Bonhoeffer in America: the Call Beyond Nationalism

We have a lot of christians whose Christianity isn't bothered by the movement to take the country back again. Their Christianity goes right along with that. In fact, they find that to be an expression of their faith bear strange.

Fruit.

and the Lord is calling us.

To stand and fight and pray, and.

I believe firmly that the Lord wants.

To give us the victory.

He wants to bless this nation with revival, with a fiery revival and reformation. He wants his church not just to.

Win against evil, but to go on.

The offense against evil.

That's not unfamiliar to Bonhoeffer. What he found in Harlem among, to christians who were harmed by that kind of rhetoric was a Christianity that's not based on right belief, but on love your neighbor. One's ability to have actual contact with your neighbor, to see your neighbor's concrete needs, not an abstract doctrine than the sudden smell of burning flesh. How do you understand Jesus? Is he a ticket to a wealthy life? Or do you know that your savior was crucified? What is our role in the suffering that is present in the world around us? Do we ignore it? Can we ignore suffering and worship a crucified and risen savior?

Welcome back to the rise of Bonhoeffer. This is Tripp, and I am right here with my buddy, doctor Jeffrey C. Pugh.

Hey, Tripp, how you doing?

I'm doing good, because I get to talk to you about Bonhoeffer, and, let everyone hear what happens in the year of 1930.

Well, before we get to 1930, let's just go back for just a minute and remember that from our last session, Bonhoeffer had finished his time in Barcelona as an assistant pastor, was heading back to Germany, and when he got back to Germany, he wrote a second dissertation, which was a standard practice for german academics and would qualify him to teach at, german schools. He wasn't sure at this point whether he wanted to be a pastor or pursue the life of an academic. I'm sure that his family wished for the academic route because it was the more prestigious way to go and would acquire some kind of status in german society. But after he finished writing that dissertation, he was looking around for what his next move would be. And at that point, he accepted an offer of a postdoctoral fellowship, a Stallone fellowship, to union theological seminary in New York City, and that journey would change his life in significant ways in 1930 and 1931.

This time period is a transition for Bonhoeffer as much as it's also a transition for Germany. When he leaves to go to New York, the energy of the nazi party is getting just a few percent in the vote. And by the time he returns, the growth and energy and the fear on the horizon is rampant. And we'll look at that at the end of this episode.

Bonhoeffer moves from german identity to larger christian one

I think one of the things to emphasize as we look at this r1 school year for Bonhoeffer are a number of transitions that we see. The preacher we met last time who couldn't move beyond his nationalism through his encounter in New York with people like Lasserre. Hes going to have an ecumenical vision, move beyond kind of his german identity to a larger christian one. Hes going to encounter the sermon on the mount and not just see it how Lutherans do, in a kind of exemplification of our shortcomings, but as a real agenda for discipleship in the world. Something that all the scholars weve talked to emphasize, is that it was here in New York where he moves from the phraseological to the real, where the ideas of the faith actually find reality in bodies and on the ground.

Another way of expressing that might be moving from the theoretical to the pragmatic or to the practical. That, in fact, is a massive, important point of what happens to him in New York City. When Bonhoeffer arrived on the shores of America, this was a journey that would change his life. September of 1930, for the first time in his life, he found himself living in a dormitory at Union Theological Seminary, which was the bastion of american liberal Protestantism. That was the place in America where it was seen as being the sort of apex of theological education in America. And part of the

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shock for Bonhoeffer was that he was an astute, sophisticated theologian. He was conversant with the most complex philosophical theological thinkers in modern Europe. He had a classical education, and now he's at union, which is sort of, like I said, the center of american liberal protestant education. And he finds himself in a place that seems so very strange and removed from the world that he left.

One of the things about union theological seminary and that kind of academic environment, it was, compared to Bonhoeffer's previous experience in Germany, is that this is the height of the social gospel movement in american churches, where the theological education is intimately connected to a lot of faith organizing, investment in the transformation of the social order. Things like the 40 hours workweek, child labor laws, these kinds of things were intimate to theological education and coming out of the life of the church. And that is not what liberal theology was up to in Germany.

In Germany, the liberal theologians were diving deep into philosophical ideas, looking at presuppositions, exploring all the reasons for the appearance of faith in religion as a phenomenon. So they were intimately invested in Schleiermacher or Kant or Harnack. Even so, there was a great deal of philosophical construct, of theological sophistication. When Bonhoeffer gets to union, he's in a class with a, man by the name of Reinhold Niebuhr. And Niebuhr is very sophisticated in his own way. He's a very intelligent theologian. Theologian. He's a christian ethicist, recently arrived from Elmhurst College to the big city of New York City, where he becomes a professor of ethics. And Bonhoeffer finds himself, in a Niebuhr class. What he's expecting a kind of level of sophistication that he experienced in Germany, just wasn't there.

