Growing Up Conservative, 2

Here are the rest of my reflections on my Bible college education.

Yes, we were taught a conservative view of the Bible and the Christian faith. We were taught that the “social Gospel” was dangerous. We were taught our primary mission was evangelism, winning people to faith in Jesus so they could go to heaven, rather than building schools and hospitals. We were warned about liberal theologians who were basically atheists that used religious language as metaphors. But we were not taught hate. Overall, my conservative religious education was positive and wholesome, and made me a better person.

Brother Wilson had been the founding professor at Ozark Bible College. He celebrated his fortieth year while we were students there. There was also a new, younger professor, Knofel Staton there. He was known as a dynamic speaker. He spoke nearly every weekend in different churches or conferences throughout the area. Sonja and I both enrolled in his “Introduction to Bible Study Class” our freshman year. It was an amazing class. This was before I had enrolled in the official hermeneutics class, but it was a seminar in historical and contextual interpretation.

Professor Staton’s favorite theme was unity. The church was to be a community of unity. He loved to explain agape, the Greek word for God’s love. Agape is “seeing a need and moving to meet it.” The church is a community of unity, the body of Christ through which his love flows to a hurting world. Feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, helping single mothers, sponsoring alcoholics anonymous, fighting racism, all these works of love were as valid as evangelism. He led us through Romans 16 and pointed out all of the women who were active in ministry. He mentioned Deborah in the Old Testament and called the theory that God chose her only because there were no strong men available “poppycock!”

I did a lot of reading beyond course requirements. Whenever I found a good author I ready several books by the same name. One of my professors liked Elton Trueblood. I read his book on Philosophy of Religion in conjunction with a course on the subject. A statement in that book surprised me for its direct and simple logic: “You don’t have to believe anything that is irrational.” Specifically, he was talking about Christian beliefs about hell. The statement struck me. I had somehow believed we have to believe some things that don’t make sense, as a test of faith, or because God is smarter than we are. But here is a Christian thinker who says, No, you don’t have to believe things that don’t make sense.

Along with several of my friends, I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship, which emphasized genuine repentance and obedience to the words of Jesus Christ. We didn’t know much of the historical background. We thought obedience meant being faithful in prayer and church attendance, avoiding pornography and alcohol, the traditional sins for conservative Christians. We didn’t realize the book was written in 1937, three years after Hitler seized power, and that for Bonhoeffer, obedience meant resistance to the ideology of Arian Nationalism, white supremacy, the idolatrous worship of a strong leader, and the compromise of the churches in endorsing “German Christianity.” Later I would make a more detailed study of all of Bonhoeffer’s major writings, especially his Letters and Papers from Prison, written while he was paying the personal cost of his following Jesus.

You had to be there in the late 1960s and early 1970s to appreciate Francis Schaeffer. He had a ministry in the Swiss Alps called “L’Abri Fellowship.” Wandering hippies and students on a Wanderjahr and young people needing a few days of detox would crash for a day or a month and think deep thoughts and have deep conversations with Francis and his wife Edith. These vagabond seekers experienced genuine Christian love and heard answers to their deepest questions, while being challenged with new questions. Occasionally Francis would tape record a lecture and put it in an archive. He also collected recordings from other visiting lecturers, such as Os Guinness.

Francis Schaeffer had long hair and wore Lederhosen. His voice was high-pitched and always reminded me of Truman Capote. Friends would gather his recorded lectures and transcribe them into books. And the books were eloquent. Schaeffer critiqued modern literature, philosophy, and theology, along with art and politics, and presented faith in the living God as the alternative to modern despair; He spoke of “The God Who Is There,” as a reality not just a metaphor.

There has often been an element of anti-intellectualism in conservative religion. We valued the positive contributions of Schaeffer’s thought. But he also gave us “permission” (if we needed it–yes, we needed it) to attend to great art and literature and to think serious thoughts.

At the other extreme of intellectual stimulation was a satirical journal called the Wittenberg Door. Reading it helped keep my perspective in balance. The magazine regularly lampooned icons of the evangelical subculture. But it also included serious interviews. I was introduced to Martin Marty, Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, and many other serious Christian thinkers and activists. A cartoon in the Wittenberg Door characterized what kind of magazine it was: a young man standing at a news stand was surreptitiously looking at its pages hidden under the cover of a Playboy magazine.

