Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies And Import For Christian Social Thought

by Willis Jenkins

We are not to be theoethical tourists in the lives of others, but are to attempt the hard work of being pilgrims on the journey with others.

That person’s legacy is fashioned in a particular way, largely based on how his or her thought and deeds align with contemporary needs and aspirations. That legacy then becomes the implicit standard by which authenticity is judged. The collective ear has been tuned to hear a particular voice, and any words out of phase with this voice stand a good chance of being ignored.

If we look at actually-existing relationships of power—including the abuse of power—we cannot accept some of Bonhoeffer’s general claims about the form of an individual’s existence conformed to Christ. We may, however, be able to use his work as the starting point for thinking about how the community conformed to Christ can move beyond the abuse of power.15

the model of church authority focused on the preacher and the office of preaching will tend to produce an individualized model of leadership and authority both within churches and within other social and political groupings. Elliott discusses, by way of contrast, the “group-based” paradigm of authority represented and practiced by such civil rights leaders as Ella Baker—a pattern of participatory democracy in which adult education is key, the involvement of all in decision making is a significant goal at all levels, and hierarchy is kept to a minimum.23 This modus operandi was important and influential within the civil rights movement and was particularly furthered and advocated by women activists—but it is one that ran in many ways counter to King’s instincts about how leadership functions, instincts shaped by his particular ecclesial context and position. Some interesting comparisons

King put it this way: “Nonviolent resistance had emerged as the technique of the movement, while love stood as the regulating idea. Christ furnished the spirit and motivation, while Gandhi furnished the method.” Yet King also saw in the Gandhian campaigns the same love he saw in Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. He articulated this kind of love in many places, one of them in the bus boycott account itself. Singling out agape love for extended comment, King says the following: Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. It is insistence on community even when one seeks to break it. Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community. It doesn’t stop at the first mile, but goes the second mile to restore community. It is a willingness to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven to restore community.… The resurrection is a symbol of God’s triumph over all the forces that seek to block community. The Holy Spirit is the continuing community-creating reality that moves through history.… In the final analysis, agape means a recognition of the fact that all life is interrelated.… Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force in the universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.24

Before we draw the final conclusion, allow this review. It can be said either way: the communitarian ethic of both King and Bonhoeffer is inherently a love ethic; or, their love ethic is inherently communitarian. All—self and other—belong in the same framework of moral reference and concern, and bear the same dignity and stamp as a child of God. Sharing vulnerability and sharing power for life worthy of life keeps the circle of love intact. Double standards, and using power to privilege “us” over “them” and sacrifice “them” for our sins as well as theirs, breaks the circle and destroys community. Resistance for the sake of community restoration and structural justice is thus a requirement of peace itself. Or, to say it differently: both King and Bonhoeffer understand goodness as a power. And for both, moral agency based in empathy for the other issues in resistance to violence with means that express the power of goodness.30

Hindsight reveals that theologians such as King and Bonhoeffer, who refused to cave in and capitulate to racist logic, no matter how popular at the time, were exceedingly rare. It is precisely their refusals—and the theologies behind them—that edify many today. Their deeply held convictions that racism was a form of apostasy within the churches and their courageous actions against the wickedness of racism are great theological legacies. We could talk for days about whether our governments

Bonhoeffer was a brilliant and faithful man, who eventually achieved martyrdom, but he was (like many of us) capable of pride in the church, disdain for the world, and double-mindedness about both. We do Bonhoeffer more honor by acknowledging the ways in which he grew through war and suffering than by imagining that he had a perfectly clear and consistent moral vision all along. Rather than a simple break with Discipleship, one sees in the later works a maturation of views, a deepening empathy with “the world” and a more realistic take on “the church” in line with his 1932 lectures and addresses. Still, it is not too much to say that Bonhoeffer reconceived Discipleship’s idea of sanctification. It continued to mean Christian growth in holiness, but now it became an engaged leavening of the world rather than a proud escape from it—an open book (a.k.a. the gospel) rather than a sealed train. For the later Bonhoeffer, the point is neither to oppose nor to equate the natural and the supernatural, the secular and the ecclesial, but, instead, to witness to their being reconciled in Christ. Christian witness eschews ideological principles cut off from life in God, and it takes special care not to reduce agapic love to a “vague idea.”11 Such witness is also decisively universal: “in the body of Christ all humanity is accepted, included, and borne,” and the church’s “concern is the eternal salvation of the whole world.”12

Many sincere Christians fear that a modern loss of faith and the moral “subjectivism” that often accompanies it will leave one unable to judge right and wrong, but, in fact, faithlessness makes it impossible to decline to judge others and to forgive. The turn toward self and away from God does not strip us of the power to draw moral contrasts; it forces us to draw invidious contrasts everywhere, to bolster our shaky confidence or to survive “the rat race.” Absent the light of the world, we “keep our metaphysics warm” (T. S. Eliot) by freezing others out. Yet true unity with God means not isolation from the world but communion with it, both because of and in spite of its/our sin. Seeking to elevate self by denying or denigrating others is very close to the core of fallenness, and such a temper spells the end of a prophetic witness that directs attention to God. (The true prophet does not berate or banish people, any more than she capitulates or panders to their evil; instead, she speaks the truth that we are not alone and thereby inspires people with the love of God.)

because they confessed faith—though they did confess brilliantly and in this way remained faithful to the conventional martyr pattern—but because they were compelled by the cross of Christ to act in the interest of others. We hear faint echoes of this theme in an early Christian martyr like Polycarp of Smyrna, whose death could be described as a death “for others” because it brought to a close a regional episode of persecution. But martyrs for justice do not take center stage until late modernity. As I have argued elsewhere, recent martyrs have added a new letter to the alphabet of martyrdom.1

For King, the cross discloses the dire lengths to which God will go to restore broken community. James Cone calls this the basis of King’s strength to love. The cross also became the means by which he sifted through and interpreted other faith claims. Moreover, it separated him from both the liberal theology of his training and the ideology of Malcolm X, who would not be persuaded to love the oppressor.12 There could be no lasting solution to racism, thought King, until the oppressed learned to love their oppressors.13

Segregation could not have been so well choreographed and slavery could not have lasted so long were it not for the evil theology of American churches during those evil times.12

What is important to notice is that while the focus is still ostensibly on sin as a personal category—evangelical abolitionists exclusively focused on the interior life of the sinner rather than the social effects of sin—the abolitionist understanding of sin marks the developing turn to the material consequences of sin on the victims that creates the predicate for later reflection on systemic sin and then social sin. Structurally this type of discourse sees the power of sin at work in systems that lead people astray and once they are led astray to propound the work of vice within society and thus to hamper not only the personal journey to righteousness of individuals, but also to truncate the display of public righteousness within the whole society. This might be thought of as the early evangelical social theory of sin. It is a theory of sin whose primary focus is on sin and its effects as they are propagated and felt by individuals.

By cruciform communitarianism I mean embodiment of the cruciform life by a community with the goal of overcoming the structures of evil that are destroying the spiritual and material well-being of God’s children. This was exemplified in King’s approach to the civil rights movement, both personally and as a part of the leadership of that movement.

King’s approach was to describe social evil (i.e., segregation and militarism) as an organic presence within society, albeit a harmful one. This is seen in his frequent likening of it to a cancer in the body politic. In resorting to such a description, King was moving beyond the early evangelical position that relied on the reduction of social evil to a problem characterized by congeries of relations among sinful people. In his assessment, social evil was an actual power within itself. Here King is utilizing the contemporary liberal social theory of his time found in works such as Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society13 and Myrdal’s An American Dilemma.14

To appreciate fully King’s synthesis it is necessary to be clear about the two primary alternatives that were being voiced in his context. There was the evangelical-conservative approach that operated purely on the level of personal involvement with sin and refused to expand the analysis of sin to a systemic and social level. This was the approach seen in both the broad stream of the segregationist position in the midst of the civil rights movement, as well as, ironically, in much of the Black Church’s engagements with the struggle. It is unfortunate that this particular approach is what became synonymous with evangelicalism during the time and in succeeding decades and thus occluded the substantial framing of the struggle by King and others in evangelical categories. This approach relied on the central themes of evangelicalism—personal experience and holiness—and thus characteristically refused to contemplate a social dimension of sin. This stream of evangelicalism was widespread in both black and white communities throughout the South, so its power cannot be marginalized. In addition to this evangelical-conservative approach, the liberal-modernist approach provided a significant alternative to King’s synthesis. This approach relied heavily on the sciences for the social theory underlying its account of social evil. The focus was placed more on the behavior of groups and to the extent that there was a focus on individuals it was a more psychotherapeutic model (for example...

The evangelical (conservative and liberal) synthesis of personal and social righteousness (or sinfulness) focuses on the conversion of the hearts of individual members of society, which brings about a will to live differently and consequently changes the ways these individuals inhabit the social relations of their society, thereby transforming the institutions based upon these relations. Thus, the sinful structures of society are changed by “converting” enough members of society to change the social fabric of that society. This narrative of conversion then finds its fullest expression in the development of communities of the converted that bring about change within the entire society. This understanding is what, in my opinion, stands behind King’s image of the beloved community. His work in creating new communities of the converted, or new publics to follow this image to its logical conclusion, might very much be thought of as a type of evangelization of the social order much in the mode of the evangelical abolitionists and the social gospelers. While I think that it would be an unhelpful reduction to identify this evangelistic activity with the “Christianization” of society—for King’s work and appreciation of communities of differing faith resist such a move—it is quite clear that his modus operandi in the creation of these new publics is analogous to the dimension of practical ministry understood through an evangelical lens as saving souls, for King, the soul of a nation...

His three climactic reasons are “my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ,” “obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them,” and “because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children.… Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves.”

With King, for instance, at no time after entering full-time ministry did he ever sit down and compose a comprehensive and systematic account of the meaning and significance of Jesus. He just never perceived the Holy Spirit’s calling to such a task.

nonviolent direct action seeks reconciliation, not defeat of an adversary. After all, said King, oppressors are also victims of their own oppressive behavior. Nonviolent resisters seek to win their adversary’s understanding and even friendship rather than to humiliate or defeat them. “The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”18

One reason why worship precedes theology is that relationality lies at its heart. Worship works on the analogy of the knowledge of a child: a child only knows her parent as a child, incompletely. Yet, by being in relationship to its parent, the child’s incomplete knowledge becomes satisfied. Jesus has defined our relationship to God as a child to a parent, but it would prove difficult to find many Western Christians who are content with the incompleteness and dependency in that view of relationship to God. Herein is the Western discomfort. Western individualism inevitably confuses the reality of God with one’s own idea of reality.