Were Jesus and Bonhoeffer Pacifists?

Unpacking the Complex Legacy of a German Christian Martyr

Imagine this…

You are visiting Portland and one afternoon while exploring you find yourself standing on a footbridge, looking down over streetcar tracks. Suddenly you notice a runaway streetcar hurling out of control toward the bridge. Down the track there are five people; and the banks are too steep to climb to get off the track in time. You realize that the only way to stop the out-of-control streetcar is to drop a very heavy weight onto its path. But the only available, sufficiently heavy weight, is a large man, also watching the streetcar from the footbridge. Your dilemma is whether you should shove the man onto the track in the path of the trolley, killing the man; or refrain from doing this, letting the five die.

What would you do?

This is a variation of the classic “Trolley Problem” often used to discuss the subject of ethics. The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment first devised by the Oxford moral philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967. Back in the day as a professor of ethics, I would often raise this dilemma. You can play with the variables to discuss a range of ethical issues. For example, what if the five people on the tracks were life-sentence felons and the large man on the footbridge was a medical doctor. Or what if the five people on the tracks were elementary school girls, and the man on the footbridge just celebrated his 100th birthday.

We can scale up these dilemmas with monumental implications. On May 2, 2011, the United States conducted Operation Neptune Spear, in which SEAL Team Six shot and killed Osama bin Laden at his "Waziristan Haveli" in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The raid took 40 minutes and five people were killed. Many people would feel it was justified to kill bin Laden, who founded al-Qaeda and masterminded the September 11 attacks.

In the 1930s and 1940s with the rise of Hitler, German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer found himself in the clutches of an ethical dilemma and crisis of faith. He aligned himself with the Confessing Church, a Protestant movement in Nazi Germany that opposed the Nazi government’s efforts to unite German Protestant churches into a pro-Nazi church.

Bonhoeffer was accused of being associated with the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler and was tried along with other accused plotters, including former members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office). He was hanged on 9 April 1945 during the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is controversial for a number of reasons, including his outspoken political views, his role in the Confessing Church, and his theology. Unless you live on a remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean with no internet, you’ve heard about the controversy about the new Bonhoeffer film. I can’t possibly adequately cover the legacy and lessons related to Bonhoeffer’s life and death, but I hope to offer a few insights from the recent controversy of the film.

Who is Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

There are many ways one could cover the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For the sake of this article I will create a brief timeline of his life, share some of his words and writings, and express how Bonhoeffer impacted my own life and journey.

10 Important Events in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life

1906: Bonhoeffer is born in Breslau, Germany, with his twin sister Sabine, they were the sixth and seventh children out of eight. His father was Karl Bonhoeffer, a psychiatrist and neurologist, noted for his criticism of Sigmund Freud (who I covered in Part Two of my psychology of religion series); his mother Paula Bonhoeffer was a teacher and the granddaughter of Protestant theologian Karl von Hase and painter Stanislaus von Kalckreuth.

1920: Bonhoeffer declares at 14 years old that he wants to be a theologian and minister. Bonhoeffer’s family was not religious, and his father and brother were agnostics. His brothers were particularly scornful of his decision, believing that religion was a distraction from promoting equality and human rights. Bonhoeffer studied at Tübingen and the University of Berlin, where he earned his Doctor of Theology degree in 1927.

1930: Dietrich goes to New York to study at Union Theological Seminary for a year. Bonhoeffer is invited to attend Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, transforming his spiritual outlook. Specifically, Bonhoeffer was inspired by the church’s resistance to white supremacy and emphasis on social justice. Bonhoeffer's experiences at the church helped him empathize with victims of Hitler, including Jews, trade unionists, and the Roma. Bonhoeffer used the Black church as a theological template for his resistance with the Confessing Church in Germany.

1933: Gives a radio address two days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, warning young Germans not to idolize their leaders. The address was a strong criticism of the Nazi regime and the leader principle (Führerprinzip). Bonhoeffer’s speech was cut off abruptly, but it's unclear if the Nazi regime was responsible.