Another Bonhoeffer Biography

I don’t know if we need another one, but here is a review of a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Evidently Charles Marsh indulges in a little speculative psychoanalysis about Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Eberhard Bethge, suggesting a latent homosexual attraction.  This speculation, based on no evidence other than reading between the lines in the letters, of course could be neither proven nor refuted.

I think it does show a pretty serious failure to understand Bonhoeffer.  First of all, he had no use for psychoanalysis; he described it as a secular version of religious fanaticism.  Revivalist preachers tried to convince decent, honest people that they were miserable sinners, and psychoanalysts tried to convince happy, well-adjusted folk that they are inwardly miserable.  Bonhoeffer believed private matters should be kept private and one should not speak in public about sexuelle Dinge.  Aha, proof of repression?  I think rather it reflects his aristocratic upbringing and some honest convictions about propriety and ethics.

In his Ethics Bonhoeffer followed traditional categories of duty, vocation, family, work, government.  But He also said there is another realm where ethical behavior is realized, and that is the area of freedom.  To this area he assigned friendship.  He recognized a failure in previous attempts to define and describe ethical behavior without recognizing the importance of deep and abiding friendships not confined by categories of duty but developed in the realm of freedom.

One of the failures of a lot of our thinking today is a lack of imagination and vocabulary to appreciate the value of friendship.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethge certainly did love one another.  It was a deep human and Christian friendship.

WWDD?

Nearly everyone admires Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and nearly everyone wants to claim him for their cause.  He is the only theologian Richard Dawkins has every quoted, with approval, as far as I know.  In the 60’s the theologians of the “God is dead” fad appealed to him for his remarks on “religionless Christianity.”  Elton John sang about that fad in the song “Levon” (I think that was the song: “and the NY Times say ‘God is dead’ and the war’s begun . . .)

The new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas is attracting a lot of attention and selling well.  Metaxas claims Bonhoeffer for American evangelicals.

Bonhoeffer did part with German liberal theology–but not without a sympathetic respect for what it attempted to accomplish.  He was impatient with those who would simply dismiss it.

Clifford Green, editor of the authoritative “Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition” project, doesn’t care for Metaxas’ interpretation of Bonhoeffer.  (Review here)

Victoria Barnett, another editor of the Bonhoeffer Works, also finds Metaxas’ portrait one-sided.  She has an interesting insight on why Bonhoeffer appeals to people at opposite ends of the theological spectrum:

Bonhoeffer was deeply pious in a way that some liberal Christians (again, in the contemporary U.S. sense of that word) might find hard to connect with and it’s that piety that speaks directly to evangelicals around the world. At the same time, he was a highly intellectual and critical Christian, and therein lies his appeal for Christians on other points of the spectrum. More importantly, Bonhoeffer had witnessed firsthand what happens when faith and ideology converge.

I haven’t read Metaxas’ new biography yet, but it is on my list, along with one  by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, newly translated from the German.  (Reviewed by Bob Cornwall)

New Bonhoeffer Biography

Eric Metaxas’s new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is getting good reviews.  My friend David Chicaguala, who works with homeless folk in New York City knows Eric, and says he will introduce me when I get up there again.

You can see a video of Eric discussing his new book here.

I plan to read the book by the end of May–as soon as I’m done grading papers and final exams.  I’ll pass on my reactions then.

Government Takeover of Textbooks?

OK, not really–but there are new federal regulations that require colleges to list their textbooks with the course listing.  Since our line schedule comes out next week, I have to select books now for fall classes.  Here’s what I will be using:

For a new course on Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Life, Thought, and Influence, I will require the following:

1. Letters and Papers from Prison (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 8).
   
2. Ethics (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 6).
3. Stephen Haynes, Bonhoeffer for Armchair Theologians.
4. Jürgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World.

The new edition of Letters and Papers is due out this June.  It is nearly twice as long as the prior English edition–and will unfortunately be much more expensive.  But the Bonhoeffer Works volumes are magnificent editions, carefully edited and translated with helpful introductions and annotations.  The English series is nearing completion, following the German editions which appeared throughout the decade of the nineties.

