Seasoned Speech: Rhetoric in the Life of the Church

by James Edward Beitler

One of his most famous pieces from this period is his essay “The Church and the Jewish Question.” Bonhoeffer spends the first two-thirds of the essay carefully delineating the proper relationship between the church and the state, seemingly attempting to anticipate objections of those who might see his argument as overstepping the bounds of the church’s political authority. Having done so, Bonhoeffer contends that it is the German state that risks acting outside of its limits by exerting “too much law and order” through “the obligatory exclusion of baptized Jews from our Christian congregations or a ban on missions to the Jews.”35 The piece’s rhetorical power lies partially in Bonhoeffer’s seemingly restrained tone, which leads, in measured argumentative steps, to bold claims and stark choices for German churchgoers. He warns that forcing baptized Jews out of the congregation “would always mean a genuine church schism . . . because it would make racial uniformity a church law to be fulfilled as a requirement for fellowship in the church.”36 In rhetorical terms, identification and division along racial lines undermines the essence of the church itself, which finds its unity through allegiance to Christ alone. Bonhoeffer writes, “It is the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not.”