Although I have long admired him greatly, quoted him in sermons and chapel talks, and
included him in university/seminary lectures, up until now I have not written
about Dietrich Bonhoeffer in any of my previous blog articles (and this is my 499th
one).
Today, though, on the
110th anniversary of his birth on February 4, 1906, I am happy to
post this article in honor of Bonhoeffer’s memory.
As most of you probably
know, Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis in a German prison in April 1945, just
weeks before the end of WWII in Europe. He was 39 years old, the same age as
Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated on an April evening 23 years
later.
Bonhoeffer was born
into an upper middle-class family and could easily have become a medical doctor
or a lawyer. Instead, he chose to become a pastor and a theologian. And then he
chose to become one of the leaders among the small percentage of Christians in
Germany who stood up in opposition to Hitler and the Nazis.
Before Hitler’s rise
to power, though, Bonhoeffer spent the academic year of 1930-31 as a student
and teaching fellow at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. For six
months during that year he regularly attended the Abyssinian Baptist Church and
sat under the preaching of Pastor Adam Clayton Powell (1865-1953).
Bonhoeffer, who turned
25 during the year he was in New York, was significantly influenced by his
experience of attending that predominantly African American church in Harlem.
In January 1933 Adolf Hitler, Führer (leader) of the National
Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), was appointed Chancellor of
Germany. Bonhoeffer, who was still just 26 at that time, soon began to oppose
the fascism of Hitler and 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 Confession in 1934. They sought to
make it clear that Jesus Christ was the Führer, their leader and the head of
the Church, not Hitler.
Later that year, Bonhoeffer
went to London to become pastor of a German-speaking church there. In 1935,
though, he returned to Germany to become the head of the Confessing Church’s
seminary.
In September 1937 that seminary in Finkenwalde was closed
by the Gestapo and by November, 27 pastors and former students of Bonhoeffer were
arrested.
That same November, Bonhoeffer published his most widely
read book, Nachfolge (“following
after”), which in 1949 was published in English as The Cost of Discipleship.
In it Bonhoeffer sought to elucidate what following Jesus really means.
The first chapter of the
book is titled “Costly Grace,” and there Bonhoeffer rejects what he terms
“cheap grace.” That term was one he had heard in New York. Before
Bonhoeffer was born, Rev. Powell had used the phrase “cheap grace” to refer to
the dominant forms of religion that tolerated racism, sexism, and lynching in
one form or another.
For Bonhoeffer, “cheap grace” was what he
saw among the “German Christians” who accepted Hitler’s fascism. But he came to
see that for him discipleship meant to stand up for the Jews and to oppose
Hitler—and he even joined in plotting to kill Hitler in order to save Jewish
lives.
Because
of his anti-Nazi activities, Bonhoeffer was arrested and imprisoned in April
1943. Two years later he was executed.
Bonhoeffer
wrote in Nachfolge, “When Christ
calls a man, he bids him come and die.” That, indeed, was the cost of
discipleship for him.