The book by Stephen Haynes is also new and I haven’t seen it yet–I’m walking by faith here–but I assume it is of the same quality as his two prior books on Bonhoeffer.  Finally, I am using one of Moltmann’s little volumes because the course deals with Bonhoeffer’s influence.

Professor Moltmann spoke in 2008 at the Prague Bonhoeffer congress on Bonhoeffer’s influence on his own life and theology.  He mentioned that he was originally a bit put off by the formal and “churchy” language–Moltmann himself was brought up in a secular household and came to faith as a prisoner of war after an American army chaplain gave him a New Testament and Psalms.  He joked that his first reaction to Bonhoeffer’s Life Together was that after his years in prison camp, he had had quite enough of life together.

The book Jesus Christ Today is professor Moltmann’s attempt, some forty years later, to answer a question Bonhoeffer raised in one of his prison letters,

Wer ist Jesus Christus für uns heute?  Who is Jesus Christ for us today.

One answer is given in a chapter on Jesus Christ and Torture.  Jesus Christ is the brother of the tortured and the judge of the torturer.

Who Am I?

Whoops!  I meant to post the following comment on “Theological German,” but accidentally placed it here.  Oh well, I guess I’ll leave it here.  If you are interested, the book is in English.

Dave Black recommends a new book on Bonhoeffer’s Poetry, due out in June from T&T Clark.

For a sample, see “Christen und Heiden” posted earlier here in three installments (1, 2, and 3).

By the way, Dave also says he is not opposed to Greek students using helps, if that’s what they need.  I assume the same would apply to German.

Things to Read in Prison

While Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in prison, hoping to be released but-as it turned out-waiting to die, he kept himself busy by reading and writing.  One of the books that captured his attention was The Worldview of Physics by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.

Bonhoeffer was arrested in April of 1943, initially on relatively minor charges after helping a Jewish family escape to Switzerland.  The Nazis did not yet suspect him of involvement in a plot against Hitler, and he hoped to be cleared of the lesser charges.  After a year, by May of 1944, he must have seen it becoming less likely that he would be released, but still he maintained hope.

Bonhoeffer continued reading and writing as a way of occupying the time-but also for a more serious purpose.  He was planning to participate in rebuilding Germany and Europe after the war. He was thinking about serious issues affecting the church and the world.

While reading Weiszäcker he expressed the view that we can no longer think of God as the answer to the gaps in our understanding and abilities.

We should seek God in the middle of our lives and activity, not out on the boundaries.

We should see God in our success, health, and strength, not only in our weakness, sin, and failure.

Weiszäcker himself was an interesting figure. He was a brilliant young scientist, working alongside of Heisenberg, Bohr and others on nuclear research during the war.  He later claimed that they had deliberately avoided developing the bomb, though that has been disputed.  Nevertheless, after the war he did devote himself to banning nuclear weapons.

Weiszäcker was a committed Christian who taught philosophy in German universities for a second career after teaching physics.  I wonder if he read Bonhoeffer after the war, and if the influence was mutual.  Carl Weiszäcker lived to be 94.  He died just last year, in April of 2007.

(More here, here, here, or here.)

What’s a Pro-Life Voter to Do?

The archbishop of Denver criticized Nancy Pelosi for misrepresenting catholic teaching on abortion (here).  She claimed that the church was ambiguous on the question of when life begins.  Archbishop Chaput answered that the church has never been ambiguous about abortion–it has always condemned the practice.  Archbishop Chaput even quotes the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who said,

“the destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”  (From Bonhoeffer’s Ethics)

Candidate Obama has voted against restrictions on late-term abortions and even against a law protecting infants who survive unsuccessful abortion procedures.  A nurse from Chicago has testified under oath several times that she has witnessed this phenomenon several times.  Babies (that’s what everyone calls fetuses after they are born) have been left to die after surviving induced abortions (here).

We are not talking about subtle nuances here–whether a fertilized egg is a person–we are talking about near-term fetuses or even babies surviving outside the womb.

So how can a pro-life voter support a candidate who opposes any restrictions on late-term abortions?

But there is another life-issue–war.  The other candidate says he will keep us in Iraq for one hundred years, if necessary.

Looking back on these two issues, we are really talking about elective abortion and elective war.  No one on the pro-life side wishes to deny abortion when it is medically necessary to save the life of the mother. What bothers so many is when abortion is not necessary, but a choice, an elective option.