1935: Bonhoeffer starts teaching at the underground Finkenwalde seminary. He writes a study of the Sermon on the Mount that becomes his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer’s most famous work. One of the central concepts of the book is “cheap grace”, which is a comfortable commitment to Christian doctrine in place of living the radical message it implies. Bonhoeffer wrote, “Cheap Grace is the deadly enemy of our church. It is grace without price: grace without cost!”

1939: Union Theological Seminary’s Reinhold Niebuhr sponsors Bonhoeffer returning to America. He had been invited to the United States to give guest lectures, but he realized that he had made a mistake and after two weeks returned to Germany to share the trials of his people.

1940: Gestapo shut down the underground seminary. By this point, Bonhoeffer is working for the Abwehr, a military intelligence group that hides German resistance activities.

1943: Bonhoeffer is arrested for helping smuggle Jews into Switzerland. He was arrested along with his sister Christine and her husband, Hans von Dohnanyi, and they were brought to the prison in Berlin-Tegel.

1944: Operation Valkyrie, the plot to kill Hitler, fails. Operation Valkyrie, also known as the July Plot, was an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944. The plan was part of a larger anti-Nazi resistance movement in Germany. The plotters’ goals were to: Remove Hitler from power, Seize control of the government, and Negotiate better peace terms with the Allies. The coup attempt was plagued by delays, confusion, and poor communication. The bomb planted by Claus von Stauffenberg under Hitler's table only lightly injured the Nazi leader. The Gestapo discovers Abwehr plans for the assassination, showing Bonhoeffer was involved in the plot.

1945: Bonhoeffer, Abwehr leader Wilhelm Canaris, and five other men hanged in Flossenbürg Concentration Camp. The night before his execution, Bonhoeffer said, “Every act of courage comes with a cost.” Bonhoeffer’s last words were, “This is the end for me, the beginning of life.” Bonhoeffer's family didn't learn of his death until four months later. Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison was published posthumously.

10 Defining Quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a great deal during his lifetime, from sermons to poetry to an unfinished play and novels, including an unfinished philosophy book titled Ethics. Here are some of the many inspiring quotes from Bonhoeffer’s work:

“It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies.”

“Does not our preaching contain too much of our own opinions and convictions and too little of Jesus Christ?”

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

“God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world. It is not the love of God that is the problem, but the disbelief of men in the love of God.”

“We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”

“Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God.”

“Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life.”

“Comfort the troubled, and trouble the comfortable.”

I’ve mentioned a few of Bonhoeffer’s books above. If you are interested in further exploring the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a few useful reads are:

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge

• Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen

• Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Christiane Tietz

• Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance by Reggie L. Williams

• Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

• Bonhoeffer and King: Speaking Truth to Power by J. Deotis Roberts

Bonhoeffer Film Controversy

Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin is a 2024 historical drama thriller film about the German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written, produced and directed by Todd Komarnicki.

What exactly is the controversy?

The controversy surrounding the Bonhoeffer film are many, including:

The Historical Inaccuracy Controversy

The film includes many historical inaccuracies, including depicting Bonhoeffer holding a gun. While it is true that the pacifist Bonhoeffer of the 1930s involved himself some years later in a conspiracy with the ultimate aim of assassinating Hitler, he wasn’t a gun-slinging militia member, dreaming of the birth of the NRA.

The Slogan Interpretation Controversy

The film’s slogan, “How far will you go to stand up for what's right?”, is not a question Bonhoeffer ever asked. Maybe you think this is splitting hairs since Bonhoeffer championed issues of social justice and was part of the resistance to Nazism, but perhaps you can appreciate how someone might take the film’s how-far-will-you-go slogan and turn it into a rationale for extremism and violence. Many people have accused the film of being overconfident in its depiction of Bonhoeffer’s evolution into a would-be assassin.

