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Christian nationalism and the far right
We must stand up to, and speak out against, Christian nationalism, especially when it inspires acts of violence and intimidation.
By Dr. Ellen Kennedy, the Rev. John Matthews & the Rev. James Erlandson
Sophie Scholl was beheaded by guillotine in Munich, Germany at the age of 21.
Her crime? Speaking out against the Aryan white supremacy of the Nazi regime.
It was 1943. Sophie was a member of the White Rose, a clandestine group of university students who were distributing leaflets at universities throughout Germany urging resistance to the Third Reich.
A janitor saw Sophie dropping leaflets off a balcony railing into a central hallway at the University of Munich, and he turned her in to the Gestapo. She was arrested, imprisoned, beaten, and murdered four days later.
After the execution, a pro-Nazi rally was held at the university, and the janitor was given a standing ovation.
“Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go,” Sophie said, before she was guillotined. “But what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who became a leader in what was known as the Confessing Church, which opposed German Christian policies of exclusion and marginalization. He was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler that culminated in a failed coup on July 20, 1944. As a consequence, he was imprisoned for two years and sentenced to death at a court-martial in Flossenbürg concentration camp in Germany.
On April 9, 1945, he was led naked into the execution yard and hanged. His crime? He would not subvert Christianity to a religion that put Hitler ahead of God. He believed that the German Protestant church failed to stand up against the evils of Nazism and he stood in solidarity with the victims.
Sophie Scholl and Dietrich Bonhoeffer have become heroes in the pantheon of “upstanders” against the Christian nationalism of Nazi Germany.
What is Christian nationalism?
As Georgetown University political science professor Paul D. Miller described in Christianity Today, “Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Christian Nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation’ – not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.”
We’ve all seen T-shirts proclaiming, “Jesus Christ is my savior and Donald Trump is my president.” This is an example of Christian nationalism.
History repeats
By Burt Baldwin, Ignacio
When I attended seminary many years ago, I was struck by the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Reverend Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran minister, theologian and activist. He is best known for his work, “The Cost of Discipleship,” which was published in the 1930s. Dietrich was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship and Adolf Hitler. He spoke, without fear, against the regime’s euthanasia program and the persecution of the Jews.
As a result, he was imprisoned in April 1943. He was sent to Tegel Prison, and later, transferred to the Flossenburg concentration camp.
Nearly a month before the liberation of Europe, in April 1945, Dietrich was accused in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler, which was known as the “July 20 Plot.” Less than a month before the end of the war, Bonhoeffer was stripped of his clothes, ordered up to the gallows and hung.
Dietrich was one of the few people who could see what fascism was doing to his country. He witnessed the destruction of Jewish cemeteries and the rampaging of Jewish businesses during the riots of “Kristallnact,” also known as the night of the broken glass. He watched as Jewish citizens were harassed, beaten and raped. Synagogues were burned. Jews had to register their businesses, which were later confiscated. Jewish professors were banned from universities. Jewish children were ordered to attend only Jewish schools. Book burning became a national event.
The ultimate humiliation was the ordering of Jews to wear a gold star when appearing in public. Of course, this was to be followed by the Holocaust.
There is an old adage that alludes to history repeating itself. It may be true, for it only takes time for people to forget or deny the past. I have recalled some similar events in the past years, which puts me on edge and should sober us all – that history can indeed be repeated.
We have had numerous hate crimes and murders in Jewish synagogues, we have had racist marches and the destruction of Jewish cemeteries. We have had legislation for voter suppression and gerrymandering of voting districts. We have had book-burning sessions and censorship of literature by right-wing groups.
We have had propagandist media companies spewing lies to the public. We have had politicians denying the results of our voting system. We have had professional athletes and entertainment stars embracing anti-Semitic hate speech.
There is another old adage that “those who ignore the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.”
It is time to self-examine who we are and what we want the future to look like for us and our children.
The Courage to Make Righteous Choices
Let your faith make a difference in your choices.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:10 (NIV)
This isn’t my favorite beatitude, but it’s an important one. As a Christian I like to focus on all that I gain by following Jesus: eternal life, a restored relationship with God, a life of meaning and purpose, a heart of worship, His friendship and guidance, peace that surpasses understanding.