Niebuhr is unique in that he never got a PhD, but he gave the Gifford lectures, which is like the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for philosophical theologians. He was on the COVID of Time magazine. He had best selling books in America. It's hard for people in our present day to imagine a, theologian on Time magazine being someone that religious and non religious people take seriously when thinking about religion and politics and for people of, faith to be so organized when it goes to kind of social change, political policy and these kinds of things. And Bonhoeffer meets that, like, turned up to eleven when he encounters Niebuhr.

Maybe put it in terms we can understand, if there were ever an american theologian to be on a stamp, probably would have been Niebuhr. So Bonhoeffer has two doctorates now, and he's sitting in Niebuhr's class. And we'll let the present Reinhold Niebuhr professor of christian ethics, Gary Dorian, pick.

Up our story while he's writing this dissertation under liberals, a wonderful little book called act and being. And he barely finishes that book. And it's very eye flying and philosophical. It's quite wonderful, actually. But he does have this question, like God, what does any of this mean to the actual real world? So where is he going to go? Well, there's one place that actually claims to make this connection that actually goes from theology to the world. There's one place that does social ministry in a way that's, you know, apparently the model, the place to go that's always going on. When he came to union in 1930, he's going to come here and interact with these union theologians, and they've got something that he doesn't have. And he assumes they'll, you know, they'll have theology in common. They'll have common discourse. He'll be able to learn from them about how you kind of make the connection between an academic theological world and a church world, and just the problems of real life, where you're speaking to the disconnect. That's what union should be good for.

That's not quite what Bonhoeffer found.

Bonhoeffer was a little shocked at what he found, actually. He has these choice letters, missives that he writes back to his superiors in Germany as supervisors. In December, hes writing to Max Dietzel. And he says the.

And that brings me to the sad part of the whole thing. There is no theology here. Although I am basically taking classes and lectures in dogmatics and philosophy of religion, the impression is overwhelmingly negative. They talk a blue streak without the slightest substantial foundation and no evidence of any criteria. The students, on the average 25 to 30 years old, are completely clueless with respect to what

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dogmatics is really about. They are not familiar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, amused at the fundamentalist, and yet basically are not even up to their level. They are interested in barthes, and now and then also do a bit in pessimism. Thats when its really bad. In contrast to our own liberalism, which in its better representatives doubtless was a genuinely vigorous phenomenon. Here, all that has been dreadfully sentimentalized and with an almost naive know it all attitude. It often just burns me up when people here deal with Christ and are, then done with him and laugh insolently if I present a citation from Luther on the consciousness of God.

Absolutely blistering, just lays out the stupidity of these glasses. He's going to Niebuhr's class, sitting there with Niebuhr, taking a few notes at first, and then shaking his head and putting down his pen, and then just staring imperiously at Niebuhr. And of course, Niebuhr just got the union in 1928. This is still in the period where Niebuhr says, you know, I felt like a fraud standing before our class, because Bonhoeffer has two doctorates and Niebuhr doesn't have any. But Niebuhr is feeling this contempt at the end of one class. Bonhoeffer says, is this a theology school or a school for politicians? Right. And so that's an argument they have. Niebuhr comes back and says, you are just too low threatened. You have this idea of the doctrine is just too self evident to you. And now you think theology is about doctrine and now applying it to the world. As far as Bonhoeffer is concerned, he's going to all these classes that are supposedly theological classes, and yet no theology is happening here. His argument is that here at union, theology has become a handmaiden of social ethics. It's actually social ethics. It's the social gospel that's in the driver's seat here. And then anything that's theological at all is just kind of a subset. It's just kind of a commentary. It's subordinate to what that is. And so to him, what he immediately sees, which is in all those blistering things he says in those letters, is that, oh, my God, I have seen how far the kind of winning wing out can go because lays back at Germany, theology is still, you know, an enterprise, a very considerable sort of import here. It's a field where he can recognize we still got treatment of doctrines and, especially Paul. Oh, that's one of the things he says about union. He says they just sneer at Paul beyond the slightest idea how great Paul is, because they just think they're so far beyond him, so they have no idea. Yeah, that's one of those examples where your average fundamentalist coming from church in the US is so far beyond all union students, sir. That's what he sees. That's what he says.