The Idealism of Bonhoeffer Controversy

The film is accused of turning Bonhoeffer into an evangelical saint and distorting his life. One of the criticisms of those who write about Bonhoeffer is that they often have a religious background and tend to depict Bonhoeffer in an overly favorable and even idealistic light. For example, Eric Metaxas, who wrote a widely-known biography on Bonhoeffer (mentioned above), is a staunch conservative and has in the past been a prominent supporter of Donald Trump. Metaxas’ biography of Bonhoeffer was named the 2010 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Christian Book of the Year, meanwhile The Christian Century published an article refuting the book, titled, Hijacking Bonhoeffer.

The Theology of Bonhoeffer Controversy

There are also difference of opinion about Bonhoeffer’s theology. Many theologians have gestured toward Bonhoeffer’s late reflections on “religionless Chris­tianity”. He developed the concept of “religionless Christianity” in letters he wrote to his friend and student, Eberhard Bethge, while in prison. Bonhoeffer wrote, “We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore.”

Peter Hooton’s book, Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity explores these ideas further. Bishop John Shelby Spong is among those who have tried to build on Bonhoeffer’s phrase and his book Jesus for the Non Religious has certainly moved the conversation along among progressive Christians.

The Family of Bonhoeffer Controversy

Members of the Bonhoeffer family have issued a statement expressing concern about the misappropriation of Bonhoeffer’s legacy to support Christian nationalism. The film’s director, Todd Komarnicki, as well as several of the actors in the film wrote to express their concern about “the misuse of our film and the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Christian Nationalists.”

The Christian Nationalism Controversy

I previously published an article about the rise of Christian Nationalism. At the seminary that Bonhoeffer attended, Union Theological seminary, theologian and journalist Arnd Henze presented a seminar titled, “Weaponizing Bonhoeffer: How Church Resistance to Hitler Was Dragged into Today’s Culture War.”

Bonhoeffer joined the German resistance as a double agent and supported an effort by some of his family members to develop a plot to assassinate Hitler. Thinking of the Trolley Dilemma at the beginning of this article, do you think it would be ethical to assassinate Hitler to prevent the execution of 6+ million innocent people. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here to say probably many of you would support the idea of assassinating Hitler to prevent The Holocaust.

But does that make Bonhoeffer a Christian nationalist? Of course not.

Bonhoeffer agonized over the contradiction between his pacifism and his conclusion that Hitler needed to be stopped to prevent the killing of millions of Jews and the evisceration of the church. He accepted that his participation in the plot was worthy of God’s judgment against him, even though he believed it was necessary. Based on this, it’s obviously a reach to put a MAGA hat on Bonhoeffer and use him as the posterchild for constructing a Christian theocracy, and criminalizing one’s political opponents.

Bonhoeffer died for being involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. One might rightly argue that he was justified in resisting the evils of Nazism, but his death was not because of his beliefs, but rather for his “crime” of conspiracy to murder. To regard him as a “martyr” would be a very different sense from the usual Christian martyrs.

Many Evangelicals who claim Bonhoeffer as their own might be more than a little disturbed if they went digging around in this theology. For Evangelicals the cross is at the center of their faith. Bonhoeffer did not believe in substitutionary atonement – Christ suffering as a substitute for our sins, dying in our place to earn eternal life for us. Rather, he concerned that we live cross-centered lives, meaning that we take up our cross and follow Christ, living lives of self-denial. Bonhoeffer was also a universalist, believing in the eventual salvation of all. He wrote that there is no part of the world, no matter how godless, which is not accepted by God and reconciled with God in Jesus Christ.

The fragmentary nature of Bonhoeffer’s works led to him being claimed by a number of groups, from the “Christian atheists” of the 1960s to conservative Evangelicals. Bonhoeffer mostly studied under liberal theologians, but was clearly influenced by Karl Barth’s Neo-Orthodoxy.

Were Jesus and Bonhoeffer On The Same Page?

I first encountered Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the reading of his book, The Cost of Discipleship, published in 1937. In the book, Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Jesus stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him, he is the sole Mediator in the world.”

It was Bonhoeffer who confronted my tendency to think of my Christian faith as a matter of individual salvation and personal relationship with God, and to understand that true Christianity is about a transformed relationship with all of humankind. Bonhoeffer wrote,

“The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them.”

