Court evangelical Eric Metaxas wrote a popular biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that was panned by Bonhoeffer scholars. University of Virginia theology professor Charles Marsh wrote a biography of Bonhoeffer that was praised by Bonhoeffer scholars.
When Metaxas invoked Bonhoeffer to justify his rejection of the Black Lives Matter movement, Marsh responded.
You may recall that Marsh is the scholar who gathered the Bonhoeffer quotes we published as “Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Stupidity.”
Here is Metaxas’s tweet:
The Washington Times article Metaxas tweeted is here.
Here is Marsh’s twitter thread:
Indulge me a long thread (my first, fingers crossed) in which I show readers the absurdity of this tweet. A more lively response (imho) can be found in my book, “Strange Glory. A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” (Knopf, 2014) pic.twitter.com/rsT9F4l61O
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 16, 2020
1/Bonhoeffer’s life-changing encounters with the American organizing tradition initially came through two largely forgotten teachers at Union, Harry Ward and Charles Webb. (First of a dozen or so,)
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 16, 2020
2/Methodist minister, professor of practical theology Christian socialist, Webber was known to friends & foes alike as the chaplain of organized labor. Bonhoeffer loved his book, “A History of the Development of Social Education in the United Neighborhood Houses of New York”.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
3/Bonhoeffer wrote, “I paid a visit almost every week to settlements, Y.M.C.A., co-operative houses, playgrounds, children’s courts, night schools, socialist schools, asylums, youth organizations, Association for advance of coloured people [sic]…. It is immensely impressive!”
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
4/In Webber’s courses DB went deep with the National Women’s Trade Union & the Workers Education Bureau of America and wrote reports on labor, selective buying campaigns, civil rights, “restriction of profits,” juvenile delinquency, “the activity of the churches in these fields.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
5/Webber introduced DB to the Southern Tenants Farmers Union, the Delta Cooperative, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the British cooperative movement. The last he visited a few years later while praying and making plans for the illegal seminary at Finkenwalde.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
6/Then there was Harry Ward, the Methodist activist and social reformer.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
7/For an extraordinary portrait of Ward’s life and thought, I highly recommend this book by my friend and fellow Baptist boy. RIP, David. pic.twitter.com/b3A9A2kNFF
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
9/Ward combined an old-time Methodist zeal for righteous action with a crusading Marxist critique of economic inequality.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
10/Bonhoeffer took Ward’s popular class, “Ethical Interpretations” (jointly taught with Reinhold Niebuhr), on developing the ethical and theological skills needed to interpret/evaluate “current events in light of the principles of Christian ethics.”
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
11/Bonhoeffer and his classmates were required to read and analyze newspaper articles, political journals, government reports, and various legal documents—all from the perspective of “the Jesus of the proletariat.”
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
12/Bonhoeffer said he listened closely as Ward enunciated his singular version of Pascal’s wager: Christians had the world to gain from living “as if” there existed an ethical God weighing every human action in the balance. This meant, at least for Ward, a socialist revolution.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
13/Next let’s meet Bonhoeffer’s classmate and interlocutor James Dombrowski and consider that DB read and admired his Columbia dissertation, “The Early Days of Christian Socialism in America.”
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
14/Over the next three decades, Dombrowski would direct the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, serve as executive director of the Southern Conference Educational Fund and work behind the scenes with key figures in the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott. (Six or seven more).
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
15/One of Bonhoeffer’s most trusted classmates was a seminarian from Tennessee named Myles Horton, who called himself “the token hillbilly” at Union.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
16 After he finished union, Miles Horton returned to Tennessee and founded the Highlander Folk School-“specializing in education for fundamental social change.” In the 1930s/ ’40s, Highlander emerged as a training centers for the Christian Left. .
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
18/This is an interesting tribute. https://t.co/0kwBInovoW
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
19/In the 1950s, Highlander would shift focus from labor to civil rights and help train the generation of church-based organizers that included Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ella Baker, pictured here. pic.twitter.com/QpP7xPLszT
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
20/These activist/theologians blew Bonhoeffer’s mind and illuminated a way of doing theology closer to the ground.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
21/And we haven’t even spoken about Bonhoeffer’s deep immersion in African-American Christianity and culture. Or explored the implications of his parting observation, “I heard the gospel preached (only) in the church if the outcasts of America.”
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
Almost done. Sorry if I skipped some numbers and things are out of order.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
23/His cousin, fellow conspirator said the American year set his “entire thinking on a track from which it has not yet deviated and never will.” Progressive protestant ethics (he first rejected for its lack of doctrinal rigor) made Bonhoeffer into a theologian of the concrete.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
25/A straight line runs from the progressive American organizing tradition in white and black through the civil rights movement to Black Lives Matter.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
25/26 Had Metaxas bothered to look at the two large bankers boxes in the Berlin public library containing files, notes and clippings of the academic year 1930-31, he would have seen this evidence. And ignored it.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
Back in Berlin, Bonhoeffer listened with new purpose as his brother Klaus -murdered for his role in July ‘44 – explained: “People are flirting with fascism. If the radical wave of right-wing sentiment captures even the educated classes it will soon be over for the nation.” Done.
— Lived Theology (@LivedTheology) June 17, 2020
For the continuing debate over Bonhoeffer’s legacy, I recommend Stephen Haynes’s The Battle for Bonhoeffer: Debating Discipleship in the Age of Trump. Haynes also has an essay in the recently released The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity.