Saints and other notable personalities appearing in the Calendar of the
Episcopal Church in April.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an anti-Nazi theologian and pastor during World
War II. Best remembered for authoring the Christian classics The Cost of
Discipleship and Life Together, Bonhoeffer
was born in 1906 in Germany and began his
journey in church leadership during the rise of
the Nazi regime.
Although Bonhoeffer did not grow up in a
particularly religious home, he announced his
plans to join the church when he was just
fourteen. After obtaining his doctorate in
theology and working in churches abroad,
Bonhoeffer became a priest and lecturer in
Berlin at the age of twenty-five.
Hitler's rise to power just two years later
marked a turning point in Bonhoeffer's career.
Despite the mounting cost, Bonhoeffer spoke
out against the Führer's influence. Frustrated
by the unwillingness of church leaders to
oppose Hitler's anti-Semitism, Bonhoeffer
created the Confessing Church, alongside Martin Niemoller and Karl Barth.
In 1938, his brother-in-law, the jurist Hans von Dohnanyi, introduced him to
the group seeking Hitler’s overthrow.
A year later he publicly stated that “the Church
was silent when it should have cried out
because the blood of the innocent was crying
aloud to heaven. She is guilty of the deaths of
the weakest and most defenceless brothers of
Jesus Christ.”
Bonhoeffer and von Dohnanyi responded
personally by helping some Jews move to
neutral Switzerland.
Eventually forbidden to teach publicly and
forced underground, Bonhoeffer taught
seminary students for several years until even
the Confessing Church grew reluctant to
Bonhoeffer’s Statue in
contradict Nazi leadership. Having lost this
Westminster Abbey
opportunity, Bonhoeffer briefly sought asylum
in the United States but, after concluding that it was wrong to abandon his
friends, returned to Nazi Germany.
17