottawa, despite the government’s declaration of the Emergencies Act Ed JONES AFP

On February 15, Bloomberg ran a story about the “freedom convoy” that seemed to illustrate Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity.

Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister who was part of the German resistance to the Nazi Party and to Adolf Hitler’s rise. His book, The Cost of Discipleship, is a meditation on “The Sermon on the Mount” in which Bonhoeffer splits the Christian concept of grace in two.

On the one hand is “cheap grace,” which is “without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

On the other hand, Bonhoeffer said, is “costly grace.” It “confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him.”

Indeed, resisting fascism by submitting “to the yoke of Christ” and following him cost him dearly. At age 39, the Nazis hanged him.

His theory of stupidity is featured in a letter written to friends a few years earlier. The letter, which is now known as “After Ten Years,” argues that evil like the Nazis isn’t the worst thing. Stupidity is.

“One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force,” he wrote. “Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

Bloomberg reporters Jen Skerritt and Robert Tuttle were covering protests of the Canadian government’s requirement that truck drivers delivering freight across the US-Canadian border must be vaccinated.

Protests in Alberta and Manitoba, dubbed the “freedom convoy,” took the form of blockades of bridges and trucking routes, at odds with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s declaration of emergency powers.

Skerritt and Tuttle interviewed one trucker. His name is Jake Klassen. His two campers and semi were in the blockade. He said Trudeau’s emergency powers were an attempt to “take everything from us.”

Then there is this part:

Klassen said he hasn’t been able to visit his nine-year-old daughter in months. She is receiving palliative care at St. Amant, a care residence in Winnipeg, but due to restrictions that require visitors to be fully vaccinated, Klassen and his wife can’t see her.

“Yes, that’s absolutely stunning and sad,” said Victoria Barnett

Barnett was director of programs on ethics, religion and the Holocaust at the National Holocaust Museum. She’s the author of many books on interfaith history. She edited a 2017 translation of “After Ten Years.” I asked if Jake Klassen exemplifies Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity.

Maybe, but as part of a bigger phenomenon. “After Ten Years” was his attempt to understand the first 10 years of National Socialism and what had happened to his compatriots, his church, his country.

He’s trying to figure out why most Germans caved to Nazi ideology and why they became integral to what happened. The historian Klemens von Klemperer (himself a refugee) called the Third Reich a “consensual dictatorship” — which is a pretty good description.

Go into that a bit more please. How was it consensual?

His main point is that stupidity is a moral failure, not an intellectual one. He’s reflecting on the process by which people willfully become part of a larger movement or political group, etc. As they become increasingly involved, two things tend to happen:

1. They become isolated (or they isolate themselves) from those who disagree with them or challenge them (and I would say also from news sources that would challenge their worldview) and
2. They get a lot of reinforcement. One of the things that happened in 1933 after Hitler came to power was that Nazi Party organizations were founded for every demographic group – teachers, housewives, kids, etc. Everyone suddenly had a badge, a uniform, meetings to go to, new friends to meet etc. — and that was a big factor in creating a new sense of a larger German community serving a “grander” purpose (in the Nazi mindset).

A big part of that, of course, was identifying enemies and those who needed to be excluded — Jewish citizens, political opponents, critical journalists, etc. But that early formation of consensus made life much harder, even by the end of 1933, for people who didn’t agree with it.

What you’re describing is collectivism, no?

The self-understanding of the German Volk was a collective concept personified by the “Fuhrer.” That’s a big part of authoritarian or fascist regimes. Authoritarian leaders can do things without parliamentary approval, because they represent the “true” will of “the people.”

But that also created a dynamic in Nazi Germany in which there was this mass adoration – almost a mass hysteria – for the person of Adolf Hitler. There are paintings portraying him as a messianic figure.

Bonhoeffer said there is no defense against stupidity. But if it’s a moral failing, wouldn’t a defense be private and public morality?

Ideally, yes.