The same is true of George Bush’s war in Iraq.  It was an elective war.  We were not under attack, nor were we in imminent danger of attack from Iraq.  Even had it been true that Saddam Hussein was still trying to develop Weapons of Mass Destruction, no one believed he had a missile ready to launch.  So this was an optional war–not a war forced upon us but a war chosen to accomplish a good cause–eliminating a tyrant, bringing democracy to the Middle East–but not a war undertaken for immediate self-defense.

Only one candidate had the judgment or courage to vote against that war.

Help me out readers.  Am I being selfish to think of my own family? In sixteen years my grandson could be sent to Iraq.  Maybe he will be told that the Iraqi government is almost ready to stand on its own–they just need a little more time.  Right now we don’t have a draft–but the current system is unfair to those who enlisted, and there have been senators calling for a reinstatement of conscription.

I assume that all those who enlist for active duty or in the reserves are motivated by the desire to serve their country.  I assume they believe they will not been sent into optional or elective wars.  They will not be called upon to enter harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary.  In that case we will want a president with a proven record of good judgment.

So here is my problem.  How can I vote for a candidate who supports elective, optional late-term abortion?  How can I vote for a candidate who supports elective, optional war?

You might say the answer is either don’t vote or vote for a third party candidate.

The problem with that for me is that it would be avoiding my responsibility.  Barack Obama or John McCain will be our next president (of course, barring unforseen tragedies or divine intervention).  I have a responsibility to choose one of these candidates.  Which pro-life issue is more important?  Or do I call it a draw and vote on the other issues?  In that case, the choice to me is clear enough.

Easter Wishes from Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes an Easter letter to his parents during his first month in prison. He is allowed to send one letter every ten days. He refers to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, who was about 19 at the time. He was about 37 when he wrote the letter.

Easter Sunday, April 25, 1943

Today the tenth day is finally here again, so that I may write to you. How glad I am to let you know that I am celebrating a happy Easter here. The liberating thing about Good Friday and Easter is that one’s thoughts turn far away from one’s personal fate toward the ultimate meaning of life, suffering, and everything that happens, and one clings to a great hope.

Since yesterday it has been amazingly quiet in this prison house. The only sound heard is “Happy Easter,” as everyone calls to each other with no envy, and no one begrudges the fulfillment of their Easter wishes to those who labor here in these difficult conditions.

Good Friday was Maria’s birthday. In the past year she bore the death of her father, her brother, and two especially beloved cousins with such a firm heart. If I didn’t know that, I would worry about her. Now Easter will console her, her large family will stand by her, and her work in the Red Cross will keep her completely occupied.

Greet her warmly, tell her that I long for her very much. Tell her not to be sad but brave as she has been til now. She is so very young! That is the hard part.

Christian and Heathen (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Here is the poem by Bonhoeffer that I promised earlier. It is a good meditation for Holy Week and Good Friday.

People go to God in their need,
plead for help, ask for happiness and bread,
for deliverance from sickness, guilt, and death.
So do we all, all of us, Christian and heathen.

People go to God in his need,
find him poor, abused, homeless, without bread,
see him entangled in sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand by God in his suffering.

God goes to all people in their need,
satisfies them body and soul with his bread,
dies for Christian and heathen on the cross of death,
and forgives them both.

What Does God Need?

The obvious answer would be that God needs nothing from us. It was the answer Epicurus gave: the gods are perfectly happy and their bliss is neither diminished nor enhanced by anything we do. Passages in the Bible also agree, that God in his eternal divinity is in need of nothing–certainly not sacrifices. As David says in the Psalms, speaking for God,

If I were hungry, would I ask you?

God has all the glory he needs as well. Our pitiful attempts to “give” him glory and praise do not supply any deficiency in God.

And yet that is not the whole story:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison a poem about Christians and Heathens. He said all people go to God in their need, but Christians stand by God in his need. (I will post the poem in a day or two.)

The message of Easter and Holy Week is that God so identified with our needs that he became one of us, taking on our guilt, death, sickness, and needs. When Jesus walked this earth, he needed food and shelter, friendship, and strength from his Father.

