In April 1945, weeks before the fall of the third Reich, German Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in Flossenburg, a Nazi prison camp. Bonhoeffer was a highly respected theologian and author of The Cost of Discipleship, which taught that the Sermon on the Mount was a practical call to extraordinary ethics and advocated pacifism. A few years later he was arrested for espionage along with a number of members of the Abwehr (the German Intelligence Agency) because of their ongoing secret strategy to undermine and overthrow Hitler. A few months later, when the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler and seize control of Germany failed, it became evident that Bonhoeffer had been involved in that, as well.
How did this deeply spiritual, highly intellectual, and profoundly faithful Christian pastor journey from avowed and sincere pacifism to involvement in espionage and assassination? Bonhoeffer’s life and death raise questions about how Christians are called to live their faith in the real world of politics, war, injustice, and sin.
St. Stephen member Richard Parr is a well-read student of Bonhoeffer’s life and theology. He recently taught a Northminster Sunday school class on the Beatitudes using The Cost of Discipleship as a guide. Dr. Ritsch was a friend of Dr. John Godsey, who introduced Bonhoeffer to the US, and has studied with Victoria Barnett, the staff director of the Committee for Church Relations at the US Holocaust Museum. She is one of the editors of the the new series Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, the first time all of Bonhoeffer’s writings have been collected, edited, and published.
The class begins February 5 at 9:40 a.m. in the Northminster Room, which is located at the top of the stairs near the sanctuary-side entrance to the Education Building. It will run for seven weeks. Come at 9:30 to get breakfast in the Fellowship Hall (located at the South end of the Education Building) and then bring it upstairs.