Tag: bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology – Part IV. We Need Communal Repentance for Communal Injustices

[Read all posts about Antifascist Theology by clicking here.]

When telling the story of America, where do you begin? Did the story of America begin in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are created equal”? Or did it begin in 1619, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to our shores, ushering in the start of a decidedly unequal society built on the backs of marginalized people groups? The answer to that question has been hotly debated in recent years, and I don’t plan to address it today, except to say that “it’s complicated.” However, it is crucial that we do think deeply and critically about the past — the good, the bad, and the ugly. Real history requires the study of nuance, of complicated people groups doing complicated actions for complicated reasons. 

In contrast, one of the hallmarks of fascism is an oversimplified, often mythologized celebration of a nation’s founding story, which may have little basis in fact. In the first century BCE, the Roman poet Virgil wrote The Aeneid , which linked the founding of Rome to the glorious heroes and demigods of the Trojan War stories. Virgil’s writings helped to prop up and justify the new order of the Pax Romana, the empire led by Caesar Augustus after the fall of the Roman Republic. All past evils and uncomfortable truths were washed away in the glow of the founding story. 

Fascists over the centuries have followed suit. Mussolini linked his vision of Italian fascism to the Roman Empire, nearly 1900 years prior, while Hitler’s Nazis concocted a pseudoscientific story about “Aryans” that linked to Norse and Germanic legends. For both Mussolini and Hitler, these stories required a timeless villain that they described as the globalist, unrooted, corrupt, disloyal Jew. We all know what horrors would soon be justified by these fables. 

Norse imagery used in Nazi propaganda : Source

Now, I don’t think there is anything automatically wrong with telling semi-mythical origin stories about one’s people group; humans have been doing it since the invention of language — see the Babylonian Enuma Elish, or the book of Genesis. To the extent that Americans are inspired by a fake story about George Washington chopping down a cherry tree tree, that is probably fine. However, it is bad when those stories are misused to justify evil, oppress marginalized groups, and/or to puff up a sense of false pride and supremacy. What’s even worse is when Christians, who ought to hold ourselves to a higher standard, refuse to acknowledge wrongs done and instead continue to justify sins and evil done in our nations. 

So what is the answer? How can we as Christians move forward to tell the truth about previous generations, repent and make amends as needed, and pursue justice in our own time? 

Bonhoeffer has much to say about this in his Ethics (pages 134-145), written in the 1940s under the specter of Nazi fascism. As I have written previously, while Bonhoeffer does not use this term, what he is essentially creating in Ethics is a work of antifascist theology. The tendrils of fascism have been creeping up in many places recently and we would be wise to heed Bonhoeffer’s warnings, lest we fall into similar errors. 

Bonhoeffer’s Theology of Communal Guilt

I have written before about the idea of communal guilt and communal repentance. It is a deeply biblical idea, but in the West it is often ignored because we are overly focused on individual culpability. In contrast, as Bonhoeffer writes in Ethics, “The church today is [supposed to be] the community of people who, grasped by the power of Christ’s grace, acknowledge, confess, and take upon themselves not only their personal sins, but also the Western world’s falling away from Jesus Christ.” Even if we ourselves do not think we have done wrong, or have done very little, we still must confess: “Even the most secret sin of the individual soils and destroys the body of Christ. Murder, envy, strife, war—all arise from the desire that lies within me (James 4:1). I cannot pacify myself by saying that my part in all this is slight and hardly noticeable…I am guilty of inordinate desire; I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have spoken; I am guilty of untruthfulness and hypocrisy in the face of threatening violence; I am guilty of disowning without mercy the poorest of my neighbors….what does it concern me if others are also guilty? Every sin of another I can excuse; only my own sin, of which I remain guilty, I can never excuse.”

Bonhoeffer points out that this is not merely something to be confessed by individuals for themselves, but by Christians on behalf of the whole church. “The church was mute when it should have cried out…the church has looked on while injustice and violence have been done, under the cover of the name of Christ.”

Bonhoeffer shares a litany of sins of which the German church was guilty. How many of these are similarly true of the American church today?

  • Using the language of “resisting Bolshevism [communism]” to legitimize violence against leftists
  • Not resting on the Sabbath
  • Exploiting working people beyond the hours of the workweek
  • Disrespect towards elders
  • Not speaking out against the arbitrary use of brutal violence
  • Looking on silently while the poor are exploited, and the strong were enriched
  • Not condemning slanderers who tell lies about other people

Clearly, all of these sins have both individual and communal manifestations. In our day, one person’s private sinful inclination can quickly become very mainstream — witness the rise of slander as we share unfounded conspiracy theories and lies on social media — “Oh I’m just asking questions; it’s my freedom of speech.”  Or witness the coarse joking of Christians who eagerly express the not-so-hidden desire to kidnap, kill, or rape their political opponents (#FJB anyone?).

