WWBD (What Would Bonhoeffer Do?)

The German pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo nearly 79 years ago, on April 5, 1943. He was implicated in the plot to overthrow the German government under Hitler and sentenced to die—and, indeed, he was hanged on April 9, 1945. 

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1933)

What Did Bonhoeffer Do in Germany?

On the 110^th anniversary of his birth on February 4, 1906, I posted a blog article titled “Honoring the Memory of Bonhoeffer.” Thus, this post focuses on Bonhoeffer’s activity as a part of the resistance to Hitler from 1933 until his arrest by the Nazis ten years later.

Bonhoeffer was one of the first prominent German Christians to speak out in opposition to Hitler. Two days after Hitler was installed as the German chancellor in January 1933, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he criticized Hitler.

In April of that year, he raised the first voice for church resistance to Hitler's persecution of Jews, and in the following year he joined with Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth, and others to form what came to be known as the Confessing Church.

These anti-Nazi Christians in Germany drafted the Barmen Declaration in 1934. They sought to make it clear that Jesus Christ was the Führer, their leader and the head of the Church, not Hitler.

In 1940, Bonhoeffer became even more active in the German resistance and finally he was arrested because of that activity. At that time, he was charged with avoiding military service, advising his students to do the same, and also for helping some Jews escape Germany.

Despite what is often said/believed about Bonhoeffer, he was not arrested for participating in any assassination attempts. The main attempt to kill Hitler came on July 20, 1944, and after that plot failed, some 7,000 people were arrested and nearly 5,000, including Bonhoeffer, were executed.

Bonhoeffer was, indeed, a part of the resistance and until his arrest worked closely with those who devised the July 20 assassination attempt, especially with his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, who was accused of being the "spiritual leader" of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.

It is obvious, though, that Bonhoeffer was not directly involved in the 7/20/44 assassination attempt itself, for he was imprisoned fifteen months before it occurred.*

What Would Bonhoeffer Do Now in Ukraine/Russia?

It is difficult to know what Bonhoeffer would do in Ukraine if he were living there now, for he lived, wrote, and was martyred in a country that was waging war, not one suffering from the horrors of unprovoked invasion.

Being a Christian in Ukraine now is far different from being a Christian in Germany in the 1930s. We know what Bonhoeffer did there then; we don’t know what he would do in Ukraine now.

However, I think we do know what Bonhoeffer would do were he a Christian living in Russia today. He would undoubtedly become a part of—and likely the leader of—a resistance movement that would agree with Pres. Biden’s moral outrage: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

It is not evident, though, that all Christians should do the same—or that we who safely live in this country should “tell” Christians in Russia what they should do. (This issue is dealt with at some length in the March 11 posting in Christianity Today: Do Russian Christians Need More Bonhoeffers?)

What Would Bonhoeffer Do Now in the U.S.?

With some certainty we can assume that were Bonhoeffer alive in the U.S. today he would speak out strongly against those American Christians who advocate Christian Nationalism—as, thankfully, some American Christians are. (See Christians Against Christian Nationalism.)

More specifically, he would doubtlessly oppose efforts to “make America great again” and the growth of White Christian nationalism since 2015.**

Bonhoeffer’s most widely read book is Nachfolge (1937; Eng. trans., The Cost of Discipleship, 1949, and Discipleship, 2003), the theme of which is faithfully following Jesus and living by his teachings, especially as found in the Sermon on the Mount.

That, surely, is what Bonhoeffer would do here now—and what he challenges us to do also.

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* Bonhoeffer’s persistent pacifism is a central theme of a new book by Mennonite scholar Mark Thiessen Nation, Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2022).

** White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (April 2022) by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry promises to be a helpful analysis of the latter; see this interview with Gorski in the March 15 post of YaleNews.

Remembering Flannery, Gloria, & Aretha: In Observance of Woman’s History Month

Flannery O’Connor, Gloria Steinem, and Aretha Franklin were distinctly different, but all three are definitely worth remembering in Women’s History Month (March) as they embodied this year’s theme, “Women Providing Healing, Promoting Hope.”

These three outstanding women are especially worth remembering today as all three were born on March 25: Flannery in 1925, Gloria in 1934, and Aretha in 1942.