But Jesus has always been honest that following Him on the path of right choices will sometimes cause suffering. Even small choices can require sacrifices. Giving the right of way to the car merging into your lane. Returning the money when a cashier gives too much change. Biting your tongue and changing the subject when someone starts to share juicy gossip. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote The Cost of Discipleship, in which he challenged Christians to let their faith make a difference in their choices—large and small. Bonhoeffer faced persecution, including imprisonment and death, for taking a stand against Hitler.
I may never face such heroic choices…
AUTHOR: ROBERT D. CORNWALL, WORD&WAY
BONHOEFFER’S RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY IN ITS CHRISTOLOGICAL CONTEXT. By Peter Hooton. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic (Rowman & Littlefield), 2022. 211 Pages.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer lives on as a martyr. His death came in April 1945 at the hands of the Nazis as World War II was nearing its close. He was only thirty-nine at the time of his death by hanging. His story has been told by several biographers, and his works have been made available for all to read in English translation. Despite his relative youth, he left behind a massive amount of material, both published and unpublished. As a result, Bonhoeffer has proven to be one of the most influential theologians of the past century and a half. This is true even though his theological understandings never reached a point of completion. Perhaps it’s that incompleteness that’s lent itself to the diversity of interpretations of work over the years, as well as its use by people from across the religious and even political spectrums. For example, Conservative evangelicals, some of whom are Christian Nationalists, have appealed to his efforts to resist the Nazis as fodder for their acts of resistance, especially when it comes to attempts to outlaw/discourage abortion. At the other end of the theological spectrum, in the 1960s the “Death of God” theologians found his prison letters and essays that hinted at a world without God attractive. Then there are the pacifists who have made use of his reflections on nonviolence. Some have simply tried to turn him into a conservative American evangelical (ala Eric Metaxas).
Robert D. Cornwall
Over the years my theology and practice have been deeply influenced by Bonhoeffer’s writings. I began reading his works (Cost of Discipleship) in college and continued to read them through seminary (I took Lewis Smedes’s “Ethics of Bonhoeffer” course) and beyond. I’ve read most of the biographies and several more specialized studies. I purchased the full set of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works and keep them close at hand so I can dip into them when needed, especially in sermon preparation (the scripture index in the index volume is very helpful!). I’ve always welcomed studies of his life and works that illuminate rather than obfuscate. That is true of two recent biographies by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen and Charles Marsh, which are especially good. Added to these studies is Peter Hooton’s Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity in Its Christological Context. Hooton’s book is a specialized monograph, that focuses on one dimension of Bonhoeffer’s theological explorations. While it’s written for a scholarly audience, I found it to be very accessible.
As for the author of this book, Peter Hooton is involved in the area of public theology at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture on the Canberra campus of Charles Sturt University. Before this, he was a career diplomat working in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the South Pacific. He holds a Ph.D. from Charles Sturt University and is part of the university’s “Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre.”
Hooton’s book appears to be based on his Ph.D. dissertation at CSU. In it, he focuses on Bonhoeffer’s musings about religionless Christianity. This view of Christianity is especially present in Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, as well as his Ethics. These works, all of which are to some degree incomplete, appeared at the end of his life. They suggest themes and possibilities of further exploration should he have survived the war. It was especially in his letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge, that an imprisoned Bonhoeffer delved into what the possibility of a religionless Christianity. Though when he wrote of a religionless Christianity, he wasn’t embracing atheism. Rather, he was envisioning what a non-institutionalized Christianity might look like. He was not, of course, alone in this, for Karl Barth was writing about Christianity apart from religion, which Barth believed was a human venture. For Bonhoeffer, this religionless Christianity would speak to a world come of age, that is a world that in a post-war world would have lost its innocence and naivete. Bonhoeffer’s vision of such a Christianity come of age, as the book’s title suggests, was deeply rooted in Bonhoeffer’s Christocentric vision.
Hooton points out that Bonhoeffer’s critique of religion was linked to Barth’s. His older contemporary suggested that religion is a human act of seeking God, which is a futile effort as God is wholly other. However, God is encountered as an act of Grace as God reaches out to humanity. Early in Bonhoeffer’s theological career, he placed greater weight on the church as the means of encountering God. We see this in works such as Sanctorum Communio, his initial doctoral dissertation. However, by the 1940s, he was contemplating what theology might look like in this new world order outside the realm of the church. Like Barth, Bonhoeffer never suggested that anyone should separate themselves from the church. However, he began to believe that the church isn’t the cure for what ails the world. While he resonated with Barth’s critique of religion, Bonhoeffer didn’t completely embrace Barth’s view. Bonhoeffer called Barth’s views a “positivism of revelation.” Nevertheless, he agreed with the larger critique of religion, and that critique was Christological in nature.