I remember that day when my entire relationship with humankind changed. It was when I stopped judging people, and started listening. For better or for worse, we are one human family. Today I will remember that:

• Every human being has at least one secret that would break my heart.

• Every human being has moments when they feel alone, abandoned, forsaken and forgotten.

• Everyday human being needs love, belonging, acceptance, compassion, understanding, validation, and worth.

• Every human being carries hurts and wounds from the volatility of their lived human experience.

• Every human being is a manifestation of the same infinite, timeless, ultimate and complete reality and nature.

As mentioned, I previously wrote an article on Christian Nationalism. The sub-title of the piece is: “Would Jesus be a Christian Nationalist?” You can read what I wrote there, and I won’t repeat it here. To answer the sub-title question, my answer is “no” - Jesus would not be a Christian nationalist.

Was Jesus a pacifist?

Generally, pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism or violence. The word pacifism was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901.

In modern times, interest was revived by Leo Tolstoy in his late works, particularly in The Kingdom of God Is Within You. Mahatma Gandhi propounded the practice of steadfast nonviolent opposition which he called "satyagraha", instrumental in its role in the Indian Independence Movement. Its effectiveness served as inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr.

There is some disagreement about whether Jesus was a pacifist. On the one hand, there were plenty of instances in the Jesus-story where Jesus could have reverted to violence and didn’t. It was clear that Jesus was not intending to establish any kind of political rule. Jesus’s teachings on the Sermon on the Mount are often used to justify pacifism.

On the other hand, the cleansing of the temple is often cited as a rebuttal to the argument for Christian pacifism. When Jesus sent his disciples out the first time- he sent them out with nothing for their journey (Luke 9:3). The next time as Jesus prepared to send them out into the hostile world, Jesus commanded them to take their necessary bags, coats, and if necessary—sell their cloak to purchase a sword. He said to them:

“But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:26).

Interestingly enough, Peter had a sword just as Jesus commanded. While Jesus rebuked Peter for defending him, he didn’t rebuke Peter for having a sword.

While we all know that Jesus did not advocate the advancement of his teachings by sword, bomb, plane, tank, or military conquest, Jesus also seemed to understood that his followers were going out into a dark land of depravity and they would likely need a sword for simple protection.

Was Jesus a pacifist? It’s complicated. You’d be hard-pressed to find Jesus inciting violence, but he may have understood that in some instances violence might be necessary.

Was Bonhoeffer a pacifist? Generally, most people would say yes. Bonhoeffer opposed war. Bonhoeffer’s theological framework for his call to nonviolence and love of enemies is found in his book, The Cost of Discipleship. Some label Bonhoeffer as “a pacifist and enemy of the state.”

Despite the recent film, although Bonhoeffer was aware of various plots to kill Hitler – he knew of five assassination plots, out of the forty-two documented by historians – it is believed that he himself was never an active participant in any of them. Many say that there is no evidence that Bonhoeffer was linked in any way to these attempts on Hitler’s life. Just because Bonhoeffer engaged in sensitive conversations with the would-be assassins, they argue, it does not follow that he personally participated in their plans.

I don’t think Jesus would have signed off on all of Bonhoeffer’s theological positions, but in my view they would have agreed on many things. They would have agreed that that the measure of one’s character is not based upon one’s theological or philosophical positions, but their actions and way of being in the world.

Courageously confronting injustice was a shared conviction by Jesus and Bonhoeffer. Speaking truth to power is a non-violent political tactic, employed by dissidents against governments or institutions they regard as oppressive, authoritarian or an ideocracy. In their own right, Jesus and Bonhoeffer did this at great personal sacrifice, and had their lives cut short as a result.

Both Jesus and Bonhoeffer stood in solidarity with the marginalized, victimized and oppressed. Bonhoeffer said that authentic Christianity protects the oppressed from the oppressor. Jesus so completely identified with the victimized that he said that coming to their aid was the equivalent of serving him directly.