Bonhoeffer’s essay is an exploration of why that didn’t happen. (Elsewhere, he explores the lack of civil courage) But Nazi Germany is a disturbing case study in the failure of leaders, institutions (such as the church), etc., to stand up in an effective way to National Socialism.

The best and bravest people were either arrested early on or got out. But he’s pondering (and I think this is autobiographical) the failure of good decent people critical of the regime to be more effective.

That didn’t happen. (Along the way, one must acknowledge that many of them became complicit). But by staying in and working from inside the regime, they also failed to offer a clearer example of resistance.

That’s why by 1942 Bonhoeffer believes (as he writes here) that “only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity.”

The trucker above says he’s seeking liberation, too. Liberation from responsibility. How would Bonhoeffer persuade a man that he has agency and can visit his dying daughter by making the right choice?

One thing DB ignores is the psychology of all this. (He describes stupidity as a sociological problem). In Nazi Germany, we’re also looking at the pressures and dynamics within a fascist police state.

In other circumstances, however (eg, the truckers’ protests), this gets back to the peer pressures within a group that’s getting its information only from certain sources, in which there is a lot of pressure to conform to the will of the group (and a reward for doing so).

I’ve studied this in terms of the psychology of group behavior in Nazi Germany, but the literature on personality cults, mob behavior, etc., shows that the longer and more deeply a person gets involved in something like this, the less individual agency they perceive they have.

For Bonhoeffer personally — he wrote as a theologian and person of deep faith — that faith has the capacity to make someone see more clearly. But “After Ten Years” is a rather bleak assessment.

I’m reminded of something Michael Josephson said in 1989:

Success can be defined so many different ways but right now it is defined in a kind of how high is your position, how many people work for you, how high is your salary. When you get into that kind of yuppie version of success, you’re going to sacrifice things along the way. There’s not enough commitment to the ground rules of civil virtue.

A society focused on “success” (greed, selfishness) is a society in which a man won’t do the right thing to see his dying daughter and as a consequence, will make sacrifices he can’t reverse along the way.

He’s making an important point about what we value publicly and how that affects the individual’s ethics and sense of responsibility.

I’ve been very disturbed by some of the very callous reactions during the pandemic – eg, the minimization of the deaths in nursing homes, the rush to get back to normal when thousands of people are still getting sick and dying (and when large sectors of the population — children under the age of 6 — can’t yet be vaccinated).

But as I saw somewhere, the scale of the callousness has been on display for some time now in how we’ve dealt with school shootings, the high level of violence in our society and the much higher levels of violence experienced by people of color and the poor.

For the rest of the post…

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Loving Other People

Faith & Values: Regard no one with partiality. See and respect each other.

By STEVEN H. SHUSSETT

FOR THE MORNING CALL |

FEB 05, 2022 

Love your neighbor, someone who may be different from you, even opposed to you, but is regarded above all else as a child of God. (kate_sept2004/Getty Images)

A few weeks ago this nation rightly observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day, whose witness means so much to the United States, the world, and the church. Dr. King demonstrated that following Jesus means regarding no one with partiality. No one is superior. All are loved by God.

This past week was bookended by the birthdays of two lights lesser known to many, but that shine no less brightly: Thomas Merton on Jan. 31 (1915) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Feb. 4 (1906).

The lives and work of these two men are too full for just one newspaper column.

Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, directed an underground seminary, participated in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and was martyred just before the Allies arrived.

Merton, a convert to Roman Catholicism, became a monk at mid-life, joining one of the strictest orders of the Church. Though seemingly cut off from the world, he became a prominent writer on expected topics like God and prayer, but also an advocate for peace, justice, and reconciliation.

In 2022, these two men share not only a common birth week, but a message that echoes Dr. King’s. A message that this country and this world so desperately need to hear, summed up in the one word, “regard.”

“Regard” can mean to view or see another. Many of us know what it is to avert our eyes so as to not see a homeless person. If we don’t know what to do, it’s easier to pretend that there is not there. But many of us have learned to see, to smile, offer a brief word, so that even if no money is exchanged, at least some humanity is.