Well, that's a curious situation, that this sophisticated german theologian would see more value in what the fundamentalists are understanding than in what his classmates are understanding.

Bonhoeffer's union experience is really the New York experience

So how is it that we get a theologian of Bonhoeffer's stature who ends up at union? How do we get from that imperious, slightly arrogant theologian who comes to union to the person that leaves nine months later, a completely transformed and different human being?

This is something that comes up in all the interviews with Bonhoeffer scholars, is that the union experience is really the New York experience.

One of the voices that we've heard in our previous session was Reggie Williams, the author of Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus. He had some really astute observations about Bonhoeffer's time in New York. The person who studied most Bonhoeffer's relationship to the Harlem Renaissance and to the things that he was learning in the black church.

I think he's looking for something more concrete when he comes to New York. His family believes that the church is simply what they're just calling bourgeois. It's a part of protestant culture. It's part of the Bildungsbergertungs world, the upper middle class german world. People get married there. They baptize their children, they have catechism and so forth, but it's compartmentalized. In the aftermath of World War one, people are jumping to their death in depression there. People are wearing clothes made of paper and cloth. They're eating bread made of sawdust and flour. It's a really bad time. Does the church have anything to say about this? He's looking for something that can put your entire body under the gospel, under the claims, and there is no witness for that in Germany. He finds in New York a faith witness that where one's whole body is under, the claims of the gospel.

Reggie makes an amazing point that Bonhoeffer, the author of discipleship, is here looking for a vision of the faith where one's whole body is invested in the call to the gospel. And

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it obviously wasn't just found in the classroom, but it was found in all these different relationships that take place. And to really get an idea of what's going on in this year in Bonhoeffer's life, we have to get to meet these individuals, because he shows up, and he's yet to see the sermon on the mount as this cornerstone picture of what the life of the disciple looks like. He's yet to move past the kind of nationalist framing that he inherited, and he's yet to realize that kind of deep solidarity in a, theology of the cross is a theology of those who bear crosses.

Bonhoeffer's friendship with Jean Lasserre sparked ecumenical peace ethic

Today, all these big transitions are happening here in New York. So, Jeff, where do we turn and where do we look? And who do we need to meet to see how these transitions happen?

Probably one of the places might start would be with his Ceylon fellowship colleagues from France and Switzerland, Jean Lucerre and Irwin Sutz. He probably wanted to share his disappointment with the lack of theological rigor in the classroom with them. But as their relationship grew, Bonhoeffer became exposed to new ideas and new understandings.

Something that is often skipped over by Americans is that Lassere is french. This is in the wake of World War One. How do you imagine those tensions playing when Bonhoeffer and him first meet?

Well, they're both patriots who love their countries. I would imagine that there were some tensions between the two because Bonhoeffer still has strong german nationalist leanings.

The impact of Bonhoeffer's friendship with Lasserre shows up repeatedly in conversations with Bonhoeffer scholars.

One of those scholars is Lori Brandt Hale, who is presently the president of the board of directors, directors of the International Bonhoeffer Society, english language division. And she has played a pivotal role in furthering Bonhoeffer scholarship and is also the co editor, with David hall, of Dietrich Bonhoeffer theology and political resistance. She introduces us to Bonhoeffer and Lasserre.

Jean Lasserre was a french pacifist, one of his fellow students who challenged Bonhoeffer's reading of Jesus Sermon on the Mount. He confronted Bonhoeffer with new ideas about the relationship between the biblical texts, God's word, and living out that word as a citizen of the world, taking seriously Jesus peace commandment. By November of 1930, on Armistice Day, Bonhoeffer preached at a Methodist church in Yonkers, New York, and began to articulate what would become his own ecumenical peace ethic.

Now I stand before you not only as a Christian, but also a German who loves his home best of all, who rejoices with his people and who suffers when he sees his people suffering, who confesses gratefully that he received from his people all that he has and is. You have brothers and sisters in our people and in every people. Do not forget that come what may. Let us never forget that our christian people are the people of God, that if we are in accord, no nationalism, no hate of races or classes can execute its designs, and then the world will have its peace forever and ever.

His friend Lucer reasserted this sentiment in a book published eight years after Bonhoeffer's death, when he wrote, nothing in the scriptures gives the christian authority to tear apart the body of Christ for the state or anything else. One cannot be christian and nationalist.

