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

by Reggie L. Williams

Bonhoeffer was puzzled by the isolation caused by his radical convictions: I felt that, in some way I don’t understand, I found myself in radical opposition to all my friends; I was becoming increasingly isolated with my views of the matter, even though I was and remain personally close to these people. All of this frightened me and shook my confidence, so that I began to fear that dogmatism might be leading me astray—since there seemed no particular reason why my own view on these matters should be any better, any more right, than the views of many really able pastors whom I sincerely respect.93 The radical convictions that Bonhoeffer displayed during the church struggle were not the product of his German theological and ecclesiological environment; they were imported goods. His entry into the social context of African Americans in Harlem was the reversal of a theological hermeneutic that typically flowed from Germany to the United States. In Bonhoeffer’s case, the flow of essential theological content moved across the Atlantic from Harlem to Germany.