Of course in our day, like in Bonhoeffer’s, there are those who would argue that these sins are not so bad, or at least, not so bad as the sins of our opponents. Bonhoeffer responds to these people and writes sarcastically, “Is this going too far? Should a few super-righteous people rise at this point and try to prove that it’s not the church, but all the others are guilty?…to be called as judges of the world, proceed to weigh the mass of guilt here and there and distribute it accordingly?” To these people who engage in such Whataboutism, who argue that the Church’s confession of communal sin is unnecessary when the other side is also bad, Bonhoeffer thunders at them— “Free confession of guilt is not something that one can take or leave; it is the form of Jesus Christ breaking through in the church. Whoever stifles or spoils the church’s confession of guilt is hopelessly guilty before Christ.”

Wow! He is not holding back. For the church to be the church, it must be willing to confess the sins of its people, and its nation. Anyone who tries to oppose such communal confession is “hopelessly guilty!” I think of all the pundits and politicians who are so quick to deny that American Christians have ever done anything wrong, and say that we have nothing to apologize for. Bonhoeffer thinks such people are not only deluded, but practitioners of a false gospel. To deny the existence of any guilt is to deny any possibility of forgiveness, repentance, or redemption.

However, if we do choose the right path, progress is possible. Bonhoeffer writes: “The nations bear the heritage of their guilt. Yet by God’s gracious rule in history it can happen that what began as a curse can finally become a blessing on the nations…to be sure, the guilt is not justified, not removed, not forgiven. It remains, but the wound that is inflicted is scarred over. For the church and for individual believers there can be a full break with guilt and a new beginning through the gift of forgiveness of sin. But in the historical life of nations there can only be a slow process of healing…Continuity with past guilt, which in the life of the church and the believer is broken off by repentance and forgiveness, remains in the historical life of nations…

“What matters is only whether the past guilt is in fact scarred over. If so, then at this point, within the historical conflicts of nations both domestic and foreign, something like forgiveness takes place, though it is only a weak shadow of the forgiveness that Jesus Christ gives to believers. Here the claim to full atonement by the guilty for past injustice is renounced; here it is recognized that what is past can never be restored by human power, that the wheel of history can no longer be rolled back. Not all wounds that were made can be healed; but it is critical that no further wounds be made….Where this does not happen, where injustice rules unchecked and inflicts ever-new wounds, there can certainly be no talk about such forgiveness. Instead, our first concern must be to resist injustice and convict the guilty of their guilt.” 

Bonhoeffer clearly makes the distinction between wounds that have slowly been left behind by the passage of time, and wounds that continue to remain open and gaping. In both cases, however, there is the need be a need for Christians to seek forgiveness and healing, not to simply sweep the past under the rug.

Some Case Studies

The idea of communal guilt is a bit vague. What might this look like practically? Let’s take a few case examples. 

There are some sins of our own nation that have indeed “scarred over,” and are mostly in the past. For example, Anti-Catholic sentiment used to be one of the biggest forms of discrimination in the US, with legal, social, and ethnic prejudice embedded throughout the nation. Recall that it was a big deal that JFK was the first Catholic President. However, as writer and speaker Eboo Patel has pointed out, anti-Catholic sentiment is very rare nowadays, and systemic and social barriers to Catholics have virtually disappeared. This feels like a good example of Bonhoeffer’s “scarring over”— it doesn’t justify the sins of the past, and the pain may still be there in some ways, but for the most part it is in the past. There are no new wounds being made against Catholics except in the absolute rarest of occasions.

Anti-Catholic cartoon from 1913 depicting the church and the pope as a malevolent octopus (source)

Or take the response of Germany after the Holocaust. After being forced by the Allies to reckon with the evils perpetrated in their name, Germany has embarked in a multi-generational, long-term effort to make amends. Germany has sent reparations checks to individual victims of the Holocaust for decades, as well as billions of dollars of military funding to the Jewish nation of Israel. They have constructed memorials to the Holocaust in ways both big and small, both national and local. And in terms of foreign policy, Germany has accepted over one million refugees fleeing violence, and has been very hesitant to resort to armed violence (as seen in the recent hesitation to get involved in the war in Ukraine). The repentance after WWII in Germany has thoroughly remade both that nation and Europe as a whole-for the better! [In comparison with Germany, Russia never made a serious attempt to repent or make reparations after the collapse of the USSR, and instead allowed bitterness and jealousy to take root. The contrast between modern-day Germany and modern-day Russia is vast.]  