Here we have two very disparate people echoing one another about the relationship of the Christian and their role in society or their duties to the state. What is it that connects them at this point? Why is it that Bonhoeffer ends up sounding like a french pacifist?

Stephen Haynes: Understanding how the sermon on the mount gets used is important

As we've mentioned, one of the places that we can start is by understanding how the sermon on the mount gets used. And this particular passage of scripture found in Matthew and Luke is Jesus Sermon on the mount, where he has these radical prescriptions for life, these radical ways of living, this radical vision of loving your enemy. And if they strike you, turn the other cheek. And blessed are the meek, and. And for they shall be powerful. I mean, there are all these kinds of ideas that take the accepted ways and visions of understanding human relationships in the world and turning them on their head. But sometimes christians don't actually read those particular Bible passages the same way. And I think that's where the influence of Lassayer was able to work its magic on Bonhoeffer.

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When we just think of all the different protestant traditions. Very few of them see the sermon on the mount as the invitation to genuine discipleship. But when we think of Lutherans that do, Bonhoeffer comes to mind because that's like the outline to his book, cost of discipleship is going through the sermon on the mount right there in the middle of it. And you can just imagine someone showing up and encountering in lesser in the voice of a new french friend, while they're kind of cultural aliens in New York. Someone who thinks that Jesus meant exactly what he said and he meant it to all disciples, and that the invitation to become a disciple of Jesus is to not take Jesus ethical teachings as evidence that one is indeed a sinner in need of grace, but that the sinner saved by grace is invited into a deep commitment where you pray for your enemies, you turn the other cheek, you seek to be a peacemaker in their relationship. Right there in New York, you start to see the kind of grounding in the way of Jesus that animates the rest of Bonhoeffer's life.

And how does that happen? Well, once again, Laurie Brant Hale explains it to us.

I think it shaped his ability to see things differently or clearly. When I think about this encounter with Lesayer, and I think about the sort of ways Juan Humphrey would have impaired to the reading of the sermon on and out of beatitudes, he would have inherited a lutheran understanding of that biblical text. That said, this is either a, hoped for ideal in the kingdom of God, or this text reminds us of how far we fall short. This idea of sin is missing the mark, right? That we as human beings are limited and we can't quite live up to the expectations, and so therefore we are.

Fallen, we are broken.

And I think Lesayer no, this is actually a mandate for how to live. I think Jesus meant this. This is how we're supposed to treat each other, relationship with each other.

Stephen Haynes is a professor of religious studies at, ah, Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He's also the author of the battle for Bonhoeffer, the Bonhoeffer Legacy and Bonhoeffer for armchair theologians. In our conversation, he pinpointed the relationship here with Lasserre as a turning point for Bonhoeffer's own vision of the faith.

I think it's what made wanna approach to Nazism so uncompromising. He had to sort of just rethink everything he had been taught, everything that was circulating in Germany. And he finds this ancient source that probably he and most Germans had ignored or saw as an expression of the impossible impossibility of living the christian life. He starts to see it as a, as a real guide to life. People have written about the role of John Lachere in this context where he meets this frenchman in New York, and they're prepared to hate each other for obvious historical reasons. And Bonofer realizes, well, this guy's really got something that I didn't anticipate. This sort of a peace ethic that's biblical and makes sense and it's applicable, and I'm going to take it seriously. He says later that this was kind of a revelation for him and kind of a turning point. There's some personal things going on as well in terms of his sense of his, egotism, but also a sense that the answer to any kind of movement, m like Matthewism, is here in the Bible.

Bonhoeffer and Lesere's friendship sent them to the movies to see all quiet on the western front. It's an adaptation of an anti war novel written by a, conscript in the imperial german army. The Nazis condemned the film as unpatriotic. And you can just imagine watching a film like that with your new french friend in America, where the tensions between those nations play out is a site of, reorientation for Bonhoeffer, in relationship to his nation and his understanding of, the role of violence.

What was even more powerful was that when they went to the movie theater, they're watching it surrounded by an american audience.

30,000. From the Russians? No, from the French, from the Russians. We capture more than that every day in La Serres.

Memory of it. The theater was full. They were american. But the film had been made from a german soldier's perspective. Everyone in the audience identified with the Germans. And when the french soldiers were killed on screen, there seemed to be a lot of laughing and applauding. On the other hand, when the german soldiers were killed, there seemed to be a very solemnity. This is les,

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there's memory. It was a rather difficult experience for both of them. Bonhoeffer was embarrassed and chagrined that his friend was experiencing this in the movie theater and sought to comfort him, console him when the movie had ended. The reconciliation that they experienced as a french and German was a bonding moment for them. It certainly made Bonhoeffer understand that lesser's commitment to the sermon on the mound and to his pacifism wasn't just something that was in his head, that, in fact, embodied his way of life.