For Merton and Bonhoeffer, Jesus’ witness of seeing the poor, marginalized, and different, was not lost. Bonhoeffer studied in the United States, and regularly attended Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, which was largely African-American. In a city full of more familiar churches, he found his spiritual home among persons who, because of the sin of racism, often went unseen.

In Merton’s day, the split between Roman Catholics and Protestants was sharp, where one would cross the street rather than walk in front of the other’s church. Religiously mixed marriages were little different than that between races, family members cut off for either “offense.” It was in that world that Merton developed a range of relationships that would be remarkable even for someone who was not in a monastery. There was hardly a race, religion, or region of the world with which he did not have some connection.

But “regard” also means more than just seeing. It means to respect and honor, and each of these men does the word proud. In 1950s America, Merton was in a place of power: a successful, white, male religious leader. Instead of denying the realities of his day — racism, the Vietnam war, and poverty — he challenged the world’s perspective. In proclaiming that we are all God’s children, he followed Jesus, of whom it was said, “Teacher, we know that you … teach the way of God … for you do not regard people with partiality.”

Bonhoeffer was imprisoned as a traitor but respected as a pastor, not only by other prisoners, but even his guards. It wasn’t because of his title, but because he followed Jesus’ call to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Even those who would take his life.

For the rest of the post…

The Opening Words of “Life Together”

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Ps. 133.1). In the following we shall consider a number of directions and precepts that the Scriptures provide for our life together under the Word (17).

During this era of COVID, we need to read or reread this classic work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Life Together

Christ came to make us truly human: Social ethics and the image of Christ

DAVID GUSHEE, SENIOR COLUMNIST  |  DECEMBER 17, 2021iDirect capture

This is the last in a three-part Advent series.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer always brings me up short when he emphasizes the indicative rather than imperative voice in Paul’s thought and in Christian ethics more broadly. For example, in terms of Bonhoeffer’s work on image Christology, he emphasizes that the work of Christ in restoring the image of God in humanity is an accomplished fact, a reality that has its effect whether particular people respond or do not.

We are to understand that the human condition has been remade due to the saving work of Christ. This remaking of humanity does not depend on human response. Thus, how we view any particular person must not depend on whether this person has believed in or made progress in appropriating what God has done in Christ. It is not as if some human beings are now elevated in status over others because they believe in Christ while others do not:

In Christ’s incarnation all of humanity regains the dignity of bearing the image of God. Whoever from now on attacks the least of the people attacks Christ, who took on human form and who in himself has restored the image of God for all who bear a human countenance.

This approach to Christ’s restoration of the image of God in humanity does important theological and ethical work. It shifts the foundation for claims about the worth or dignity of humanity from what might be a shaky, damaged imago dei to a sturdier, restored imago Christi. Human life is dignified not just because of what it once was, or was long ago intended to be, but because of what God has done in Christ to reclaim it.

The church or Christians are not different in moral status before God, as if only those who are in the church or are actually making moral progress in conforming to the image of Christ are viewed as worthy human beings. The church is instead that community that goes ahead of the rest of humanity in seeing realities that others do not yet see and behaving accordingly.

“The church must be determined to treat all human beings with a dignity proper to what God has done on humanity’s behalf in Jesus Christ.”

One of these realities is that human dignity and worth have been restored in the saving work of Christ. So the church must be determined to treat all human beings with a dignity proper to what God has done on humanity’s behalf in Jesus Christ.

Again, we listen to Bonhoeffer:

Inasmuch as we participate in Christ, the incarnate one, we also have a part in all of humanity, which is borne by him. … Our new humanity now also consists in bearing the troubles and the sins of all others. The incarnate one transforms his disciples into brothers and sisters of all human beings. The “philanthropy” (Titus 3:4) of God that became evident in the incarnation of Christ is the reason for Christians to love every human being on earth as a brother or sister.

It is on this basis, for Bonhoeffer, that followers of Christ seek to extend love and protection to the lives of other human beings, who are our “brothers and sisters” whether “in the church-community or beyond.”