Or to look at a negative example, we can look at certain people groups in America and see that some harms never scarred over, or, even if it partially healed, the scar keeps getting picked at and infected. Witness the genocidal removal of Native Americans from their lands and continued overlooking of the problems they face now, particularly in Native reservations. Witness the longstanding mistreatment of African-Americans at all levels of society, from the lack of reparations and justice after slavery, to the continued under-investment in and over-harsh policing of their communities. Or witness the coddling of wealthy corporations while consistently overlooking small farmers and blue collar workers. None of these are new phenomena in America, but we have never truly seen the Church at large confess sins against these groups, nor has the nation sought long-term justice, healing, and progress in them. 

Now, it is tempting in some liberal circles at this point to blame “white supremacy” or “capitalism” for all systemic sins in America and in the entire world. However, a view that blames Western ideology for all problems in the entire world actually falls prey to the same Eurocentric mindset it is critiquing. It removes agency from non-Westerners to choose their own paths, and treats them like children whose every choice is ultimately based on the foundations laid by Westerners. Can we blame white supremacy and capitalism for the genocide of Uyghurs in far-west China by the Chinese Communist Party? Should we lay the blame for 1930s Japanese militarism and violence in Korea and China at the feet of Western Europeans, or is it instead appropriate for descendants of those victims to seek justice and apologies from modern-day Japan (as they actually are doing)? Or what about evils that happened around the world centuries ago, before European colonialism started, that still have a legacy today? At the final judgment of the world, the sins of Europeans are indeed vast. Western Christians must deal with them all as quickly and thoroughly as possible lest we ourselves receive judgment. But at best it overstates the case, and at worst engenders unneeded opposition, to lay all the sins of all history at the feet of modern-day Europeans and North Americans. Each community must take proper account of its own actions, right or wrong, justified or unjustified.

On a related note, Bonhoeffer himself is hesitant to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by rushing straight from the evils of empire into a different mess. He writes, “By renouncing the crown or by surrendering what had been conquered, a ruler could cause even greater disorder and incur even more guilt.” In other words, we must be careful that the unjust systems we seek to tear down are not replaced by something even worse. The French Revolution started with lofty goals but ended with the guillotine and Napoleon. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2011 Arab Spring both sought the ends of evil dictatorships but both resulted in bloodshed and violence worse than before. We must not be slow or scared to act against social injustice, but we must be wise in how it gets corrected. 

Me at at an Arab Spring rally in Ramallah, Palestine, 2011.

Conclusion

There is a LOT to think about here. And I am still learning and having my theology shaped on the topic of communal repentance. But in the meantime, it leaves me with many questions. 

What are the open wounds still open in America and around the world that must be repented of? Or let’s get more local — What about in Central Pennsylvania? What about here in Carlisle? And what would repentance look like? 

Of what communal sins should me and my family and church identify ourselves? Of what communal sins are we still guilty of? Are there ancestral or generational curses that we must become aware of in order to break cycles of brokenness? 

What if the revival that we Christians are seeking in America can only come through communal repentance? How does one even being to help American Christians see the messy truths about our nation? 

Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology – Part III. Unexpected Alliances

Today we will continue looking at what I am calling “antifascist theology,” as expressed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. [In Part I, I introduced the core concepts of fascism and introduced Bonhoeffer. In Part II, we explored the three general categories of Christians who fall under fascism’s sway.]

In recent years, I’ve noticed unexpected connections and alliances between certain Christian and non-Christian groups that are both working for truth, justice, and human dignity. Take for instance, anti-violence and anti-poverty Christian activist Shane Claiborne, who literally beats guns into gardening tools and once illegally occupied an abandoned church in Philadelphia to set up a shelter for homeless people. As a Christian activist, Claiborne regularly finds himself working alongside lots of people who he disagrees with theologically– but he finds common ground when it comes to issues like these. Or for another example, check out these Christians in Oregon working alongside firmly non-Christian antifascist groups to provide mutual aid in the wake of the Oregon protests and wildfires.

