Luther, Bonhoeffer, and Public Ethics

Prompted by the 2017 commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, this book examines the legacy of Martin Luther in the life, work, and reception of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the most widely read modern Lutheran theologian. Framing the commemoration of the Reformation in conversation with Bonhoeffer’s legacy places much more than Bonhoeffer’s connection to Luther at stake. Given the fraught relationship of the Lutheran Bonhoeffer with the German Protestant Church under National Socialism, the question inevitably arises: “What happened to Luther’s church in Germany?” This in turn prompts the question: “How did the Protestant tradition play out in public life in other nations?” And these historical issues in turn encourage reflection on a question that exercised both Luther and Bonhoeffer: “What will be the shape of the church in the future?” In these pages, an international group of scholars and practitioners from both church and state pursues these questions.

This rich collection of substantive and expert essays explores both Bonhoeffer’s complex relation to the traditions of Lutheran faith as well as the ways in which, refracted through his own work, impulses from this same Reformation faith press upon important contemporary questions in church and public life. Students of Bonhoeffer’s theology and all those wrestling with the shape of public theology today will welcome the instruction, provocation, and encouragement this volume provides., This volume is remarkable, and prescient. With chapters by an impressive array of international scholars, including historians, theologians, and activists, the book examines critical questions related to Martin Luther and the legacy and ongoing impact of the Reformation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the National Socialist context that shaped his life and thought, and the consequent implications of their work on contemporary issues in the church and the world. Michael DeJonge and Clifford Green have curated a book that seriously grapples with the past to form the future, that seriously grapples with global struggles for racial, social, and environmental justice. It is a book that matters.

Michael P. DeJonge is professor and chair of religious studies at the University of South Florida.Clifford J. Green is Bonhoeffer Chair Scholar at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and project director of the Early Career German-American Bonhoeffer Research Network.