Bonhoeffer and Babylon
“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
– Jesus, from John 18:36
This past weekend a scripted film on German theologian and Confessing Church leader Dietrich Bonhoeffer was released in theatres. Long in coming, the film touches on the dilemma that faces many of us at one time or another: when do we work within an unjust system to try to reform it or when do we resist, as Bonhoeffer put it: “not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, [but] to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
Even more challenging for Bonhoeffer is whether and when violence is a legitimate expression of active resistance. Realizing that Hitler was intent on a level of human destruction that was unprecedented in modern times, including the Jews, he became active between 1940 and 1943 in a movement to topple him, by coup if possible or assassination if necessary. Defending his actions to his sister-in-law, Emmi Bonhoeffer, he explained “If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can’t simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”
This is what some call a “Bonhoeffer moment.”
Last week we finished up our most recent Salt and Light Story on Daniel, who chose a different path. After being taken into exile by a brutal dictator, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Daniel was willing to stand for his faith while working at the right hand of the very man who would eventually tear down the Temple in Jerusalem. Without violating specific obligations of his faith, Daniel went on to serve a number of pagan kings, seeking “the welfare of the city” where God sent the Jews into bondage, as commanded in what is called the “Letter to the Exiles” found in Jeremiah 29.
It has been fascinating to see the response to the movie in the context of the political moment we are in, and how it can be a Rorschach test for those on the left and the right.
For the left, President Trump is the totalitarian threat to Democracy and possibly a threat to Jews as well. Whether it is on the Daily Show or on the side of Madison Square Garden (as projected by the DNC), he was compared to Hitler on a regular basis. Biden and Harris’s campaigns actually charged that he “channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy.” Left-leaning media have raised the stakes: “Donald Trump Wins the 2024 Election, Putting Democracy on the Brink” headlined Vanity Fair’s coverage of the election; “Trump Is Building the Most Anti-Semitic Cabinet in Decades” declared The Atlantic.
For the right, the totalitarian threat is cultural Marxism and aggressive progressivism which has deconstructed the social norms that have guided western civilization for centuries. With its use of hard and soft power to suppress oppositional voices and persecute the un-woke through reeducation training, this Hitler has to be resisted. Whether in the form of campus speech codes, Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute false charges of Russian collusion, or corporate DEI practices, they say now that President Trump is back in office, the infrastructure of the deep state and other vehicles of oppression must be uprooted.
It is in this political moment that the film is being released, with its movie poster of Bonhoeffer holding a gun (which he never did, that we know of). In an ironic twist, an open letter signed by 86 of 100 adult descendants of the Bonhoeffer siblings, concerned that the film might encourage right-wing violence, calls out conservatives generally, Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Project specifically, and Bonhoeffer biographer Eric Metaxas by name, but neglects to mention the two assassination attempts on Trump's life or the threats of political violence coming from the political left.
The left sees Christian nationalism in President Trump, and the right sees cultural Marxism in Vice President Harris. The question for Clapham is what are we called to do in this “Bonhoeffer moment?”
In another “letter to the exiles,” the New Testament book of 1 Peter offers a constructive guide for living as grace agents in a culture and kingdom which is “of this world”:
“Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.” (1 Peter:13-17)
Context is important here. Peter writes to followers of Jesus in provinces controlled by the Roman empire, and encourages them to maintain the faith despite the persecution they were, and would be experiencing not just culturally and socially, but by the hands of the state.
Fear is a driving force behind our actions, and we all take action to mitigate what we are worried might harm us, our loved ones or the innocent. I have been reading The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as translated by Isabel Best, and was struck by his constant reminder of God’s sovereign plan. He counseled against giving in to our fears, and especially trusting in early power to mollify them. He saw the German Lutheran church’s capitulation to the Third Reich and to Hitler as a lack of faith in the sovereignty of God. As the film-version of Bonhoeffer thundered from the pulpit, they had replaced the Savior with a false idol.
Was Bonhoeffer wrong, therefore, to participate in an effort to assassinate Hitler amidst a severe totalitarian threat? In discerning our particular Bonhoeffer moment, we think it’s important to be very, very careful when comparing the gas chambers of Auschwitz with modern day court packing and White House recess appointment concerns. Despite justifiable concern for human suffering amidst a historic deportation of undocumented migrants or the permanent consequences of gender-affirming care surgery for minors, careless comparisons to the horrors of the Nazi regime only escalate the already increasing patterns of violent rhetoric and political violence, closing off the opportunity for debate and persuasion about policy matters that our Democratic process is meant to address.
Fleming Rutledge has become a favorite Bible commentator, and in her final weekly reflection in Means of Grace, written for the liturgical calendar, she reminds us that the only thing we should fear is God Himself. What should we be doing as exiles? What should we be found doing on the Day of Judgment? She uses the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 to ground us. In the upside down Kingdom that Jesus spoke of, power comes from serving the powerless, not appealing to the powers of this world.
While so many Christians on the right and the left celebrate Bonhoeffer as an example of a faithful disciple resisting tyranny, it would be good to also remember all the men and women of faith and conscience during that time, who quietly resisted the false promises of the Third Reich through the hard work of serving their persecuted neighbors even when it cost them their lives.
Although not perfect, the Bonhoeffer film explores complex moral terrain and raises important questions. Ultimately, the question for all of us is whether politics and political power has become our identity? Our religion? Our savior?
“Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” Matthew 26:20-53