{"id":27270,"date":"2021-02-22T08:19:50","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T16:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=27270"},"modified":"2021-02-22T08:19:50","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T16:19:50","slug":"bonhoeffer-leadership-a-chronology-of-commitments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/bonhoeffer-leadership-a-chronology-of-commitments\/","title":{"rendered":"Bonhoeffer & Leadership: A Chronology of Commitments"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the very moment when Swiss theologian Karl Barth asserted that Christianity was separated \u201cas by an abyss from the inherent godlessness of National Socialism,\u201d Germany was working to fuse the German Volk<\/em> (people) with the German Kirche<\/em> (church).[1]<\/a> Embedded within Hitler\u2019s masterplan for domination was a strategy to make the violent rule of the Third Reich congruent with Christianity. This was not a subversive strategy, but quite overt and it worked with staggering efficiency.<\/p>\n

The German church quickly oriented around the construction of Jesus as \u201cour Aryan hero\u201d and aligned with the F\u00fchrer\u2019s anti-Semitism.[2]<\/a> In response, Bonhoeffer rejected the notion of the Aryan Jesus and revealed anti-Jewish sentiment as anti-Christ. As Dylan Branson so aptly pointed out in his article \u201cA Spoke in the Wheel\u201d,<\/a> Bonhoeffer urged the church to remember its three-fold progression of responsibility from within the nation-state: question, aid the oppressed, and, if necessary, directly oppose.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Rather than heed Bonhoeffer\u2019s prophetic critique, \u201cthe German Christians preached Christianity as the polar opposite of Judaism, Jesus as the arch anti-Semite, and the cross as the symbol of war against the Jews.\u201d[4]<\/a> In so doing, Germanness had become synonymous with anti-Jew. To be a German Christian meant to rid the faith of everything Jewish.[5]<\/a> Of course, this was absurd.<\/p>\n

The question, then, for Bonhoeffer and his colleagues became: Christianity or Germanism?[6]<\/a> The majority chose Germanism. Incensed by their inability to take a defiant stand against the will of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer went to work organizing within the ecumenical context. His goal was for the global church to acknowledge the heresy of the German Church by disallowing their membership within the ecumenical movement. He knew that the Nazis, at that time, were very concerned with their global reputation and that being barred from the global ecumenical community would be suffered as a significant hit to the Nazi strategy.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

At this moment, Bonhoeffer was resolved in his commitment to Jesus, to the ecumenical church, and to Germany.<\/p>\n

While Metaxas does not suggest this series of commitments chronologically, I do assert that there is a proper ordering and that the chronology is of note. First, Bonhoeffer was unapologetically Jesus-centered. While the question \u201cWhat is the Church?\u201d was a core wondering, Bonhoeffer did his best to disallow the Church to become the center of his theology, remaining steadfast on Jesus instead. Second, moved by his immersion in Rome, Bonhoeffer was fully committed to the work of the church in Germany and strengthening its collaboration with the global church. While in his brief life, this commitment was focused on the issue of the German Church, it is clear that intra-faith dialogue and collaboration were critical for Bonhoeffer. His humble participation sets an example for what this work could (and does) look like today. Third, he was still a proud German who wanted the very best for his people. It pained him that Germany as a whole was self-sabotaging and saw his role and that of the church to participate in its redemption and restoration.<\/p>\n

For Bonhoeffer, restorative participation rested on the aforementioned chronology of commitments. He understood the church as secondary to Jesus: it was to be the contemporary embodiment of Jesus\u2019 presence and power within society. The role of the church at large, according to Bonhoeffer, was to follow Jesus into society equipped not with weapons to win but with the tools to transform.<\/p>\n

Of note to me, Bonhoeffer\u2019s strategy was not directly focused on the masses nor the ecclesial power-brokers. Instead, Bonhoeffer spent the majority of the life he had left accompanying young aspiring faith leaders who were questioning the legitimacy of German Christianity and searching for its hopeful alternative. While Bonhoeffer is oft remembered as the martyr, I think of him as a subversive pilgrim-guide who dared to follow Jesus into deeper interdependence, expressions of powerlessness, and radical generosity.<\/p>\n

~~<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Metaxas, Bonhoeffer<\/em>, 171-172.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 168.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 155.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 172.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 172.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 185.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid., 189.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the very moment when Swiss theologian Karl Barth asserted that Christianity was separated \u201cas by an abyss from the inherent godlessness of National Socialism,\u201d Germany was working to fuse the German Volk (people) with the German Kirche (church).[1] Embedded within Hitler\u2019s masterplan for domination was a strategy to make the violent rule of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1943,1960,35,1904],"class_list":["post-27270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bonhoeffer","tag-commitment","tag-leadership","tag-pilgrimage","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27271,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27270\/revisions\/27271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}