The openness that Bonhoeffer brought to this idea of the church—and to the Roman Catholic Church—was hardly typical of German Lutherans. Several things account for it, the first being his upbringing. He had been reared to guard against parochialism and to assiduously avoid relying on feelings or anything unsupported by sound reasoning. To his father’s scientist’s mind, any actions and attitudes based on anything like tribal affiliations were wrong, and he had trained his children to think the same way. For Dietrich the theologian to hold a prejudice in favor of Lutheranism or Protestantism, or
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