Remembering Flannery O’Connor

Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Georgia and had a short, difficult, and productive life before dying at the early age of 39 in 1964.

In 1949 while living in New York City and making her mark as a promising young writer, she was diagnosed with lupus. Consequently, she moved back to her mother’s home in Milledgeville, Georgia.

Even though she continued to write, gradually she was able to work only two hours and then only one hour a day. Yet, she completed two novels and 32 short stories. Wise Blood, her first novel was published in 1952, and “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” her best-known short story, the following year.

O’Connor was a woman of strong religious faith, and she is widely considered the best Catholic woman author of the 20^th century. God’s grace was an underlying theme of her writing.

One of O’Connor’s well-known statements is, “People without hope not only don’t write novels but what is more to the point, they don’t read them.”

Remembering Gloria Steinem

Despite a humble Ohio childhood, Gloria Steinem graduated magna cum laude from prestigious Smith College in 1956 and earned the Chester Bowles Fellowship, which enabled her to spend two life-changing years in India.

Steinem’s essay about her hopes for the future of women was published in the Aug. 31, 1970, issue of Time magazine. Here is the link to the March 5, 2020, issue of Time that reprints the original essay with Steinem’s comments 50 years later.

Indeed, for more than 50 years Steinem has pursued healing the of gender, ethnic, and other factors that have separated people, favoring some (men, Whites, etc.) to the detriment of others (women, Blacks, etc.). The world is better off because of her ground-breaking and ongoing lifework.

Steinem’s contributions were recognized when she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993 and awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama ten years later.

Her book The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! was published by Random House in 2019 (when she was 85!). Singer and actress Janelle Monáe dubbed it a “fearless book full of passion, resolute perspective, and unbiased hope for the future.”**

Remembering Aretha Franklin

Though born in Memphis, after age five Aretha grew up in Detroit where her father was pastor of the influential New Bethel Baptist Church from 1946 to 1979.

Respect, a 2021 “biographical musical drama film,” features “Ree” (Aretha) from 1952 to 1972. “Respect” was the song recorded in February 1967 that became her first #1 hit song. And, indeed, much of her early life was seeking respect as an African American and as a woman.

But she was not seeking respect for just herself, “Respect” became a demand for gender and racial equality and has been both a civil rights and a feminist anthem. About a year ago Rolling Stone selected the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,”—and “Respect” was #1 on that list.

Franklin’s life illustrates this year’s Women’s History Month theme. In August 2018, the month she died, The Guardian posted an article titled Aretha Franklin: a life of heartbreak, heroism and hope.

The climax of the movie Respect shows her healing in 1972 as she powerfully sang “Amazing Grace” as it was being recorded. It became the highest-selling album of her career with over two million copies sold in the U.S.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee three days this week, is poised to become the first Black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. That possibility is due in part to the ground-breaking work of Gloria and Aretha.

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** The 2020 film The Glorias, based on Steinem’s autobiographical book, My Life on the Road (2015), “weaves a compelling, nontraditional tapestry of one of the most inspirational and legendary figures in modern history.” It is well worth seeing and is available free for those who have Amazon Prime and available for $6-7 on other streaming services.

~&~ Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian woman who is a climate scientist and an evangelical Christian, has authored a highly acclaimed book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World (2021), which I mention here because the subtitle echoes the theme of this year’s Women’s History Month. 

Punitive Justice vs. Restorative Justice

As you may or may not know, I was a sociology major in college and Criminology was one of the memorable courses I took as such. But that was a long time ago, and since then there has been an important change in emphasis (in some circles) from punitive justice to restorative justice. 

My Time in Jail/Prison

The first time I was ever in a prison was when my Criminology class at William Jewell College made a field trip to the United States Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. At that time, it was the largest maximum-security prison in the United States.

Even before that unforgettable experience, though, I was concerned about prisoners in local jails. While still in college, I became pastor of a small mission church, and soon I began taking high school kids from church to the Henry County (Mo.) jail to conduct monthly “jail services.”

Several years after going to Japan, I visited people I knew, or knew of, a few times in detention centers (jails), and then multiple times I went to several different detention centers and penitentiaries to visit one man charged and then convicted of murder.

Since retirement, I have visited one young man held, at separate times, in the Clay County Jail & Detention Center here in Liberty, Mo.

In all these cases, the prisoners were incarcerated as a form of punishment. They were the target of what is often called punitive justice. That is, they were being punished for breaking the law and committing crimes against society.

From the time I took the Criminology course to the present I have always thought that the primary purpose of incarceration ought to be rehabilitation, not punishment. Accordingly, I have long been an advocate of indeterminate sentences.

It has only been in recent years, however, that I began hearing/learning about an alternative to the traditional practice of “penal justice.” This innovative approach is called “restorative justice.”

Meet Howard Zehr

More than any other living person, the new and growing emphasis on restorative justice is due to the teaching and writing of Howard Zehr.

Zehr (b. 1944) is currently the Distinguished Professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He is also the co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice.

Zehr has often been called the father—or the grandfather—of the restorative justice (RJ) movement. His first book introducing RJ was Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (1990).

Now, The Little Book of Restorative Justice, Zehr’s book first published in 2002 with the revised and updated edition issued in 2015, is more widely known. The current Amazon.com website for the latter indicates that over 150,000 copies have been sold.

Zehr has been a lifelong Mennonite, and his work in developing the concept/practice of restorative justice is in keeping with central tenets of that form of the Christian faith.

The Goal of Restorative Justice

An editorial review of Zehr’s 2015 book states:

Restorative Justice, with its emphasis on identifying the justice needs of everyone involved in a crime, is a worldwide movement of growing influence that is helping victims and communities heal, while holding criminals accountable for their actions.

All the people I have visited in jails and prisons were incarcerated primarily for punitive purposes. They were there to see that “justice was done,” but that was only punitive justice. There was nothing being done, it seems, that would help victims and communities heal.

RJ, though, is designed to promote three interlinking goals: offender responsibility, victim reparation, and community reconciliation.

In my research for this article, I watched “How to Love Your Enemy: A Restorative Justice Story” (2020), a YouTube video of what has been done in Longmont, Colorado, a city of nearly 100,000 about thirty miles NNW of Denver. Their Community Restorative Justice program dates back to 1994.

Their website now states: “Longmont Community Justice Partnership provides restorative justice services to the Longmont community and offers training in restorative practices throughout Colorado and the United States.”

This is the type of program that needs to be encouraged and supported across the country. 

Helping Ukraine: War without Violence?

Today is the twentieth day since the beginning of the unprovoked Russian invasion of the sovereign country of Ukraine. The courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people has certainly been admirable, but their suffering has been great and their short-term future is exceedingly bleak. 

From the 3/5/22 cover of The Economist

President Zelenskyy’s Call for Help

Since the very beginning of the invasion of his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been widely praised as a courageous leader in his beleaguered country and an exemplary advocate of freedom. He will be awarded the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award for 2022.

President Zelenskyy has repeatedly taken to the airwaves to make zealous appeals for increased military help from NATO and the U.S. He has warned that the refusal to give assistance through such means as declaring a no-fly zone over his country will result in the deaths of thousands of his citizens.

In response to that March 5 appeal, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said, “Let’s be cleareyed about our options: “A No-Fly Zone means sending American pilots into combat against Russian jets and air defenses—in a battle between nuclear powers that could spiral out of control quickly.”

So, how should the U.S. and NATO respond to Zelenskyy’s call for help?

Has President Biden’s and NATO’s Response been Weak?

Some in this country have used the lack of full positive response to Zelenskyy’s call as a sign of weakness on the part of President Biden.

An opinion piece in the March 11 online issue of The Christian Post is titled “The Ukrainian crisis: A catastrophic failure of leadership.” The author is Richard Land, President Emeritus of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Land asserts that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was “so preventable,” pointing out that 62% of Americans believe that if Trump were still president, Russia would not have invaded.

Apparently, Land is among those 62%. He writes, “Putin feared Trump’s strength, whereas he holds Biden’s invertebrate weakness in disdain.”

He also asserts that “Biden’s weakness is illustrated by his apparent fear of what Putin might do.”

This same sort of criticism is expressed by Wendell Griffen, a progressive Baptist leader for whom I have great respect. I was disappointed, though, by what he wrote in a March 9 opinion piece.