Bonhoeffer did not prefer the language of a general “reverence for life,” indeed, he explicitly rejected it. Motivation for viewing all people with dignity or sacredness and acting for the preservation, protection and flourishing of their lives for him was grounded in specific biblical and theological claims about the sovereignty of God over all of life, the commands of Christ to his disciples related to violence, and the status of all human beings as our brothers and sisters — this latter claim gaining strength through the image Christology we have been discussing.

“We should respond with awesome wonder and treat everyone with tender dignity.”

This had concrete implications in Bonhoeffer’s own moral practice — he spoke up for (non-Christian) Jews in Nazi Germany at a time when very few church leaders extended their moral concern beyond the boundaries of the church’s own (baptized) Jews.

For the rest of the post…

Lessons from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Dark Times

Martin Davie  04 October 2021

Dietrich Bonhoeffer with students in spring 1932.Wikimedia Commons

I love exploring historic churches, and in this article I want to talk about two seventeenth century churches which teach us a lesson about how we should act as Christians when the times seem dark.

The first is Holy Trinity, Staunton Harold, in Leicestershire. In the 1650s the Staunton Harold estate was owned by Sir Robert Shirley, a monarchist and a devout Anglican at a time when the monarchy and the Church of England had been abolished the Commonwealth regime led by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.

In 1653 Shirley started to build Holy Trinity in a traditional gothic style as a private chapel for his estate, and as an act of public witness to his Anglican convictions.

In response Cromwell declared that if Shirley could pay for such a fine church he could also pay to outfit a ship for the Commonwealth navy. Because of his political convictions Shirley refused to give any money for a ship and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London where he died at the age of 27.

Eventually, Holy Trinity was completed after the restoration of the Church of England, and over the West door of the Church there is a plaque written by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon, to whom Shirley had offered refuge during the English Civil War. The plaque declares:

“In the year 1653 when all things sacred were throughout ye Nation either demolished or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley Baronet, founded this church, whose singular praise it is to have done the best things in ye worst times and hoped them in the most callamitous. The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance.”

The second is St Andrew’s, Walberswick, in Suffolk. At the end of the Middle Ages, Walberswick was a very prosperous trading port and between 1426 and 1520 its inhabitants used some of their wealth to build a huge new parish church in the fashionable perpendicular gothic style. Unfortunately, from 1539 onwards Walberswick went into steep economic decline, which meant that its inhabitants were no longer able to afford the church’s upkeep.

However, they did not give up. Instead, in 1696, having received permission to rebuild, they kept the tower, but unroofed the rest of the church and sold the wood, the lead, and three of the four church bells to finance the erection of a new church building in the Western part of the old south aisle, a building where Christian worship has continued to take place ever since.

St Andrew’s, Walberswick(Photo: Martin Davie)

It seems to me that the actions taken by Sir Robert Shirley and the inhabitants of Walberswick illustrate the teaching given by the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer about how Christians should live in dark times.

In a sermon on Matthew 16:13-18 which he preached in July 1933 following the German church elections in which the Nazi-supporting German Christians achieved a great victory, Bonhoeffer comments as follows on Christ’s promise of ‘I will build my church’:

“…. It is not we who build. He wills to build the church. No man builds the church but Christ alone. Whoever is minded to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it; for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it. We must confess – he builds. We must proclaim – he builds. We must pray to him – he builds. We do not know his plan. We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may be that the times which by human standards are times of collapse are for him the great times of building. It may be that the times which from a human point of view are great times for the church are times when it is pulled down. It is a great comfort which Christ gives to his church: you confess, preach, bear witness to me, and I alone will build where it pleases me. Do not meddle in what is my province. Church, do what is given to you to do well and you have done enough. But do it well. Pay no heed to views and opinions, don’t ask for judgements, don’t always be calculating what will happen, don’t always be on the look-out for another refuge! Church, stay a church! But Church confess, confess, confess!”

Bonhoeffer makes three key points.

