Battle for Bonhoeffer Quotes

“We also know—on the question of Bonhoeffer’s politics—that he admired the work of the American religious Left and its innovations in social ministry, encountered”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer

“How fortunate we are that Stephen Haynes, a distinguished scholar of the Holocaust and public theologian, has intervened in the increasingly contentious debate over Bonhoeffer’s legacy. For the past quarter century, Haynes has also been at the forefront of international Bonhoeffer scholarship, writing for”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Protestant theologian who died opposing Hitler’s holocaust, believed that the test of the morality of a society is how it treats its children. We flunk Bonhoeffer’s test every hour of every day in America as we let the violence of guns and the violence of poverty relentlessly stalk and sap countless child lives.”6”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer

“In August 2005, after a federal judge ordered the Christian peacemaking group Voices in the Wilderness to pay a $ 20,000 fine for taking medicine into Iraq in violation of US economic sanctions, the organization issued a statement that concluded with a reference to Bonhoeffer, who asked of himself and his co-conspirators in resistance to Hitler, whether they were yet of any use. We too live in times of unspeakable peril and violence. We too live in times when questioning and resisting our government is the one path remaining to act for justice. We too have struggled and seen untold numbers of innocent people die at our government’s hand. We too answer as Bonhoeffer did, that yes, indeed, our acts and fidelity to our brothers and sisters throughout the world are not only of use, but of absolute necessity. We invite all to join us in a conspiracy of life to end our country’s war against the Iraqi people. 13”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer

“But exploration of Bonhoeffer’s career under Hitler also revealed troubling data, particularly in his essay “The Church and the Jewish Question” (1933). In addition to its bold assertion that Christians have an unconditional obligation to aid victims of the state, the essay gave credence to the ancient view that “the ‘chosen people,’ which hung the Redeemer of the world on the cross, must endure the curse of its action in long-drawn-out suffering.”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer

“written with his wife Elisabeth Sifton, the renowned historian turned his attention to Metaxas’s account only to note the “amazing ignorance of the German language, German history, and German theology.” Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern, No Ordinary Men: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans Von Dohnanyi, Resisters against Hitler in Church and State (New York: New York Review of Books, 2013), 147.”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer

“Can one really believe in the church universal and profess America First without offense to the body of Christ?”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer

“Bonhoeffer did not write a political theology nor was he much given to discussing politics in his letters, sermons, and lectures. He has at times been criticized by scholars as apolitical—which is an odd claim to make of one of the few ministers murdered in the concentration camps on charges of political conspiracy.”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer

“Eric Metaxas, with his populist Bonhoeffer, takes willful misuse to its extreme. Not since the death-of-God movement of the late 1960s has anyone produced so flawed, or so influential, an account of Bonhoeffer’s thought. Like those excitable pranksters—Thomas Altizer, Bishop Robinson, Gabriel Vahanian, etc.—Metaxas ignored the parts of Bonhoeffer he didn’t like and invented the parts he needed. 3 The death-of-God crowd read Letters and Papers from Prison and avoided the rest; Metaxas read portions of Discipleship and Life Together and not much else.”
― Stephen R. Haynes, The Battle for Bonhoeffer