Griffen asserted, “What perturbs Zelensky and delights Putin is the knowledge that world leaders lack the will to bring their arsenals, warriors and other war-fighting resources to bear against Putin.”

The opinion of Daniel Davis, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army is far better than the two divergent Baptists just cited. Davis’s article in the March 8 post of The Guardian is titled “A no-fly zone means Nato shooting down Russian jets. We must not do that” (emphasis added).

Can there be Significant Help without Violence?

The effectiveness, and even the morality, of the violent resistance of the Ukrainian people is discussed in an article posted March 7 by Religious News Service (here). It is titled “Catholic theologians question the morality of Ukraine’s violent resistance.”

While I agree with much in that significant article, here I am writing only about the morality of help for Ukraine supplied by the U.S. and NATO—and in that regard I strongly believe that the stance taken so far by the U.S. is not a show of weakness but of prudence.

The increasing level of sanctions leveled against Russia will surely in the long run lead to a cessation of violent fighting in Ukraine. Direct military action would, no doubt, be more effective in the short run—but with the distinct possibility of leading to greater escalation of violence.

Greater military help of Ukraine now, could—and perhaps would!—lead to greater suffering, more casualties, and more violent Russian warfare not only against Ukraine but also against other European countries.

Hasty, belligerent acts by the U.S./NATO could—and perhaps would!—provoke Russia to use strategic nuclear weapons. And that could well be the beginning of World War III.

Looking at the bigger picture and the potentiality of unthinkable disaster, I am deeply grateful that the U.S. and NATO are seeking to help Ukraine mostly by non-violent (=non-military) means.

The Supreme Court Then and Now: Reflecting on the Dred Scott Case

In recent years there have been a couple of bad U.S. Supreme Court decisions, namely, “Citizens United” in 2010 and the decision to gut the Voting Right Act in 2013. But it is widely agreed that the Court’s decision on the Dred Scott case 165 years ago, on March 6, 1857, was the worst ever. 

Dred Scott’s Suit for Freedom

Although it is an embarrassment to me, Missouri, the state where I was born and where I have lived again since 2004, was a slave state from its beginning in 1821, and the Dred Scott case was closely linked to Missouri.

Dred Scott was an enslaved man who was born in Virginia between 1795 and 1799. Peter Blow, his enslaver, brought Scott and his other slaves to St. Louis in 1830 and soon sold him to John Emerson, a surgeon serving in the U.S. Army.

Emerson took Scott with him to Illinois and then to Wisconsin Territory, both areas where slavery was illegal. But then the doctor moved back to Missouri in 1840. Scott, though, claimed that since he had lived in free territories, he should no longer be considered enslaved—and he sued for his freedom.

He won his case, but after it was reversed by the Mo. Supreme Court, Scott and his wife took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court—and to their dismay and the dismay of many, the SCOTUS ruled against them by a vote of 7-2.

However, in May 1857, Dred and Harriet Scott appeared in the St. Louis Circuit Court and were formally freed— but he did not live to enjoy his free status very long as he died of tuberculosis in September of the next year.**

The Supreme Court in 1857

Of the nine members on the Supreme Court in 1857—all White men, of course—five were from the South and were slave owners. Two of the Northerners sided with the Southerners in voting against Scott’s freedom.

Roger B. Taney was the Chief Justice and wrote the infamous majority opinion of the Dred Scott decision. Taney (1777~1864) was born into a wealthy, slave-owning family in Maryland. He was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice in 1836 and remained the Chief Justice until his death.

(In an interesting but unrelated Missouri connection, a new county in south Missouri was officially organized in 1837 and named in honor of the new Chief Justice. Many years later the now widely-known resort town of Branson was incorporated in Taney County.)

In his infamous opinion, Taney wrote that the majority held that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves,” whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore did not have the standing to sue in federal court.

Ironically, as Chief Justice, Taney was forced to issue the presidential oath to Lincoln in March 1861, and to listen to Lincoln’s inaugural address, where he criticized Taney and the Dred Scott decision, but not directly by name.

After the Civil War, in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision by granting citizenship to all those born in the United States, regardless of color or former enslavement.

The Supreme Court Now

From the beginning to the present, there have been 115 Supreme Court Justices—and all but seven of those have been White men.

