february-2018

It requires more than the persuasion of well-crafted
words analyzing our present context and commending
action to prompt participation in God’s mission
in such a time as this. This takes the unfettered allegiance
of people’s hearts and the formation of their
lives of discipleship. Countless pernicious forces press
in the opposite direction, lulling the church back into
complicit comfort, condoning narrow, nationalistic
loyalties, offering the subtle idols of personal success
and material reward, and promoting forms of spiritual
escapism. It takes spiritual resistance, nurtured
in communities of faithful disciples, to confront and
overcome those forces. That was Bonhoeffer’s lesson at
Finkenwalde and should be our own today.
I am not maintaining a simplistic parallel between
the rise of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler’s attempts
to directly suppress and subvert the church with
political realities faced today. Times and contexts are
different. But the similarities of forceful appeals to
nationalistic chauvinism, racial bigotry, and cultural
exclusivism as manipulative reactions to economic
anxieties, particularly in the United States and Europe,
are chilling.
What is parallel between that time and this, for all
of world Christianity, is the call to freshly confess faith
in ways that shape the church and form disciples with
enduring capacity for the spiritual resistance, renewal,
and transformation required for this moment in the
world’s history.
Our response to God’s mission has its roots in communities
of discipleship, expressions of the body of
Christ in local congregations. It is here, in the congregations
where you and I worship, that the shape of the
gospel is to be seen and understood, in flesh and blood,
Continued on Page 24
Reading Bonhoeffer
In Our Times
by VICTORIA J. BARNETT
One must be cautious about drawing
simplistic historical analogies.
Nowhere is this truer than in
the case of comparisons to Nazi
Germany, its leaders, and the
Holocaust. The period between 1933 and
1945 was characterized by a complex constellation
of factors, many of them unique
to Europe during the first half of the 20th
century. Nationalism, anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism,
and populism have played a role in
different historical periods and national contexts.
Moreover, the language of grievance
and resentment is usually homegrown, drawing
upon the embedded prejudices and fears of
a particular society as well as its hopes, which
often are articulated in themes revived from the
particular history of the host nation.
At such moments the responses of citizens
and their institutions are crucial. Political
culture is not just the product of how citizens
engage in and create their society. It is also an
expression of what we are willing to tolerate,
what compromises we make, and the reasons
why we make them—and those are the factors
that can undermine and even destroy a political
culture.
The veneer of ethics and moral behavior
in the public square can be surprisingly thin.
Human beings are easily swayed and enraptured;
peer pressure and crowd behavior are
powerful forces. We are used to living by a
particular set of rules, values, and expectations
of behavior, individually and socially, and
it is often easier for institutions such as the
civil service, universities, businesses, and religious
bodies to conform than to resist. When
the rules change it can be difficult to find our
bearings, let alone chart a new course that can
address and if necessary challenge what is happening
around us.
These are the themes that Dietrich
Bonhoeffer addressed in his writings. His context
was Nazi Germany, but his observations
about what happens to human decency and
courage when a political culture disintegrates
continue to resonate around the world today. n
Victoria J. Barnett was a general editor of the
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works series by Fortress
Press. This is adapted with permission from “After
Ten Years”: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Our Times,
© 2017 Fortress Press.
The veneer
of ethics
and moral
behavior in
the public
square
can be
surprisingly
thin.
FEBRUARY 2018 sojourners 23