6 Devotions with Dietrich Bonhoeffer
6 Daily Devotions with Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dear Friends,
I hope you found the devotions led by some of our Church Related Community workers refreshing. We now have a set of 6 Devotions written by retired Baptist minister John Matthews weaving Biblical texts and ideas from Dietrich Bonhoeffer together. John wrote a series for us last year and it’s a pleasure to have another series from him on this widely respected, and often misunderstood, twentieth century theologian.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident. He was a key figure in the ‘Confessing Church’ which resisted Nazi attempts to control the State Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Germany and involved himself in a plot to Hitler. He opposed the Nazi euthanasia programme and their genocidal persecution of Jewish people. Arrested in April 1943, he endured prison for 18 months or so before being executed in the final months of the war.
Bonhoeffer studied in both Germany and America where he encountered, and loved, black majority churches. He also worked in London. He helped establish an underground seminary training men for ministry in ways untainted by the Nazis. He taught there too. Best known for his views of “cheap and costly grace” in his Cost of Discipleship his theological work also included material on ethics and the idea of a “religionless Christianity” as he had seen how the 19th Century liberalism in theology had opened the door for Nazi ideology to infect the Church.
His deep friendship with Eberhard Bethge (they shared a flat and bank account and sent joint Christmas cards) led to some surprise amongst family and friends when he became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer. Historians think his execution was prolonged and brutal as he was deemed an enemy of the regime. He is commemorated as a 20th Century martyr above the West Doors of Westminster Abbey in London.
I hope you find them stimulating in your own journeys of discipleship.
With every good wish
Andy
The Rev’d Andy Braunston
Minister for Digital Worship