One of the reasons this story shows up in the mouths of so many Bonhoeffer scholars. There's so many of these threads that moving beyond, moving beyond nationalism. Looking at that scene in the film where the german soldier asks for forgiveness to the french soldier and then promises to write the french soldier's family, I.

Tell you, I didn't want to kill you, tried to keep you alive. If you jumped in here again, I wouldn't do it. You see, when you jumped in here, you were my enemy and I was afraid of you. But you're just a man like me, and I killed you. You'll have to forgive me, comrade. I'll do all I can. I'll write to your parents. I'll write to your wife. I'll write to her. I promise she'll not want for any. And I'll help her and your parents, too. Only forgive me. Forgive me.

Forgive me.

That nationalism that Bonhoeffer is clinging to is also connected to the memory of his brother who died in the war. This film, in and of itself, is a challenge to the kind of nationalist logic that generates a world war. And it goes from that macro picture all the way down to that intimate micro one of his own grief with Valter.

Again, this is an experience that other Germans weren't having at the time, right? They weren't traveling overseas seeking out frenchmen to go through this movie with. There's something about him that sought adventure, but also thought different experiences of the world and wanted to assimilate them, whatever way he could and makes that throne.

Join me and Andrew Root for the rise of Bonhoeffer travel learning experience

Hey, friends, I want to invite you to come with me and Andrew root this June to Berlin, Germany, for the rise of Bonhoeffer travel learning experience. You'll be able to explore theology, culture, and faith through the lens and story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It will weave together an integrative mix of lectures, tours, conversation, experiential learning, and guess where our classroom is at? Dietrich Bonhoeffer's very own home. So if you love thinking about his life, then consider joining us for this once in a lifetime opportunity perfectly constructed for anyone seeking to have a deep encounter with Bonhoeffer and wrestle with his piercing insights about faith for the modern world. We're going to explore these themes in Bonhoeffer's family home, visit various museums and sites, get to see his neighborhood, tell the story, and do it all in a small group of people, right? Just the number of people that fit in the man's living room. So come join me, Andrew Root. And it's going to be a good old time. For more information, head over to bonhoeffertrip.com. bonhoeffer trip with one p not like my name. You're listening to the rise of Bonhoeffer. If you want to get to know even more about Dietrich's life, read a little bit of him. hear long interviews with these Bonhoeffer scholars throughout the series and have live conversations and Q and A with Jeff and I. Then head over to riseofbonhofer.com and you can join up for our parallel online class. This class is donation based, including zero. So if you just want to dig a little bit deeper, nerd out a bit more about Dietrich, learn even more about his own struggle and the way he wrestled with his time in history. Head over riseofbonhoffer.com.

Have I made my whole life?

It's not only Lassere that Bonhoeffer's being challenged to read the sermon on the mount in a new way. There were other voices in New York City that were challenging Bonhoeffer as well, many of whom came from a different perspective than the european one right in the heart of Harlem.

Historically, Bonan Fristoles would have placed the impetus of his turn towards the semiran le Mans, primarily with the french pastor. That he was at union alongside Jean Lisa, was hugely important to Bonclaufer's turn towards embracing the sermon on the Mount, which I would strongly urge that you gotta read his turn towards the sermon on the Mount

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in light of the conversation he's having with Harlem Renaissance in Abyssinian. That he's reading the sermon on the Mount through the lenses of people who see Christ in the context of suffering. You have to have both of those together when you read discipleship. It's pretty much what he's talking about. It's the suffering Christ.

Reggie Williams helps us understand that Bonhoeffer is not reading the sermon on the Mount through these lenses of just lassere, but also through a powerful experience in abyssinian Baptist church that he was introduced to by one of his seminary colleagues. As Laurie Hale tells us, Albert Franklin.

Fisher was an african american student who opened the doors to Harlem and the Abyssinian Baptist Church for bond and opened his eyes to the grave racial inequities and indignities in the United States. Glen Hufferth Sunday school at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem became involved in various clubs and studies, collected the recordings of spirituals, visited church members in their homes. He also read the novels and poetry of many Harlem Renaissance writers, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and he concluded that the mood in this literature indicated that the race question is arriving at a turning point. Consequently, Bonhoeffer's friendship with Al Fischer introduced him to christian worship with an inherently different view of society. With Fischer, Bonhoeffer encountered christians aware of human suffering and accustomed to living with the threat of death in a society organized by a violent white supremacy.

