I have meant for a long time to reread Jeffrey C. Pugh’s Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times. But the book always rewards a random grab off the shelf.
[Bonhoeffer] wondered how the Christian faith can move away from the temptations of religion to be tied to national or ethnic identity, or psychological need. During this time, he is also trying to make sense of the ways in which Jesus becomes true concrete reality within the community of faith. In the midst of the manifold failures of the church, it was hard for him to discern the ways in which Christianity exhibits faithfulness to anything other than itself.
These failures were made particularly acute with the church’s failure to respond to the political situation it found itself in with the rise of the National Socialists. When Hitler came to power in January of 1933 he moved quickly to consolidate power through the passing of laws and the seduction of the church. His handling of both Catholic and Protestant churches led to the utter collapse of those communities as effective centres of real resistance to the evil within Germany. The church in Germany was co-opted because Hitler would only offer support to the extent that they supported him. The true shame is that whenever this type of support is offered to the church in return for its silence the church, for the most part, has taken the deal.
I don’t really like doing this sort of thing but I was really tempted to swap out a few words in that second paragraph. You could, I think, void any straight comparison to Nazis whatsoever and still find that as a description it works perfectly.
I can’t help myself:
These failures were made particularly acute with the church’s failure to respond to the political situation it found itself in with the rise of the (Christian) Nationalists. When Trump came back into power in January of 2025 he moved quickly to consolidate power through the passing of laws and the seduction of the church. His handling of both Catholic and Protestant churches led to the utter collapse of those communities as effective centres of real resistance to the evil within the United States. The church in America was co-opted because Trump would only offer support to the extent that they supported him. The true shame is that whenever this type of support is offered to the church in return for its silence the church, for the most part, has taken the deal.
Again, you don’t have to call anyone a Nazi to see that that’s a wildly accurate description of current events. Don’t get me wrong; I’ll do straight comparisons. But they do have to be done carefully if at all — if you want to do more than psychological soapboxing, that is. Most people are happy enough only to differentiate themselves, well before the real work begins. Bonhoeffer stayed with the real work; that, more than anything else, is why Bonhoeffer is so Bonhoeffer.
Pugh goes on:
Bonhoeffer saw that the choice was going to be a stark one for the German people:
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that what we’re going to get is a long, popular, national church whose nature cannot any longer be reconciled with Christianity and that we must be prepared to enter upon entirely new paths which we will have to thread. The question really is: Germanism or Christianity?