Earlier this month, Christianity Today ran a piece on whether Russian Christians need more Bonhoeffers. By “more Bonhoeffers,” the author apparently meant leaders who would speak up on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Christian leaders from Italy, Switzerland, Serbia, Bosnia and Bulgaria have given…
Was Adam and Eve’s ‘worldview’ the original sin?
Snowed in with my family over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, I stole a few moments away to read and reflect on racism in American society, how it persists even as its forms change, and ways to…
Who needs the church when we have the biblical worldview?
After his second visit to New York in 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrestled with the character of Protestant churches in America versus those in Europe in an essay titled “Protestantism without Reformation.” Even as he introduced his argument, which plays up…
Christ came to make us truly human: Social ethics and the image of Christ
This is the last in a three-part Advent series. Dietrich Bonhoeffer always brings me up short when he emphasizes the indicative rather than imperative voice in Paul’s thought and in Christian ethics more broadly. For example, in terms of Bonhoeffer’s…
Does the church in America need a new Barmen Declaration?
It is not the first time this question has been raised, but I ponder it here: Does the church in America need a new Barmen Declaration? In late May 1934, the Pastors’ Emergency League met in Barmen, Germany. Dietrich Bonhoeffer…
Ethics at the end of life: Which moral vision shall govern at the end of life?
This is the final in a four-part series on ethics at the end of life. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had this to say about the end of life: Why, aside from the demands of religion, (is it) more praiseworthy for…
A Bonhoeffer Moment finale: ‘What Christianity really is’
A research paper recently submitted in my Introduction to Christian History course at the School of Divinity, Wake Forest University, begins with these words: It has become an unavoidable reality that the American Christian church is dying slowly. For many,…
Bonhoeffer Moment No. 5: Finding a ‘will for the future’
Reflecting on the long-term impact of the Bubonic Plague (1346-1353) sweeping across Europe and ravaging his native Florence, the poet Petrarch wrote: “O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a…
Bonhoeffer Moment No. 4: ‘Are we still of any use?’
“Are we still of any use?” Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked that question of German Christians near the end of his 1943 essay, “After Ten Years.” We American Christians might ask it of ourselves 77 years later. The nation’s presidential election is…