We find the threads of Bonhoeffer's life at union starting to weave together a particular tapestry, as it were. Not only is he getting a new understanding of the sermon on the mount from his friend Jean Lasserre, but he's also understanding the sermon on the mound through the context of suffering that he is seeing within the black community, within social spaces that he had no exposure to before he came to New York. It's in that space where he writes back to his supervisors in Germany.

When we attempt to assess this situation, we must draw attention to one church group to which most of that which has been said applies only to a small extent. The Church of the outcast of America stands fairly untouched, indeed avoided, by the white church, the negro church. During my overall stay in America, I spent a great deal of time getting to know the negro problem from every angle, and also observing white America from this rather hidden perspective. Through my friendship with a negro student at the seminary, I was introduced not only to the leaders of the young negro movement at Howard College in Washington, but also in Haarlem, the Negro quarter of New York. For more than six months, I was in one of the large Baptist churches in Haarlem. Every Sunday at 230 in the afternoon, and together with my french and often as a substitute, had a group of young Negroes in the Sunday school. I conducted bible study for some negro woman, and once a week I helped out in a weekday church school. Hence, not only did I become well acquainted with, several young Negroes, I also visited their home several times. This personal acquaintance with Negroes was one of the most important and gratifying events of my stay in America.

Reggie Williams unpacks how Bonhoeffer's experience in Harlem transformed his life

Once again, we hear from Reggie Williams, unpacking his understanding of how Bonhoeffer's experience in Harlem transformed his life.

The time that he's spending at Abyssinian is during the Great Depression. If we recall, it's 1930, and as the saying goes, when white America gets a cold, black America gets pneumonia. So in Harlem, the suffering is particularly acute, and the church is, in one sense, if we're just talking about the material reality, a continuation of post World War one Germany, where there's a lot of suffering, it's visibly on the streets here. He's coming from a wealthy family, and he's at a wealthy church. Abyssinian Baptist was still employing people during the Great Depression, giving away money. There is a food kitchen. There is a clothing giveaway. There is housing for unhoused people and for elderly and so forth. There's school. That's happening. And he is an active participant in all of this.

First, I heard the gospel preached in the negro churches. In a negro church. It is not difficult to observe where the interest of the congregation awakens and where it does nothing, since the enormous intensity of feelings among the Negroes repeatedly finds expression in their outcries and interrupting shouts. But it is clear that wherever the gospel itself really is mentioned, their participation

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peaks. Here, one could really still hear someone talk, in a christian sense, about sin and grace and the love of God and ultimate hope, albeit in a form different from what to which we are accustomed. In contrast to the often lecture like character of the white sermon, the black Christ is preached with captivating passion and vividness. Anyone who has heard and understood the negro spirituals knows about the strange mixture of reserved melancholy and eruptive joy in the soul of the negro.

Any word from Bonhoeffer's pin about conversation with any black scholars? He's reading them, he's listening to the preaching. He's got his really close black friend, and he's encountering the Harlem Renaissance in Washington, DC, as he names it. The Renaissance is really taking place in houses. Writers who will bring their writing into these spaces, and they will talk about the literature that they're writing. They're oftentimes supported by wealthy patrons to do this kind of work. It's what's happening in New York, it's happening in Chicago, it's happening in DC. The movement takes the name of this black borough in New York, but it's actually a much broader one. He experiences the Harlem, Renaissance in DC, connected to Howard University, but conversation with any of these black scholars or leaders may have helped to stretch him a bit more than the friendships and the kind of tacit observation that he's engaging at Abyssinian Baptist church. But the observation did have an impact on him.