The fact that Jesus is often sadly missing from Christianity is a disturbing reality on which Bonhoeffer and Jesus himself would agree. Bonhoeffer argued that the church should not be a religious community of worshippers of Christ, but an embodiment of the teachings of Christ to the world. Bonhoeffer emphasized a human Jesus in contrast to the cosmic Christology of the church. Bonhoeffer knew that when the church stops talking about Jesus, it has nothing to say. And when it assumes dominance, it’s not talking about Jesus.

Special Considerations

There are a few special considerations I would like to briefly address in this article.

Pacifism and Privilege

Sometimes I feel that Malcolm X was to some degree misunderstood. He was a civil rights activist and leader who believed in Black nationalism and self-defense against white violence. Malcolm X's activism was defined by his “by any means necessary” policy. A few quotes of his worth noting are:

“Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”

“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”

“I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people.”

“I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk.”

Black Theology

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was deeply impacted through his involvement in Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. The Abyssinian Baptist Church is a historic African American church located in Harlem, New York City, founded in 1808. It has played a vital role in the development of urban African American communities, serving as a spiritual and cultural hub while also advocating for social justice and civil rights throughout its history. This church has been a center for community organizing and activism, fostering a sense of belonging and resilience among its congregation during times of racial oppression. In 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. visited Abyssinian and preached at services marking the church’s 157th anniversary.

Dr. Adam Clark (Ph.D. Union Theological Seminary) is a professor at Xavier University, and co-chair of Black Theology Group at the American Academy of Religion. I recently heard a brilliant presentation in which he offered a usefully sobering critique of Western theological movements through the lens of the victimized, marginalized and oppressed. You can explore “Black Theology” if you have an interest in exploring this further. A useful book on this topic by James Cone is, A Black Theology of Liberation.

Many years ago I was drawn to the rigors of “liberation theology”, and later felt some cognitive dissonance in my exploration of existential philosophy, which can be a little heavy in metaphysical abstractions that can seem a little removed from the realities of human suffering if you don’t do the work to make the connections.

Cornel West wrote, “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” Part of the point here is that there's a problem when theological systems wax eloquently about God and justice in theory, but don't seem to put this theology into action. One of the points Adam Clark made was the curious fact that some of the greatest philosophical/theological movements were happening during periods of tragic social injustice, which oddly didn’t seem to make it into these philosophical/theological discussions and writings.

Howard Thurman was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader.

In his book, Jesus and the Disinherited, he wrote:

“I do not ignore the theological and metaphysical interpretation of the Christian doctrine of salvation. But the underprivileged everywhere have long since abandoned any hope that this type of salvation deals with the crucial issues by which their days are turned into despair without consolation.

The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus.

“In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”

A few thoughts about Thurman’s quote:

1. The Cosmic Christ versus the Human Jesus

You might say that it is a privileged path when it comes to Jesus Christ, to fancy all our theological thoughts around the metaphysical Christ, while the revolutionary human Jesus fades into insignificance. It’s the difference between understanding Jesus as the one who punches your ticket to an afterlife heaven, or the one who speaks truth to power and stands with the oppressed in the here and now. Religion has always thrust upon Jesus the metaphysical title of the “Son of God”, but Jesus identified himself as the “Son of Man”, which is a title of radical solidarity with humankind and the human condition, not the supposed original-sin-human-condition, but the cry-of-the-oppressed human condition.

Though it has largely dimmed in theological circles, “liberation theology” is a Christian theological approach emphasizing the liberation of the oppressed. Liberation theology encouraged a break from an elitist notion of the Church and the return of control to the people. By involving the poor in their own liberation and offering Christianity as a tool towards a more just and whole society, liberation theologians dramatically changed the relationship between not only the Church and the state, but also the Church and the people.

