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

by Reggie L. Williams

In light of his developed theologia crucis, Bonhoeffer highlights the privilege that his colleagues had in order to ignore suffering and racial oppression as he confronted them for their inattention to the plight of the Jews in the struggle against the German Christians: The German Christians’ demands destroy the substance of the ministry by making certain members of the Christian community into members with lesser rights, second-class Christians. The rest, those who remain privileged members, should prefer to stand by those with lesser rights rather than to benefit from a privileged status in the church. They must see their own true service, which they can still perform for their church, in resigning from this office of pastor as a privilege, which is now what it has become.89 Bethge explains that this reference to pastoral privilege was a characteristic argument that Bonhoeffer made about “fatal privilege.”90 It was fatal because it prohibited Christians from seeing that their pastoral privileges rested on a deeper set of insidious privileges, namely ethnic pride and Aryan privilege.