First, it is Christ alone who is responsible for building his Church. Building the Church is not our responsibility.

Secondly, in this world we can never know precisely what Christ is doing at any point in time. He knows what he is doing and that is all we need to know.

For the rest of the post…

Heroes of the Faith: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Written by: Rev. Canon J.John

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed for his long-standing opposition to Hitler, is one of the great Christian heroes of the twentieth century.

Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 to an aristocratic German family. Evidently gifted, he chose to study theology, graduating with a doctorate at the age of twenty-one. In the first of what were to be many international links, he worked for two years with a German congregation in Barcelona. He then went to the United States to study for a year at a liberal theological college that he found shallow and uninspiring. He was, however, impressed by the African-American churches he worshipped at, appreciating the congregations’ zeal and sympathising with the social injustices they endured.

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1931, lecturing and pastoring a church. Horrified by the rise of the Nazis he spoke out publicly against Hitler from the moment he became Chancellor in 1933. His was not a popular view: many German Christians, encouraged by Hitler’s manipulative use of Christian language, saw him as the nation’s saviour.

Bonhoeffer found himself part of the resistance against Nazism. He spoke against the persecution of the Jews and when Hitler demanded a church that swore loyalty to him, Bonhoeffer helped create the Confessing Church which declared that its head was Christ, not the Führer. Bonhoeffer gained only limited support and, disillusioned, he went to pastor two German-speaking churches in London. There, watching with alarm the direction Germany was taking, he made important friendships with British church leaders.

Returning to Germany, Bonhoeffer was soon denounced as a pacifist and an enemy of the state. In 1937 he became involved in the secret training of pastors for the Confessing Church. He also wrote one of his most important books, The Cost of Discipleship, in which he rebuked shallow Christianity that he termed cheap grace: ‘the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession . . . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.’ It is a warning that continues to be valid today.

For the rest of the post…

Christian Viewpoint: Poems show value in staying ‘true to spring’ as life strips away the joys of youth

By Andrew Dixon – andrew.dixon@hnmedia.co.uk 

---

I was moved by two poems we read recently at Rhymes Recollected, our church online poetry group – both associated with last century’s world wars, writes John Dempster.

One was by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, an army chaplain in World War I, dubbed Woodbine Willie because of his generous gifts to soldiers of Woodbine cigarettes.

His poem Trees describes branches stripped of leaves in autumn. Gaunt and bare, they “mourn their beauty that is past”. The trees stand through the long winter “all uncomplaining” because (the poet imagines) “they know that Life is there”.

Woodbine Willie applies this to his own life, praying that as he faces old age “which strips off the joys of youth” he may remain as “true to spring” as the trees, allowing the challenges of frailty to draw his soul “nearer to the truth”.

Finally, he seeks as was his pastoral duty to comfort men facing death in battle: “The youth that goes like the red June rose shall burst to bloom in Paradise.” There is resurrection beyond death: the soldiers should not despair but live in the light of that coming spring.

The second poem dates from the final year of World War II. It was written by German pastor, writer and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the leaders of the Confessing Church within Germany which took a stand against Hitler.

Eventually, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned, and among his prison writings left the self-revelatory poem Who am I? He tells us that outwardly he appears to be coping with imprisonment “calmly” and even “cheerfully”. He talks “freely and friendly” to his warders. He bears “the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly”.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

In contrast, he is inwardly “restless and longing and sick”, thirsting “for words of kindness, for neighbourliness”. He is “weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making”.

And he wonders, which Dietrich is the true Dietrich? Is he a failure, feeling as he does? Is he a hypocrite, assuming an unperturbed façade? There is no answer to these questions, but the poem concludes with the healing recognition that: “Whoever I am, O God, I am thine.”

And as he walked calm and prayerful to his execution, was his inner self still at sea with confusion, or was he granted in the face of death a clarity and peace?

Bonhoeffer was no hypocrite, for in acting in the light of what he believed to be true, despite his inner struggles, he was living in Woodbine Willie’s words “true to spring”.

For the rest of the post…