Members of the secular Portland mutual aid group “EWOKS” in front of a church sign. Photo courtesy of Clackamas UCC

Now, I had previously thought that unexpected alliances like these were a somewhat recent, novel phenomenon. It is now only in reading Bonhoeffer’s Ethics that I saw the same dynamics took place in the context of German fascism! Bonhoeffer points out that when values of truth and tolerance are threatened by authoritarian power, there often forms a kind of a temporary alliance between the beleaguered defenders of those values and the remaining, antifascist Christians. Check out his words below—doesn’t most of this sound scarily relevant? It’s a long quote, but powerful-so please read carefully:

“Whenever, in the face of the deification of the irrational powers of blood, of instinct, of the predator within human beings, there was an appeal to reason; whenever, in the face of arbitrariness there was an appeal to the written law; whenever, in the face of barbarism, there was an appeal to culture and humanity; whenever, in the face of their violation there was an appeal to freedom, tolerance, and human rights; whenever, in the face of the politicization of science, art, and so on, attention was drawn to the autonomy of the various areas of life…then this was sufficient to evoke immediately awareness of some kind of alliance between the defenders of these threatened values and Christians. Reason, culture, humanity, tolerance, autonomy– all these concepts, which until recently had served as battle cries against the church, against Christianity, even against Jesus Christ, now surprisingly found themselves in very close proximity to the Christian domain…as a goal-driven alliance…Christ is the center and power of the Bible, of the church, of theology, but also of humanity, reason, justice, and culture.” [Ethics, 340-2]

To summarize, in this passage Bonhoeffer writes that the same secular liberals who had previously been attacking religion before the rise of fascism, now quickly found common cause with antifascist Christians such as himself. Of course, there were different theological values, but here was an alliance of convenience in order to defend their shared values: reason, law, culture, humanity, freedom, tolerance, human rights, science, and art. To bring it to our present day, I would argue that whenever contemporary Christians forge tactical alliances with secular antifascist movements (such as groups in opposition to nuclear weapons and war-mongering, corporate greed, environmental pillaging, dehumanization at the border, human trafficking, voter suppression, or other issues), these Christians are embodying this same kind of antifascist perspective that Bonhoeffer is espousing. Which brings me to a related topic.

Black Lives Matter

The Amish Community Protests For George Floyd & System Oppression In Minneapolis... - YouTube
Thanks to a fact check website, I learned that these demonstrators were not technically Amish, but rather part of a different conservative sect called the Church of God.

I believe that Black Lives Matter is another potential example of a “goal-driven alliance” between antifascist Christians and secular-leaning liberals. After George Floyd was murdered by police in broad daylight, millions of white Americans (including many Christians) joined in and protested as a way to decry racist police violence and to declare the fact that Black Lives Matter. Even a contingent of a conservative, pseudo-Amish Christian sect–apolitical and disinclined to join in most political actions–joined in these BLM protests! In so doing, this group was not endorsing every element of the Black Lives Matter organization, nor were they declaring that they were necessarily tossing their hats into the political ring. Instead, these antifascist Christians were simply responding to a very visible act of injustice (which in itself was simply the most blatant example of a centuries-old system of injustice). They chose to leave the confines of their Christian community and align themselves with a just cause-that of demanding justice for George Floyd and other Black lives facing widespread police brutality.

Bonhoeffer writes, quoting Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount:

“’Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ (Matt. 5:10). This verse does not speak about the righteousness of God, that is, about persecution for the sake of Jesus Christ; rather, it calls those blessed who are persecuted for a just cause…With this beatitude Jesus thoroughly rejects the false timidity of those Christians who evade any kind of suffering for a just, good, and true cause because they supposedly could have a clear conscience only if they were to suffer for the explicit confession of faith in Christ; he rejects in other words, the kind of narrow-mindedness that casts a cloud of suspicion on any suffering for the sake of a just cause and distances itself from it. Jesus cares for those who suffer for a just cause even if it is not exactly for the confession of his name; he brings them under his protection, takes responsibility for them, and addresses them with his claim.” [Ethics 346]

What Bonhoeffer is saying is that suffering for any just cause is valid and blessed by God, even if those who are suffering are not explicitly Christian, nor if the cause is solely about Jesus! While I would hope this is a pretty obvious reading of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, I know that many Christians do not actually live this out! After all, how many Christians in 1930s Germany decided not to stand in solidarity with persecuted Jews, Gypsies, communists, gays, the people with disabilities, and other “undesirables”, because to do so wasn’t a matter of defending “Christianity?” The answer is—most of them! Only a very few, the antifascist Christians in the mold of Bonhoeffer, chose to stand alongside these groups.