As I’ve noted Bonhoeffer’s vision was deeply Christological. For Bonhoeffer, God encounters us in Christ. While he didn’t reject his Lutheran theological foundations, he tended not to focus on the Trinity. Rather, in his view, the God who is for us will be encountered in Christ. Thus, his primary question concerned who Jesus is for us today. That leads to a question of who we are in relation to others. Interestingly he finds an anchor for his worldly Christianity in his reading of the Old Testament, which became increasingly this-world in orientation. As Hooton notes, Bonhoeffer’s theology was becoming progressively more inclusive as time passed. This more inclusive vision is first seen in his posthumously published Ethics. In this work, we see a movement in his thinking a move away from the powerful God of religion to a God of weakness who is revealed in Christ on the cross.
According to Hooton, as Bonhoeffer moves further into this nonreligious vision that is centered in Christ, he also begins to envision a nonreligious interpretation of the Bible. Bonhoeffer doesn’t abandon traditional biblical/theological terms like cross, sin, and grace, but he begins to look for other terms that are more expressive of the concerns of this new non-religious age. It’s not so much the words themselves as it is the way these concepts are understood. One of the concepts that he seeks to re-envision is repentance, which he speaks of in terms of ultimate honesty. For Bonhoeffer, “ultimate honesty” is ultimately a change of perspective about life and God, such that we join Jesus in being for others.
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.
Independent broker dealer recruiter Jon Henschen Publishes “Dietrich Bonhoeffer Speaks to Woke Society Today”
June 2, 2022 8:00 AM
In Jon Henschen’s article, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer Speaks to Woke Society Today,” he references one of the most well known letters written by Bonhoeffer, concluding that the root of the Nazi problem was not malice, but stupidity.
Featured May 25, 2022 on Americanthinker.com, independent broker dealer recruiter Jon Henschen’s “Dietrich Bonhoeffer Speaks to Woke Society Today” references one of the most well known letters written by Bonhoeffer during his time in a Nazi concentration camp, concluding that the root of the Nazi problem was not malice, but stupidity. It was during his time at Tegel Prison that Bonhoeffer wrote numerous letters and papers, with his letter on stupidity being one of his most impactful.
Bonhoeffer concluded that the root of the problem was not malice, but stupidity. “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while one may protest against evil, and it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless.” Henschen goes on, “Any facts presented to a stupid person that contradict their prejudgment, simply are not to be believed and even if the evidence is irrefutable, they are pushed aside as inconsequential or incidental. The stupid person is self-satisfied and, if irritated by counterarguments, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.”
Henschen also notes that “The people who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals in groups. It would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. Under rising power like what we saw in 1940’s Germany, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up an autonomous position. In conversations with a stupid person, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him.”
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By Dallas Gingles
Last summer, my friend David Krause and I were invited to Old Parkland to see a statue of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who died in a concentration camp in 1945. It is almost identical to the one above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey in London. That one is part of a memorial to 20th century martyrs. The statue at Old Parkland honors the virtue of courage.
Martyrdom and courage are related, but they are also distinct. Martyrdom, after all, isn’t primarily about courage. It is about faith — or faithfulness. Martyrs are those who are faithful all the way to death. Martyrs may inspire us to become more courageous people, but what they really show is how faith takes our everyday existence and frames it in the light of eternity. Martyrs are vivid reminders to us that we are creatures whose lives have meaning beyond death, and thus that how we live on our way to death has real meaning as well. The exceptional faith of the martyrs informs the everyday moral lives we lead.
The two statues of Bonhoeffer — one at a church, honoring faith, the other at a civil institution, honoring courage — display this interplay between the exceptional and the everyday. That is especially fitting because, while most people think of Bonhoeffer as an exceptional figure who has something to say about exceptional circumstances, Bonhoeffer himself spent a great deal of time thinking about the most everyday of moral questions. For instance, when Bonhoeffer was basically on the run from the Nazi regime at the height of its power, he was writing not just about exceptional moral problems, but about what makes for a good family, about church politics (a very boring and everyday topic), about money, and even how many days should be in a workweek.