It was of the greatest significance when Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first African American Justice in 1967, a full 110 years after the Dred Scott decision.

And now Ketanji Brown Jackson will likely soon be confirmed as the first Black woman to be seated on the Supreme Court.

Both Marshall and Jackson, as well as Justice Clarence Thomas, are descendants of enslaved people who were not and could not be U.S. citizens according to the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

But now the Supreme Court needs to act again to ensure that African Americans, whose full citizenship was acknowledged in the 1860s, can exercise their right to vote despite new Jim Crow laws currently encroaching on the voting rights of Black citizens.

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** Here is the link to a lengthy and informative talk about the Dred Scott case that was given by (now) retiring Justice Stephen Breyer in 2009.

Learning from the Mennonites in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has been the top news story for ten days now. This article, though, is primarily about the nineteenth-century Ukrainian Mennonites and their descendants—and about what Christians can (and should) learn from them. 

Menno Simons (1496~1561)

The Background of the Mennonites

The small Christian denomination known as Mennonites (and there are several church organizations who use that name) grew out of the Anabaptist movement that began in Switzerland in 1525.

It was 495 years ago, on February 24, 1527, during an assembly of Anabaptists in the northern Swiss village of Schleitheim that a statement of the basic principles of the Anabaptists was adopted.

That statement, usually called the Schleitheim Confession, was the first Protestant confession of faith. The more widely-known Augsburg Confession of the Lutherans dates back to 1530.

Menno Simons was a Roman Catholic priest who left the Catholics and joined the Anabaptists in 1536. Simons, who was from the northmost part of the Netherlands, became such a strong leader that the name of the more than two million Mennonites in the world today comes from him.

For quite some time now, most Mennonites have not affirmed or followed all seven of the articles of the Schleitheim Confession.

The first and sixth articles, though, are still followed by most Mennonites today: the affirmation of believer’s baptism (i.e., the rejection of infant baptism) and the affirmation of pacifism or non-resistance (i.e., the rejection of “the sword.”

The Movement of the Mennonites to, and from, Ukraine

The early Anabaptists/Mennonites were regularly persecuted in western Europe, so even in the 17th century some migrated to what was to become the USA, and many others moved east to Prussia, largely to what is Poland today.

Catherine the Great became the Empress of Russia in 1762, and most of Ukraine fell under Russian rule during her reign. She soon invited people from Prussia (and elsewhere) to move to the Ukrainian area of Russia and to farm the unoccupied lands there.

Two of the incentives the Empress offered the Mennonites for settling in Ukraine were self-government and exemption from military service. Since they were pacifists, the latter was especially appealing to them. The largest colonies formed were Chortitza and Molotschna, founded in 1789 and 1803.

When a change in the Russian government threatened to end their military exemption, a Mennonite delegation traveled to St. Petersburg in 1871 to plead their case. When their appeals failed, a third of the Mennonite population—some 18,000 people—emigrated to the U.S. and Canada.

(Although it was first published in 1986, here is the link to “Mennonites Ingrained in Kansas,” an informative article in the Los Angeles Times.) *

Learning from the Mennonites

So, what can we learn from the Ukrainian Mennonites?

Obviously, right now, following their example and moving to other parts of the world where they will not have to fight is not a viable option for most Ukrainians—although, tragically, during these past ten days there have been more than 1,200,000 Ukrainians who have fled their homeland as refugees.

Still, the Ukrainian Mennonites of the past are a good example of the importance of some Christians being leaven in the world. The Anabaptists’ consistent advocacy for pacifism, often resulting in their considerable suffering, has not been widely followed but has often caused others to question violence/war.

There are few Mennonites in Ukraine today, just over 500 adherents in 11 congregations. But they are active advocates of peace and justice.**

And, who knows, perhaps they have had some influence on the Ukrainians who recently befriended a Russian soldier as seen in the following picture from the March 3 issue of Metro, the British newspaper. 

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* More details of the Mennonites in Ukraine and in North America are found in my 5/5/14 blog post titled “In Praise of Ukrainian Mennonites.” In that article, I relate how many of my current church friends, as well as my daughter-in-law, have close ancestors from Ukraine.

** Here is the link to an informative article about Mennonites in Ukraine, past and present, in the 2/22/22 online article in Anabaptist World.