Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.

The timing was coincidental—the movie “Bonhoeffer” was released in theaters across the U.S. over Thanksgiving weekend, three weeks after Donald Trump’s election as President.  But for my wife Kaarin and I, and for many readers of the Reformed Journal, it felt like the right movie to see on the weekend after trying to give thanks.  Others came to the movie out of curiosity about a German pastor involved in trying to overthrow Hitler.  But some entered theaters for more pastoral reasons, looking for a message, or inspiration and solace after November 5, which they wished might come from their church.

“Bonhoeffer” presents the journey of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this German pastor, author, and theologian who became far more famous after his death than during his short lifetime of only 39 years.  Raised in a privileged, intellectually and culturally engaged German family, his decision to study theology was a surprise.  His brilliance, with a dissertation completed at age 21, made him an outstanding student, eventually sending him to Union Seminary in New York on a fellowship 1930.  It was a pivotal time for Bonhoeffer because, out of friendship with one of Union’s few black students at the time, Frank Fisher, he was introduced to Harlem, black culture, and the Abyssinian Baptist Church with its pastor, Adam Clayton Powell.  The exposure to Christianity lived out within that culture, among those repressively marginalized by society, had a dramatic effect on Bonhoeffer’s theology and life.

The film’s focus on this part of Bonhoeffer’s experience is one of its most important public contributions.  Many who read Cost of Discipleship and Ethics in college or seminary, and used Life Together in a church small group, have never known this formative part of his story.  Reggie Williams, the author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance is the foremost scholar who has addressed this chapter of Bonhoeffer’s journey.  His perceptive review of the movie points out the dangers of many stories presenting a white figure as a champion for blacks whose own agency is undervalued.  Yet, the scenes of Bonhoeffer teaching a Sunday School class in Harlem and being exposed to the ruthlessness of black discrimination in his U.S. travels, vividly makes the point of Bonhoeffer’s growing empathy for a Christian community he found so inspiring but distant from his own.  It’s how he began “seeing things from below.”

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1931 when Hitler’s National Socialist Party was gaining greater public attention, with its antisemitic ultranationalist, anti-communist, and “strong man” appeal, all in the wake of the Great Depression and in a floundering democracy.  With a theology centered in the radical call to follow Christ’s clear words and life, Bonhoeffer became committed to the Confessing Church, the remnant of German Christianity finding resistance to the Nazi regime as intrinsic to the call of the gospel.  The film powerfully conveys his denunciation of the extreme nationalistic complicity and embrace of Nazism by the official church as Hitler became Chancellor and consolidated power.  And at the “underground seminary” in Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer taught students the spirituals he learned in Harlem.

As war breaks out and some signs of the Nazis’ genocidal intentions are seen, Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law persuades him to be part of a network of those from the government and other parts of society who are attempting the overthrow of the regime, including plots to assassinate the Fuhrer.  Bonhoeffer’s role includes carrying messages from the resistance to Allied countries, including England, through his ecumenical contacts.  The plots fail, and Bonhoeffer is arrested in 1943 with other conspirators.  As Germany faces defeat, Bonhoeffer is moved to Flossenbürg where he is hanged on April 9, 1945.  In the film he celebrates communion with fellow prisoners the previous day.

The movie has its flaws.  I’m no film critic, but the acting seems unremarkable, though sufficient.  There’s no Ralph Fiennes performance like in Conclave, and “Bonhoeffer” won’t be getting any Oscars.  It’s an artistic presentation and employs imaginative scenes and historic license to make its points, which Bonhoeffer scholars may find unsettling.  Its most serious weakness, in my view, is that Bonhoeffer’s own ethical struggles, as one committed to the norm of the non-violence of Jesus, are not conveyed.  The moral ambiguity of any actions in historical settings saturated with evil, requiring daily life and death decisions, weighed heavily on Bonhoeffer as he tried to ground an ethics rooted finally in faithful relinquishment to God.  The movie makes Bonhoffer seem too certain, righteous and heroic.

Yet, the movie presents Bonhoeffer’s overall witness and life in public theaters across the country to many thousands who may have barely known his name, much less his influence in theology and faith formation over recent decades.  That is historic.  Kaarin and I saw the movie with two ELCA pastors.  All four of us, pastors who have tried to connect faith and life, left the movie emotionally impacted and inspired.  That is what the story of Bonhoeffer’s life does.

Reception of the movie inside some Christian circles has been complicated by Eric Metaxas’ best-selling biography of Bonhoeffer published in 2011.  Its subtext highlights Bonhoeffer as a conservative criticizing the liberal theology preached from the pulpit of Riverside Church.  Metaxas’ subsequent endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016, with frequent appearances on Fox News, and later his full embrace Trump’s election conspiracy theories deepened critiques that Metaxas and others were hijacking Bonhoeffer’s legacy for a militant right-wing MAGA agenda against an evil establishment.  Some even feared that this could condone violence in the fight for Christian nationalism. 

But conflating this movie about Bonhoeffer with Metaxas’ political agenda is seriously mistaken.  That agenda deserves the most serious critique, as has been done by a powerful statement and petition from the International Bonhoeffer Society, and now signed by thousands.  Even the actors in the film “Bonhoeffer” have publicly denounced all those attempts to distort and misuse the legacy of the story they portrayed for purposes of Christian nationalism, objectives which Bonhoeffer have completely resisted.

The movie serves us best by stimulating a deeper exploration of the meaning of Bonhoeffer’s witness for our time.  After watching it, Kaarin and I found Martin Doblmeier’s 2003 documentary movie, “Bonhoeffer” on Amazon Prime.  It’s extraordinary, feeling like a Ken Burns production.  The depth of Bonhoeffer’s theological journey shines through, with his interactions with Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and many others.  Interviews with Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s close friend, Jean Lassarre, whose commitment to Christian nonviolence was so impactful, Desmond Tutu, John de Gruchy, and many others illuminate Bonhoeffer’s life in revealing ways.  For anyone who sees the current movie “Bonhoeffer,” I’d strongly recommend viewing this documentary for the rest of the story, which is difficult to fully convey in a cinematic, artistic production.

Written resources on Bonhoeffer also abound.  My friend Larry Rasmussen, a Bonhoeffer scholar who previously taught as the Reinhold Niebuhr Chair of ethics at Union Seminary, recently recommended re-reading Bonhoeffer’s After Ten Years, written at the end of 1942 shortly before his arrest.  After the 2016 Trump election Victoria Barnett, the preeminent Bonhoeffer scholar, published this with a discerning and brilliant introduction.  She points out how in that hour when hopes seemed crushed, Bonhoeffer called his friends to “a power to hold our heads high when all seems to have come to naught, a power to tolerate setbacks, a power that never abandons the future to the opponent but lays claim to it.”

Recently I attended a “Post-Mortem” on the election with scholars, political scientists, religious activists, and authors.  Robby Jones, who heads the Public Religious Research Institute, provided analysis of not only the voting preferences but the convictions of white Christians who attend church.  Much as before, 80% of white evangelicals supported Trump, and around 60% of other white Protestants and 60% of white Catholics.  More than this, the support of white Christians for anti-immigrant views and proposed mass deportations, and their support for aggressive Christian nationalism, is significantly higher than that of the general population.  The results on other social issues are similar. The evidence of the data seems clear: we are witnessing the failure of public discipleship in our time, rather than Bonhoeffer’s plea to understand the cost of such discipleship.

So go see this movie.  And then read and view other resources about Bonhoeffer’s witness and life.  He witnessed the rise of extreme religious nationalism which tried to coopt the church.  Ethnocentrism drove political allegiance, diverting moral attention from monstrous evil.  Minority groups were demonized for shrewd political purposes.  Authoritarianism was justified as the only way to solve social grievances.  Political opponents were repressed vindictively, solidifying fearful loyalty from others.  Narratives of deceit were spread through available media to erode any accountability to truth.

In that setting, Bonhoeffer asked, “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?”  That should be our question as well.  Our answers, like his, will be formed through life together, hearing the word, and focusing on following Jesus. Then we must pray for the courage to preach, live and witness these answers, announced with our lives, trusting, like Bonhoeffer, finally not in our deeds but in God’s mercy.