Similarly, in our day, I think Bonhoeffer would offer a biting rebuke of the conservative Christians who have been reluctant to stand alongside in support of the Black Lives Matter protests. To be sure, Bonhoeffer was neither a communist nor a socialist, and he levels some firm critiques of these social movements elsewhere in Ethics. However, I do not think he would not have accepted the standard right-wing argument that to state “Black Lives Matter” means one is somehow aligning oneself with Marxism, atheism, or any of the other values ascribed to certain BLM leaders. Such thinking Bonhoeffer calls “narrow-minded” and “timid”, a reflection of an impoverished, potentially fascistic worldview (recall from my first blog that being angrily opposed to any hint of Marxism or communism is one of the hallmarks of a fascist mindset). Indeed, I think he would say that true followers of Jesus belong right in the middle of this cause, rather than fleeing from it!

Am I being presumptuous in claiming that Bonhoeffer would support Black Lives Matter? I don’t think so. In 1930, Bonhoeffer spent a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He became deeply connected to the African-American Church as he attended the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. There his eyes were opened to the injustices suffered by Black Americans on a daily basis. Angered by the lynching of the “Scottsboro Boys”, a group of nine African-Americans who were lynched in Alabama after a false rape accusation, Bonhoeffer unsuccessfully tried to mobilize church leaders back in Europe to organize against the injustice. Bonhoeffer was so deeply moved by the Black Christians he encountered in the United States that he translated a number of traditional African-American Spirituals into German and brought the tunes back to the churches he led in Germany! (The mental picture of a bunch of conservative white Germans in the 1930s trying to sing some lively Black worship songs is a bit funny to be honest–but hey props to them for trying!).

All that to say–Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the systemic oppression that Black people faced in 1930s America was absolutely part of the backdrop that helped him choose to stand in the gap for Jews, communists, and other victims of fascism in Germany. If Bonhoeffer were to return to the United States today, he was undoubtedly be angered by the extent to which the Black community still faces prejudice, discrimination, and systemic racism. And based on his quote above he would have some pretty harsh remarks for the “narrow-minded” and “timid” Christians who choose to distance themselves from secular justice movements–because in so doing they are not just distancing themselves from the oppressed…they are distancing themselves from Jesus.

To summarize, if one is bearing witness to Jesus in a society that increasingly bears the marks of fascism, one should expect to find oneself in some unexpected alliances. This is not a bad thing, nor does it mean that one’s Christian witness has somehow been diluted. In fact, it means the exact opposite! Now, this doesn’t mean there isn’t nuance, or gray areas. But by and large the automatic Christian response to injustice should be to stand alongside those who are experiencing it, and to advocate for justice. That’s what Bonhoeffer did, and it’s what we should do today.

Our friend Hanna, my wife Liz (8 months pregnant), and myself at a Black Lives Matter rally in Carlisle, PA on 9/26/20. We were cursed at, called terrorists, and one man pointed his fingers at us like a gun and pretended to shoot each of us. But all that is nothing compared to what our Black brothers and sisters face on a daily basis, and it was an honor to proclaim that Black lives are made in the image of God. I pray that other Christians would have the courage to stand against injustice even when it’s not an explicitly Christian cause!

Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology – Part II. Collaborators

 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.” Mark 13:5-6.

In my previous post, I introduced the core concepts of fascism and introduced Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the only German Christians to oppose Nazism both intellectually and in practice. (If you have not yet read Part I, click here) In Part II, we will explore the various groups of Christians who are deceived by the ideals of fascism. In Ethics, Bonhoeffer describes three general categories of those who fall under fascism’s sway.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on a weekend getaway with confirmands of Zion’s Church congregation (1932, Wikipedia)

1. Centrist Christians

As fascism rises many Christians choose the path of “moderation”, as if by simply being a bit “nicer,” society could be magically healed. I label these people “Centrist Christians.” In our day, people like this often say we just need more “civility,” or simply need a balance between the two extremes. While of course there can be wisdom in moderation, there is something grossly inappropriate in imagining that simply “being nice” is a universal solution when there are irreconcilable divisions and injustices in society. Some things are good, and some things are bad–and to pretend that any solution is to be found somewhere between those two sides is to ultimately choose the side of whichever group has more power. Bonhoeffer writes:

“The failure of ‘reasonable’ people is appalling; they cannot manage to see either the abyss of evil or the abyss of holiness. With the best intentions they believe that, with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joins. In their defective vision they want to be fair to both sides, and so they are crushed between the colliding forces without having accomplished anything at all. Bitterly disappointed that the world is so unreasonable, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness. They withdraw in resignation or fall helpless captive to the stronger party.”  -Ethics, 78

In his final sentence, Bonhoeffer prefigures the other two groups who fall into fascism’s sway: the Cloistered Christians who withdraw, and the Fascist Christians who fall captive to the stronger party.

2. Cloistered Christians

Other people choose to withdraw from the fight against fascism, and instead focus on their own personal holiness. Such a response to fascism may be called “The Benedict Option,” a term popularized by Rod Dreher who argues that Christians should give up hope of making a public impact in America, and instead retreat to their own private spheres in society, education, and politics. While there is a certain logic in withdrawing from the empire, in so doing these people are ceding the battleground and refusing to faithfully partake in “responsible action”, which is a key phrase for Bonhoeffer and one that I will expand upon later in this series. Bonhoeffer writes:

“Such people [who withdraw from society] neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But in voluntarily renouncing public life, these people know exactly how to observe the permitted boundaries that shield them from conflict. They must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world.” – Ethics, 80

In fact, Bonhoeffer is quite clear that there is no such thing as actually withdrawing from society in such a way as to keep one’s hands clean. Ultimately, you are either complicit with evil, or you are hard at work fighting it. Later in Ethics, he addresses the idea of “communal guilt,” and points out that in a society there is no such thing as a wholly individual action: every action, good or evil, has an effect on others around them (which is why corporate confession and repentance is so important for Christians to practice). Bonhoeffer writes:

“The quite personal sin of each individual is acknowledged here as a source of poison for the community. Even the most secret sin of the individual soils and destroys the body of Christ. Murder, envy, strife, war…I cannot pacify myself by saying that my part in all these is slight and hardly noticeable. There is no calculating here….I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have spoken, I am guilty of untruthfulness and hypocrisy in the fact of threatening violence; I am guilty of disowning without mercy the poorest of my neighbors; I am guilty of disloyalty and falling away from Christ…these many individuals are joined together in the collective “I” of the church. The church confesses and acknowledges its guilt in and through them…the church was mute when it should have cried out, because the blood of the innocent cried out to heaven…The church confesses that it has misused the name of Christ by being ashamed of it before the world and by not resisting strongly enough the misuse of that name for evil ends. The church has looked on while injustice and violence have been done, under the cover of the name of Christ.  Ethics,  136-8

If you can sense the heartbreak Bonhoeffer has in this passage, it’s because he knows he’s fallen short himself in the past. In 1939, a few years before he wrote this section in Ethics, Bonhoeffer had a chance to flee and return to the United States, where he had studied previously. But almost immediately upon arriving he realized that he had made a mistake and quickly returned to Germany. He wrote to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:

“I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people … Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive. or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make that choice from security.”[31]

Upon returning to Germany, Bonhoeffer became even more radically involved in the antifascist movement, and would be arrested within four years. But there is one more group of Christians we must talk about.

3. Fascist Christians

Adolf Hitler, Abbot Albanus Schachleiter and Reich Bishop Ludwig Mueller, 1934 (Alamy)

In Bonhoeffer’s day, similar to our own, a majority Christians become totally enamored with their fascist leaders and the basic tenets of fascism (listed in my previous blog). To these Fascist Christians, truth doesn’t matter; all that matters is that the “Christian leader” is successful, that he is a “winner” while everyone else is a “loser”. In fascism the ideals of strength, virility, masculinity, and violence are elevated; while Jesus’ ideals of bearing one’s cross, enduring suffering, and identifying with the least members of society are denigrated as weak, liberal, and effeminate. Bonhoeffer writes:

“Where the figure of a successful person becomes especially prominent, the majority fall into idolizing success. They become blind to right and wrong, truth and lie, decency and malice. They see only the deed, the success. Ethical and intellectual capacity for judgment grow dull before the sheen of success and before the desire somehow to share in it. People even fail to perceive that guilt is scarred over in success, because guilt is no longer recognized as such. Success per se is the good. This attitude is only genuine and excusable while one is intoxicated by events. After sobriety returns it can be maintained only at the cost of deep inner hypocrisy, with conscious self-deception. This leads to an inner depravity, from which recovery is difficult.”  Ethics, 89

It is perhaps too easy to pick out evangelical Christians in our day who have fallen under the sway of this type of mentality. Some, like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Mark Driscoll, come to mind as those who actually got caught so publicly exposed by their sin that they were forced to resign from their positions. But there are so many others who believe that winning at any cost is more important than actually maintaining their character and witness. [And even those who are temporarily forced out are almost guaranteed to return to the limelight one day—after all, failed End Time predictions and sexual sins haven’t kept Jim Bakker, Paula White, Jonathan Cahn, Kenneth Copeland, and other unrepentant leaders from returning to the limelight, so why would some consensual cuckolding and emotional abuse permanently keep Falwell and Driscoll from returning to public ministry?]. I could go on and on about how this type of success-oriented, hyper-masculine corruption of Christianity is completely contrary to Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, but hopefully that fact is obvious enough to even the casual reader of the Bible.

I doubt even Bonhoeffer fully knew quite how deadly this type of Christian Fascism would ultimately become in his own country. But he knew enough to know that it was opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and thus must be opposed by Christians at every level possible. I invite you to continue to join me as we further explore Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s antifascist theology.

Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology – Part I. Introductions

“Seldom has a generation been as uninterested as ours in any kind of ethical theory or program…this does not come from any ethical indifference in our times, but rather the reverse, from the pressure of a reality filled with concrete, ethical problems such as we have never had before in the history of the West…Today we have villains and saints against, in fully public view. The gray on gray of a sultry, rainy day has turned into the black cloud and bright lightning flash of a thunderstorm. The contours are sharply drawn. Reality is laid bare. Shakespeare’s characters are among us. The villain and the saint have little or nothing to do with ethical programs. They arise from primeval depths, and with their appearance tear open the demonic and divine abyss out of which they come, allowing us brief glimpses of their suspected secrets…” Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, 1943.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer-the pastor who tried to kill Hitler

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a legendary figure in Christian circles. Born in 1906, Bonhoeffer was one of only a very few German Christians who dared to speak out against the Nazi regime. Despite his pacifist leanings, Bonhoeffer eventually took part in a secret conspiracy to kill Hitler and install a new government. The conspiracy failed, and Bonhoeffer was sent to a concentration camp and hung for treason at just 39 years of age. Perhaps because of his prophetic voice, his writings, including The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, have been global bestsellers for decades. [In recent years, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been a lodestar for American conservatives eager to see themselves as Bonhoeffer-esque culture fighters warring against what they see as the tyranny of American liberalism. Eric Metaxas, a die-hard Trump supporter and notable evangelical who recently was caught on video sucker-punching an unarmed protester, wrote a biography about Bonhoeffer that further lionized him (despite being rife with historical inaccuracies).]

Bonhoeffer, Getty Images

Growing up as a young evangelical, I also loved Bonhoeffer’s writings, particularly The Cost of Discipleship, which centers on the Sermon on the Mount–the passage where Jesus says blessed are the poor, love your enemies, you can’t serve God & money, and other famous lines. As a bookish, ethnically German Christian myself, I have always felt a certain affinity to Bonhoeffer. However, the one part I couldn’t understand was to reconcile his wholehearted commitment to the Sermon on the Mount with his attempt to assassinate Hitler–is killing any man, even Hitler, really congruent with Jesus’ command to “love your enemies?” I’d often wondered how Bonhoeffer would answer that, but didn’t put forth significant effort to discover the answer.

That changed recently, when I was looking for a book to read and came upon Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, a massive 500+ page work examining Christian ethical theory that concludes unfinished–Bonhoeffer was arrested in the middle of writing it. A book that I expected to be dry and philosophical felt urgent and of the utmost importance: these were the thoughts of a man written while he was secretly planning to overthrow his own government! I realized: what Bonhoeffer had written was not a mere theory of Christian ethics, but the start of a comprehensive and rigorous antifascist theology–perhaps the first one ever written.

Of course, Bonhoeffer didn’t use the term “antifascist theology,” as it’s a term I came up with on my own–if you Google the phrase “antifascist theology”, only two results currently come up! In fact, one could argue, why use the phrase ‘antifascist theology,’ isn’t that confusing a political theory with a religious theory? But I firmly believe that a religious orthodoxy (set of beliefs) that has no physical orthopraxy (set of actual practices) is meaningless and toothless, the musing of an intellectual in ivory towers. That is not who Bonhoeffer was. The theology of a man who gave his life to fight German fascism can only be interpreted as an inherently antifascist theology–for it is exactly this theology that led Bonhoeffer to his daring course of action. As the foreword to Ethics puts it, “Understanding Bonhoeffer requires moving from disembodied principles to the concrete situation: confronting the life-destroying warmonger and the murderer of the Jews who had to be stopped.” (p. 16)

Fascism Defined

To define antifascist theology, one must first define fascism. “Fascism” comes from the Latin word “fasces”, which describe a bundle of sticks tied together with an axe—symbolizing the unifying power of the State to simultaneously bind society together and punish evildoers. Fasces have been a symbol of State power for 2000 years, ever since the Roman Empire ruled over most of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The symbol of the fasces have been incorporated into many different cultures, such as at the Lincoln Memorial (below).