He also said,

“Inasmuch as you have done unto the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done to me.”

We could speak abstractly about God been self-sufficient, immutable, and almighty. We could suppose that God can do anything he wishes. What we know is that he has chosen to work through us to fulfill his work on earth, his work of love, compassion, and providing for the needs of his children. As long as there are hungry, suffering, abandoned, or lost people on earth God needs us.

A Prayer from Bonhoeffer

I have begun posting over at Wellspring Bonhoeffer’s prayers he wrote in prison. The first was composed for Christmas, 1943, his first Christmas in prison. It is a Morning Prayer, one of a series written for himself and his fellow prisoners (at Wellspring, here).

Tomorrow I will write my thoughts about today’s tragic news.

Christmas Letter Concluded

We were snowed in a few days before Christmas, and I wasn’t able to get to my computer to complete the Christmas letter.  The thoughts are still worth reading even a couple days late.  View the second post below.

Christmas Letter continued . . .

I’m going to keep adding a brief paragraph a day to the Bonhoeffer Christmas letter. Each thought makes a good thought for the day, so be patient and enjoy it a little at a time. But keep coming back to the post below this one.

Bonhoeffer Christmas Letter

I have returned to posting excerpts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s letters on my Theological German blog, so I will share a few translations of the selections. The first is from a Christmas letter to his parents, written December 17, 1943.

Dietrich had been held for several months with no formal charges being made. He assumed he was being held on suspicion of a relatively minor charge and would be released soon. In several earlier letters he had expressed the hope of being free by Christmas to celebrate the holiday with his family and close friends.

By the time he writes this letter, he has given up on the hope of being free for Christmas.

Dear parents,

Above all, you must not think that I will let myself sink into depression during this lonely Christmas. It will take its own special place in a series of very different Christmases that I have celebrated in Spain, in America, in England, and I want in later years to be able to think back on these days not with shame but with a special pride. That is the only thing that no one can take from me.

I don’t need to tell you how great my longing for freedom and for all of you is. But you have for so many decades provided us with Christmases so incomparably beautiful, that the grateful memories of them are strong enough to outshine even a dark Christmas.

From a Christian point of view, a Christmas in a prison cell is no special problem. It will probably be celebrated here in this house more sincerely and with more meaning than outside where the holiday is observed in name only. Misery, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something entirely different in the eyes of God than in the judgment of men.

That God turns directly toward the place where men are careful to turn away; that Christ was born in a stable because he found no room in the Inn—a prisoner grasps that better than someone else. For him it really is a joyous message, and because he believes it, he knows that he has been placed in the Christian fellowship that breaks all the bounds of time and space; and the months in prison lose their importance.

On Holy Evening (Christmas Eve) I will be thinking of all of you very much, and I would very much like for you to believe that I will have a few beautiful hours and my troubles will certainly not overcome me.

If one thinks of the terrors that have recently come to so many people [with the heavy allied fire bombings] in Berlin, then one first becomes conscious of how much we still have for which to be thankful. Overall, it will surely be a very silent Christmas, and the children will still be thinking back on it for a long time to come. And maybe in this way it becomes clear to many what Christmas really is. . .

Your Dietrich

Thanksgiving Thoughts

Who would have guessed that encouraging words would come from Christopher Hitchens? Yesterday he announced on CNN that Al Qaida has been defeated in Iraq. Sometimes we are embarrassed at the prayers in the Psalms for the destruction of one’s enemies; but when you have an enemy as hideous as Al Qaida it’s easier to be sympathetic with those prayers.

I’ve been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison; and I just received a copy of the prison correspondence between him and his fiancée Maria Von Wedemeyer. To respect her own privacy and his memory she donated her collection of letters to Harvard university but requested that they not be published until after her death. The letters were published in 1992.

In one letter she expresses her exuberance at receiving a letter from her beloved prisoner. I think her joy comes through without even a translation:

Hurra, Hurra, Hurra, Hoch, Vivat und Halleluja! Ich hab einen Brief von meinem Dietrich . . . Mein liebster Dietrich . . .

Shortly before he was arrested, Bonhoeffer wrote a reflection “After Ten Years” of resistance against the German Christian’s accommodation to the Nazi regime. Here are a few thoughts from this meditation:

Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer; it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty. These last years have certainly not been like that. Our losses have been great and immeasurable, but time has not been lost. . .