Throughout his life, Bonhoeffer experienced many conversions, and the conversion that he experienced in the american context was one that would change his language, change his outlook, change his ethnocentrism, change his understanding of his relationship to his own nation and the language he was using in, Barcelona. As we saw in our last session, one replete with war can be justified. And nationalism was a higher priority than the cross of Christ, as now under the influence of the american experience, especially with the Harlem Renaissance and Abyssinian Baptist church, its exposure to the black church would change the way he understands everything.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. It's an interruption in the way that white people ordered the world. It's doing it aesthetically. That's what the Harlem Renaissance is. It's black people speaking about, black people, for black people, both in creating culture in that way. But it's got this political voice to it. It's an interruption. Who is Jesus if he's not the white representative of the savior of the world? The savior of the world is also a colonial project. Give them civilization, give them culture, and save their souls and save their humanity, as it were, by making them as human as possible, which is as western as possible. Bonhoeffer has a Christ centered theology, but it's interesting to come from Europe with a Christ centered theology. What does that mean when Jesus is white and a product of the colonial project, imperial Jesus, this is a representative of the imperial structure of the west. What he goes into, abyssinian. for abyssinian, to speak of Christ centeredness is not to speak about the colonial Christ, not to speak of the Jesus of empire, but to speak of the one who suffers with us. If God is with Jesus on the cross on Friday, then God is with us on the cross in the United States, and Sunday is coming. This is not Jesus risen with all power. This is the Jesus hidden and suffering in shame. So the black church encounter that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had was of a church that was steeped in the black social gospel, which, as Gary Dorian so helpfully describes, is a post bellum iteration. It's asking questions after slavery has ended, like, what are we to do about the mania of ongoing racism in the wake of slavery, of lynch law, of segregation, of anti black hatred, of poverty? That's the church that Bonhoeffer is attending. Christ is not one risen in all power as the Jesus he knew in imperial Europe. That's justification for white ownership, for european ownership of all things related to heaven and earth. Christ is one who knows suffering and shame and solidarity with society's most wounded. He's with us on the cross and therefore will bring us to Sunday morning. His love

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cannot be measured.

It's deeper than the shell.

Hm.

Reggie Williams: Bonhoeffer's Harlem Renaissance transformed his theology

One of the powerful things about Reggie's work with Bonhoeffer is making some connections that often get skipped or missed over trying to understand Bonhoeffer's life. And that is the unique experience and perspective that the Harlem Renaissance and time at abyssinian Baptist church gave him. Like he said, the Harlem Renaissance is a vibrant artistic community that is making space for black voices and black bodies to articulate a black experience and a culture that is deeply shaped by a white supremacy, but so often blind to it. And that encounter with the Harlem Renaissance shapes Bonhoeffer's understanding of what the voice of the outsider gets permission to do and to challenge.

Sometimes, people translate Bonhoeffer. They pay attention to the sort of emotional experience that Bonhoeffer had at abyssinian. They tell the story about how he comes back and talks to Miles Horton, and he's so moved that they have to spend some time walking along riverside drive to process it. But in fact, one of the most powerful spaces that Bonhoeffer is experiencing conversion, as it were, is the space of understanding that the Jesus Christ that he thought he knew was far more expansive, far more suffering in a way, than he had realized in Europe. He had acquired a certain understanding. Luther's theology of the cross, and theology of the cross was there to help people understand that the theology of glory was not the only approach to understand Christianity. And so he had understood Christ in a certain way as the suffering Christ. But there were levels and depths to that suffering connected to social location that he had not yet understood.

This is an essential transition if we want to understand how the Bonhoeffer who preached german militaristic, nationalistic sermons in Barcelona is transformed to the one so many of us came to know and love and be challenged by, it's here in Harlem. By hearing the message of the cross alongside those who were victims, oppressed by the supremacist culture reigning in America, he makes that connection between the suffering of Christ and God's own suffering. Solidarity with all those who bear crosses in each and every age. This kind of contextual reflection on the cross in Jesus own life, connecting to a contextual reflection of the power dynamics of supremacy culture in America, opened up his theological imagination. And there's no one who has helped Bonhoeffer scholarship capture this transition and the power of his time in Harlem more than our friend Reggie Williams.

Becke, in his massive biography, says that he never really used that language again after that, that it would take further developments in his understanding of, theologia crucis. He makes that claim in the biography. Where does that happen for him? One might say that he was looking for some response from christians, from the church to the suffering that was before him in Germany. People committing suicide, people starving, hungry, wearing clothes made of cloth and paper, from the embargo, from the allies and so forth. He's looking, does the church have any response to this? Instead, it's compartmentalized. It's what the bourgeois do. But he didn't have a model for it until he comes to the United States and sees black people's entire being. The faith encompasses not just Sunday. It is about one's entire encounter with Christ. Christ in the suffering and the shame. That suffering and the shame that's represented by Christ with the outcast and the oppressed, shapes discipleship. It's what it means to follow. This provides this conversion experience for him. It's not a partial thing now. It's the entirety. As you know, the theologia crucis is the shape of Luther's theology, the entirety of it. He is a witness for that, a model for that in the black church, whereas the white racist is simply going to see black people talking. But there's a faith claim here that is total, not compartmentalized. How could it not be? Because in a white racist country, this body is a target. But this body also identifies with Christ. For black people, that was usually transformative. For him, it also helped that his project prior to New York was trying to think about a christian concept of persons that moved

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our understanding of human being and a person out of the self enclosed, rational mind. You're not just a thinker, you're a body too.