One reason he kept writing about these everyday realities is because Bonhoeffer was convinced that human flourishing is mediated by institutions. We may think of our own flourishing as the ability to choose for ourselves the kinds of people we want to be, untethered from institutions that hold us down. To be sure, poorly run and overbearing institutions can make our lives miserable — a point not lost on Bonhoeffer in the midst of Nazi Germany. Importantly, it was this experience of living in Nazi Germany that contributed to Bonhoeffer’s belief that the good life requires good institutions.
Think about families, churches, places of work, etc. They’re all institutions of various kinds. Their shape, like the shape of all institutions, changes over time, but they are always necessary. And they always need people who are willing to take responsibility for making them work well. That’s part of what it means to live an everyday good life. It means you’re the kind of person who takes your responsibilities seriously — as a family member, as a member of a religious community, or as a professional. It is these institutions and our care for them that constitutes our everyday moral lives.
There is also one particular institution that presents especially difficult challenges to everyday flourishing: the modern state. The state is not the only form of government. There have been empires, city states, feudal lordships, and other forms. But the state has been the main form of government going back several hundred years (even modern empires are variations on modern states). The existing international order, with its assumed norms of international law, human rights, and free trade and travel, is built on the framework of sovereign states. This may all seem like a technical and arcane point until you realize that the current war in Ukraine is an attempt to undermine the entire international order that is built on modern nation states.
Bonhoeffer’s own context of Nazi Germany was the last serious challenge to the international order that depended on sovereign states until Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine two months ago. For Bonhoeffer, the state is legitimate and deserves our respect and loyalty, within limits. This may surprise us when we think about Bonhoeffer’s context, but it is all the more striking because of it. Bonhoeffer writes in one place that there are only two ways for the threat posed by Nazism to be defeated. The first is a miracle, in which God directly intervenes. The second is by the restraining power of the state. Nazism was an unbridled attempt to violate the limits within which the state deserves respect and loyalty. The proper response, according to Bonhoeffer, was not to wait on a miracle from God, but to work to bring about the conditions for a decent, ordered and limited state.
Sometimes we have to take responsibility for the state by working within it. This is called politics. It’s an everyday activity that is meant to help contribute to human flourishing. We do it when we vote, pay taxes, welcome refugees, protest laws we think unjust, etc. Sometimes we have to take responsibility for life itself when a particular state is a grave threat to it. This is called war, or resistance, or maybe even martyrdom. It’s an exceptional activity that is meant to simply hold the ground on which everyday institutions that make human flourishing possible may be built again.
By Curtis Shelburne
Religion columnist
Faith: Easter time to ponder great sacrifice and joy
4/12/2022
“Good Friday and Easter free us to think about other things far beyond our own personal fate,” wrote author, pastor, theologian, and modern-day martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And he continued, they liberate us to contemplate “the ultimate meaning of life, suffering, and events; and we lay hold of a great hope.”
I am quite sure that when Bonhoeffer spoke of the cross and the Resurrection as “freeing” us, he did so on purpose. If I’m not mistaken, Bonhoeffer’s words above were written while he was imprisoned by the Nazis. In prison, he alludes to the freedom we can find anywhere as we choose to center on Christ’s sacrifice and power rather than focusing always on “our own fate” and thus living fear-molded lives, enslaved even if we seem to be free.
Sometimes I find myself taken by surprise by a stark contrast as I’m listening to a speech or reading an article or a book, and it occurs to me, “There’s depth and wisdom here. This person has a center, a foundation, a universe that’s larger than self. This person is grounded in truth, and I need to listen.”
And the contrast? It’s unmistakable. It’s between what is genuine and deep, and what is a thin veneer or convenient mask. With regard to faith, it’s faith that genuinely seeks God’s truth and thus enlivens the whole heart, mind, and soul. It’s “sold out” to God and not just seeking favor from a sect or a pet set of superficial and divisive traditions. With regard to public discourse, the contrast is between wise words coming from a grounded truth-seeking soul and poison words “offered” by the type of soul-shriveled politician whose main focus and heart’s desire is to divide us, stoke enmity, and by manipulating us, grasp power.
Through the long centuries, this has always been true.
- 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.
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