One cannot write about these things without a constant sense of gratitude for the fellowship of spirit and community of life that have been proved and preserved throughout these years.

Letter from Prison Dec 21, 1943

(I have copied this letter from “Wellspring.” If you wish to read more, check Wellspring about once a week. Click on the link above, or in the blogroll on the right.)

Eberhard Bethge was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s best friend. He had been a student at the Seminary in Finkenwald. During Bonhoeffer’s time in prison Bethge married Bonhoeffer’s niece Renate. The couple named their first child Dietrich. Most of the letters are addressed to Bethge, who collected and edited them.

Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment in Tegel was somewhat like the apostle Paul’s imprisonment, in that he had some liberty to read and write. The guards treated him with respect, at first because of his family connections and later because they came to admire him personally, as did the other prisoners. Some of the letters passed through censors; others were smuggled out, sometimes with the cooperation of prison guards.

The German title of the Letters and Papers from Prison is Widerstand und Ergebung, which means “Resistance and Submission.” The title was inspired by this passage in a letter Bonhoeffer wrote to Bethge on February 21, 1944.

Some background information: Michael Kohlhass is a classic of German Literature, based on the life of a man who lived in the time of Martin Luther (Click on the link to learn more about Michael Kohlhass). Bonhoeffer spent a short time in Barcelona as a pastor before the war; but his knowledge of Don Quixote was probably part of his general education. Martin Buber’s famous book “I and You” (or I and Thou in some English translations; Ich und Du in German, published 1921) described the difference between personal “I-You” relationships and impersonal “I-It” encounters.

February 21, 1944, from Tegel to Eberhard Bethge (an excerpt)

I have often wondered about this: where is the boundary between necessary resistance against “Fate” and equally necessary submission? Don Quixote is the symbol for continuing resistance to the point of absurdity, even insanity—like Michael Kohlhass, who by pressing his claim to justice became a criminal . . . with both men, resistance in the end lost any real meaning and evaporated into a theoretical fantasy; Sancho Pansa is the representative of a full and clever submission to the given circumstances.

I think we must venture what is great and individual, and at the same time do what is natural and generally necessary. We must oppose “Fate” (I find the neuter gender of the word important) with the same determination as we submit to it when the occasion requires that.

Only after this twofold process can one speak of divine “Guidance.” God meets us no longer as “You” but is shrouded in “It” and my question goes to this point: how can we find the “You” in this “It” (”Fate”). In other words, how can “Guidance” come out of “Fate”?

The boundary between resistance and submission cannot be defined according to an abstract principle; but both must exist, and both must be moved by determination.

Faith demands this flexible, living approach. Only so can we make it through each present situation and make it fruitful.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You have probably heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer before–even Richard Dawkins, who doesn’t read theology, knows about him. Bonhoeffer was a member of the Confessing Church in Germany during the Nazi’s rise to power. The Confessing church refused to acknowledge any “Führer” other than Jesus Christ.

One of Bonhoeffer’s early books, the Cost of Discipleship is still popular today. In it he complained of a kind of cheap grace that appealed to God’s mercy as an excuse for complacency and compromise. The book is an exposition of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and some other passages in the Bible.

Bonhoeffer was a pacifist. He had spent some time in New York, as a visiting scholar. He was impressed with the African American Christians’ struggle for freedom. He was also impressed by the teachings of Ghandi, and had plans to travel to India. Had he lived he might have joined Dr. King in the American Civil Rights Movement.

Although Bonhoeffer was committed to nonviolence, he came to the conclusion that if a madman is driving a car through a crowd of people, a Christian has the obligation, not only to comfort the victims, but to stop the madman.

He joined a group that conspired to assassinate Germany’s mad Führer. He worked as a sort of double agent for the German intelligence, while working with the resistance.

I belong to a group called “Wellspring,” that meets out on Judd and Nancy’s farm. We currently have chosen to read Cost of Discipleship together over the next couple months. Wellspring has just started its own blog, and–I have begun posting my translations of the reading selections from the letters.

I am going to post the first selection here in a couple of days. After that, you can check the “Blogroll,” and click on Wellspring if you want to continue reading the Bonhoeffer selections.