It's not just the relationships that Bonhoeffer has with theological colleagues from Europe, not just his exposure to Niebuhr. There are other things that influence, impact Bonhoeffer's theology, his life with his time in New York. In fact, in the spring semester, Bonhoeffer took a class that was sort of oriented to the social services, the christian witness, in concrete places, even if it didn't go by Christian. So in that last semester, he had what might be called experiential learning, where he visited many of the places in New York City that were involved in helping the marginalized, those who were too poor. He was impressed with the ACLU, told his brother later on, he thought that maybe they should have something like that in Germany. But it's also in his exposure to the, activists that were surrounding these organizations, the voices from the south, like Miles Horton and Jim Dombrowski, who were exposing Bonhoeffer to another way of understanding the pragmatic aspects of christian faith in the world. Those would have a profound impact on Bonhoeffer as well. In addition, Bonhoeffer was oriented to a lot of travel, a lot of adventure. And so Bonhoeffer's time in America was no different. In the Christmas break that he had at union, he traveled to Cuba to Havana, where he experienced another understanding of church. And when the classes were over, he experienced a whole nother exposure to american culture and society. Through a fairly significant road trip with his colleagues, he went to Chicago to drop off Paul Layman, and then he and Lasaire and Irwin Sutz continued on down, going to New Orleans, where they dropped a off sutz, and then he and Lesaer continued on into Mexico. After they experienced a little time in Mexico, they made their way back by car through the south, where they experienced the worst understanding of, race relations, the most segregated, most oppressive, most racist parts of the country. And they saw segregation. They saw this racism and the effects that it had on marginalized bodies for himself, not just in New York City, but in the entirety of this country. Bonhoeffer's exposure to these experiences, these different organizations, these different bodies, led him to. As Charles Marsh, in his biography of Bonhoeffer, wrote about his year of union, the american social theology, which had seemed so devoid of miracle, had remade him into a theologian of the concrete. We can certainly say that by the time he boarded his boat back home, his world had enlarged. And even that very provincial judgment of american superficial theology, he had come to understand and had a new grasp of christian faith in action that would form the kind of civic courage necessary to face the darkness that was growing in Germany as the tensions that were tearing Germany and society apart had only intensified. In his absence, his brother Klaus had written him warning of the growing specter of fascism. And he had a friend, Helmut Roessler, and he had written Bonhoeffer a letter that described the situation in Germany and the attraction of national socialism. He had warned his friend that the rising fascism was taking over the hearts and minds of Germany, especially in the rural areas, and that it was hard to maintain a distinctly christian perspective when the gospel was being hijacked by political actors. But the gospel being hijacked was essentially pagan in nature, replacing the worship of Christ with the worship of state in the bulk. When Bonhoeffer boards his boat in June of 1931 to return to his home, he is not unaware of the fact that the great idolatry of nationalism in a german guise awaits him.

Von Hoffer's time in New York radically transformed him. He moved beyond the kind of nationalist and militaristic vision of the faith we heard in Barcelona. Through an encounter with the Harlem Renaissance, Abyssinian Baptist Church, and fellow european students, his vision of just what the disciple was called to be was transformed. A German who came to New York contemplating the possibility of killing for blood and soil, came to see himself as a disciple of Jesus. Jesus, who called his followers to bear a cross and not build them, to love their enemies and not kill them. And one who was to be found in the face of the other, regardless of how one's culture and context set you against them. Without his time in New

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York and these transformative experiences, we would never hear Bonhoeffer. The Bonhoeffer we read in the cost of discipleship when he says, it is.

The great mistake of a false protestant ethic to assume loving Christ can be the same as loving one's native country or friendship or profession, that the better righteousness and things internal are the same. It is the shining light, the city on a hill. It is the way of self denial. Perfect love, perfect purity, perfect, truthfulness, perfect nonviolence.

I can't give you anything.

But love.

Here is undivided love for one's enemies, loving those who love no one and who no one loves. it is love for one's religious, political or personal enemy. In all of this, it is the way which found its fulfillment in the cross of Jesus Christ. What is unique in Christianity is the cross which allows christians to step beyond the world in order to receive victory over the world.

We will see you next week for the rise of Bonhoeffer.

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