2. Christianity as the religion of the dominant and the powerful

Thurman refers to modern Christianity as “a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression.” Throughout history, the Christian religion has rationalized:

• the persecution of heretics

• the subordination of women

• the practice of religious intolerance

• the divine right of kings against democratic freedoms

• the institution of slavery

• cruelty to animals

• the suppression of civil rights

• white supremacy

• racism

• religious exclusivism

• opposition to scientific progress

• the burning of witches

• violence and war

• state’s enforcement of the Christian religion on the whole of society

William Hazlitt wrote, “The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.” Karl Marx famously describes religion as the “opiate of the masses.” Marx argues that religion is an ideological tool that legitimates and defends the interests of the dominant, wealthy classes in the population. It does so in part by placating the poor and exploited classes.

The point here, based on Howard Thurman’s quote, is the tragic irony of how Christianity has too often been a religion of dominance, power and oppression, while Jesus himself confronted religious empire and was a champion of the oppressed. The depiction of Jesus in the gospels is a rebel who opposed, challenged, attacked, confronted, subverted, and undermined the religious and societal systems and structures of his day that oppressed his human brothers and sisters, divided them against each other, and prevented them from finding their spiritual authority within themselves. To the religious establishment, Jesus was a blasphemer and heretic. The government viewed him as seditious and an insurgent. Jesus spoke truth to power. Ultimately he was killed for it.

3. The “spirit of Jesus” is courage

Thurman writes, “Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage...” Rather than think of Jesus as the supernatural solution to the imaginary divine dilemma of sin and separation from God, what if we saw Jesus as the spirit of courage to be liberated from all oppression. Thucydides wrote, “The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.” I'm not saying a person needs Jesus to summons courage or live courageously, but this seems to be something useful and powerful that Christianity could offer the world.

Liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutiérrez, wrote: “The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order.”

Bonhoeffer and Christian Atheism

I have written articles in the past that would be considered “radical theology” and ventures into areas such as “Christian Atheism” and “death of God theology”. Bonhoeffer’s theology evolved (including “religionless Christianity”) and it can be difficult to pin down any orthodox Bonhoefferian theology.

I do find something curious that he wrote in a letter from prison to Eberhard Bethge:

“July 16, 1944

To Eberhard Bethge:

...And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world as if there were no God. And this is just what we do recognize before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us. The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. It is quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.”

One could see in these words the idea of letting go of God-As-The-Big-Other, orchestrating, managing, controlling, intervening and fixing everything from above, to “God” as the spirit within us all who bear the responsibility and accountability for the condition of our world.

3 Non-religious lessons from Bonhoeffer

1. See the world from below

In both word and action, Bonhoeffer encourages us to see “… the great events of world history from below . . . from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.”

2. Start in the mirror

A point of emphasis for Bonhoeffer was addressing one’s own hypocrisy and duplicity. The injustice, inequality, oppression, hardship, division, greed, hate and suffering in our world is the reflection and manifestation of false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that have polluted our collective consciousness, which means they are present inside each of us. We must identify and confront the ways each of us are complicit in the injustice, inequality, oppression, hardship, division, hate and suffering in our world because of the false beliefs and mindsets inside us that we act on every day. It’s that awkward moment when you discover that you are actively participating in those narratives, ideologies, systems and structures in our world that are afflicting, abusing, victimizing, and oppressing human beings and our planet.

3. Resist

Bonhoeffer knew full well that refusing to swear allegiance to Hitler at the time could lead to execution. Desmond Tutu wrote, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” and Elie Wiesel wrote, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” A good place to start might be to educate yourself on topics related to resistance. A few books that might be useful to explore the spectrum are:

• On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

• Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts by Gene Sharp

• Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth

• The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace by John Paul Lederach

• Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovic

• When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice by Jason Brennan

In Summary:

• Turning Bonhoeffer’s resistance to Hitler and Nazism into Christian Nationalism and MAGA sympathizer is a fallacy.

• The misappropriation of Bonhoeffer’s legacy in the new Bonhoeffer film is a great concern to the Bonhoeffer family, and the film director and actors.

• Generally speaking, Jesus and Bonhoeffer are considered to be “pacifists” but it’s complicated.

• Consult black theology if you want to learn the deepest connections between religion and social justice.

• See the world from below.

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison