Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1909-1945) is one of my heroes. For real! The heroic witness of this twentieth century Christian martyr inspires and humbles me.
Dietrich left Germany at age twenty-three for a year of post-graduate theological studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He came to discover that Union Seminary was a bastion of religious liberalism in America. “There is no theology here,” he lamented to a friend. He described his seminary experience as “insipid and uninspiring.” His impressions of liberal churches were equally scathing, “In New York, they preach about virtually everything, only one thing is not addressed, or if addressed so rarely that I have as yet been able to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.” What did they preach? He continued, “An ethical and social idealism borne by a faith in progress.”
One of Dietrich’s seminary classmates, Frank Fisher, an African American from the south, invited him to attend the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Dietrich loved it. He experienced energetic worship and passionate proclamation of the gospel. It was in the Black church in America that Dietrich witnessed authentic Christianity lived out in real life. It also became the genesis of his life-long love for Black gospel music.
Dietrich’s experience in Harlem had a seminal influence on his resistance to Nazi antisemitism years later and his bold stand against Hitler’s takeover of the German Evangelical Church. His prayer in the face of imminent danger recalls Jesus’ “Thy will be done” prayer before his arrest: