Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance

by Reggie L. Williams

The content of theology in America was different, making it difficult for him to see the broader implications of Christ as Stellvertretung. Rather than the dogmatic theology of Bonhoeffer’s formative German theological environment, he found that in America “pragmatism [had] expelled dogmatics . . . and the question of truth [had] been supplanted by utility.”38 That difference communicated to Bonhoeffer that critical content from the gospel and about Christ was missing in the classroom and the pulpit. In an end-of-the-year report about his Sloane Fellowship prepared for the Church Federation in Germany after he returned home, Bonhoeffer wrote about students in practical theology seminars asking whether one really must preach about Christ.39 He reported how students laughed at a passage from Luther’s Bondage of the Will about sin and forgiveness that was shared during a public lecture.40 Significant features of Bonhoeffer’s academic training were mistreated, belittled, or completely missing in New York.