However, the political ideology of fascism is a more recent development, one that arose alongside imperialism, capitalism, and the modern nation-state beginning in the 1800s. While political scientists disagree over the precise definition of fascism, historian Stanley G. Payne focuses on three concepts:

  1. The “fascist negations”: anti-liberalism, anti-communism, and anti-conservatism; [Translation—fascism is strongly opposed to any “softening” of society brought on by liberalism, and firmly opposed to any state-run economic engines such as those brought by communism. Yet interestingly, fascists are also in tension with traditional conservatives, who are seen as being too weak to do the “dirty work” that is actually needed to improve society…sounding familiar yet?]
  2. “Fascist goals”: the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire; and
  3. “Fascist style”: a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth, and charismatic authoritarian leadership.
In 1939, 20,000 Americans flocked to Madison Square Garden for a pro-Nazi rally that combined fascist themes with more traditional forms of American patriotism. Source.

Besides Germany, a number of other societies have become ruled by fascists over the past two centuries. Italy, Spain, and Greece come to mind, and many nations still have strong far-right groups that regularly try to agitate society and recruit new members into their movements. From the Brownshirts and the Hitler Youth, to skinheads and neo-Nazis, to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, all of these proto-fascists are linked by their desire for the State to rise up and demolish any liberal/Jewish/“Deep State” political enemies.

To lay all my cards out on the table, I think there are some troubling fascistic tendencies rising up in the United States. In looking at the three concepts I listed above that define fascism, I have witnessed all three elements become more and more widespread in American society over the past 20 years. It used to be that everyone knew the Nazis were the bad guys; but now I see grandmas on Facebook actively spreading anti-Semitic propaganda, I see fathers teaching their children to hate all Marxists, and I see politicians excited about killing liberals in the streets (“pre-emptively” of course). And unfortunately, just like in 1930s Germany, many Bible-believing Christians are the very ones supporting these fascist tendencies, often by using Scripture taken out of context–although to be honest I haven’t see them even bother to do that very often!

Now, whether America is about to collapse into some kind of fascist dictatorship, I do not know. What I do know is that for years far-right individuals have been quickly buying up guns, joining militias, and proclaiming that America is close to being destroyed by nefarious forces who must be defeated at any costs…it seems hard to imagine a scenario where this all just magically ends without more violence than we’ve already seen so far. For most of us though, the struggle remains primarily a war of ideas, not a war in the streets. It is thus incumbent for all of us to make sure that we have a rigorous ethical and theological foundation with which to fight the growing tide of fascism. Hence: the need for an antifascist theology.

Antifascist Theology Defined

With fascism thus explained, I will define antifascist theology as an systemic explanation of the true nature of God and implications for Christians living in a fascist society. While good theology is always able to be translated into different cultures and contexts, there is something particularly challenging about fascism that tends to draw Christians in – unless there is a counterbalancing force warning them of it. Bonhoeffer’s work of Ethics seeks to do exactly that. And in the same way as one cannot fully understand the teachings of Jesus without understanding the socio-political environment in which he lived, we cannot fully understand Bonhoeffer without recognizing his status as a German man writing during the time of German fascism.

So as we dive deeper into Bonhoeffer’s antifascist theology, let’s not sugar-coat things. With a disastrous economy wracking Germany, and the perceived cultural threat of progressive city-dwellers, Jews, communists, atheists, and cultural elites, the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany can be seen as a reactionary attempt to “Make Germany Great Again.” Thus perhaps it’s sad but not surprising that the vast majority of German Christians enthusiastically supported fascism. For Bonhoeffer to oppose the majority of his fellow Christians was bold indeed. While he used a lot of coded language in his writing (in order to avoid being persecuted for his political views), Bonhoeffers’ attacks against fascism are quite clear.

For those of us in America today who see similar signs of fascism in our churches, communities, and national politics, Bonhoeffer’s antifascist theology will give us some tools and a framework through which we can fight back. Stay tuned for future posts in which I will explicitly lay out the main pieces of his antifascist theology.

Members of the Proud Boys, one of many proto-fascist groups that have gained increased traction in American society in recent years.

To be continued…

This concludes Park I of this series. Future parts will dive into the specifics of Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology as described in his work Ethics, and the implications therein for our own world. To make sure you are appraised of future parts, please make sure you have subscribed your email address to get blog updates.