Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on this day in 1905.
I have spent nearly all of my adult life reading and learning with Dietrich, so I thought it a good exercise -- in the midst of all the hullabaloo in American politics these days -- to share a few of the quotes of things he's said that have shaped how and why I think the way I do about that politics.
The first is from a sermon Dietrich preached while working in London as a youth pastor. It was 1934, two years after Nazism had risen to positions of prestige and power in Germany.
I have spent nearly all of my adult life reading and learning with Dietrich, so I thought it a good exercise -- in the midst of all the hullabaloo in American politics these days -- to share a few of the quotes of things he's said that have shaped how and why I think the way I do about that politics.
The first is from a sermon Dietrich preached while working in London as a youth pastor. It was 1934, two years after Nazism had risen to positions of prestige and power in Germany.
What is the meaning of weakness in this world? We all know that Christianity has been blamed ever since its early days for its message to the weak. Christianity is a religion of slaves, of people with inferiority complexes; it owes its success only to the masses of miserable people whose weakness and misery Christianity has glorified. It was the attitude towards the problem of weakness in the world, which made everybody to followers or enemies of Christianity. Against the new meaning which Christianity gave to the weak, against this glorification of weakness, there has always been the strong and indignant protest of an aristocratic philosophy of life which glorified strength and power and violence as the ultimate ideals of humanity. We have observed this very fight going on up to our present days. Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its apologia for the weak. -- I feel that Christianity is rather doing too little in showing these points than doing too much. Christianity has adjusted itself much too easily to the worship of power. It should give much more offence, more shock to the world, than it is doing. Christianity should take a much more definite stand for the weak than to consider the potential moral right of the strong (my emphasis added).The second quote is from an essay Bonhoeffer had written two years earlier ("The Church and the Jewish Question"), roughly at the same time that Hitler rose to power as Chancellor:
A state that threatens the proclamation of the Christian message negates itself. There are thus three possibilities for action that the church can take vis-à-vis the state: first, ... questioning the state as to the legitimate state character of its actions, that is, making the state responsible for what it does. Second, is service to the victims of the state's actions. The church has an unconditional obligation toward the victims of any societal order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. "Let us work for the good of all." (Gal 6:10) These are both ways in which the church, in its freedom, conducts itself in the interest of a free state. In times when the laws are changing, the church may under no circumstances neglect either of these duties. The third possibility is not just to bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel but to fall [ourselves] within the spokes of the wheel itself. Such an action would be direct political action on the part of the church. This is only possible and called for if the church sees the state be failing in its function of creating law and order, that is, if the church perceives that the state, without any scruples, has created either too much or too little law and order. It must see in either eventuality a threat to the existence of the state and thus to its own existence as well (my emphasis added).In an era of "alternate" facts, and violence toward others who are different and disagreeable to those in power, Dietrich's words -- written while he was in Tegel prison -- are especially appropriate:
The church is the church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others. In particular, our own church will have to take the field against the vices of hubris, power-worship, envy, and humbug, as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, purity, trust, loyalty, constancy, patience, discipline, humility, contentment and modesty. It must not under-estimate the importance of human example (which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus and is so important in Paul's teaching); it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives its word emphasis and power (again, my emphasis added).In a letter written while he was still in Loudon (to Erwin Sutz, on 11 Sept 1934), Bonhoeffer wrote:
The next generation of pastors, these days, ought to be trained entirely in church-monastic schools, where the pure doctrine, the Sermon on the Mount, and worship are taken seriously ... It is also time for a final break with our theologically grounded reserve about whatever is being done by the state -- which really only comes down to fear. "Speak out for those who cannot speak" -- who in the church today still remembers that this is the very least the Bible asks of us in such times as these? (my emphasis).Finally, from among his papers collected in the posthumous Ethics, there's this. I know of nothing Dietrich wrote at the end of his life that better describes our current American political landscape and how we Christians should respond to it:
"Great convictions" ... are now replaced by the line of least resistance and sailing before the wind. In the political sphere the unscrupulous exploitation of the moment now goes by the false name of Machiavellism. The all-or-nothing gamble is called heroism and unfettered action. Whatever is neither Machiavellian nor heroic can now be explained only as "hypocrisy," because there is no longer any understanding for the slow, laborious conflict between knowledge of right and the necessities of the hour, the conflict which was the genuine political life of the west, with all its voluntary concessions and its authentically free responsibility. Strength is disastrously confused with weakness, and historical continuity with decadence. The absence of anything lasting means the collapse of the foundation of historical life, confidence, in all its forms. Since there is no confidence in truth, the place of truth is usurped by sophistic propaganda. Since there is no confidence in justice, whatever is useful is declared to be just. And even the tacit confidence in one's fellow-man, which rests on the certainty of permanence and constancy, is now superseded by suspicion and an hour-to-hour watch on one's neighbor (my emphasis added, of course).