Dietrich Bonhoeffer — Wrestling with faith in the Age of Trump

Dietrich Bonhoeffer — Wrestling with faith in the Age of Trump
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

This is not a SOUL TEACHERS blog. Since Trump’s election, I’ve struggled to know how to respond to him as a person of faith. Over break, I decided that for this post, I’d publish a different kind of blog — and clarify my thoughts on the matter. I hope it challenges your thinking. if it does, I’d love to hear from you. Next week, I’ll return to my regular Soul Teachers blog.

I HAVE A friend who lives in the Deep South. She’s progressive, but she teaches at a private, fundamentalist Christian school. Obviously, she keeps her opinions to herself — she doesn’t want to risk her job. I’ll call her “Sarah.” She told me a story.

“I was chatting with a colleague,” said Sarah, “and we were talking about Trump.”

“‘Yes. I think Trump exhibits signs of the Antichrist,’” my colleague said.”

Sarah’s colleague was referring to the apocalyptic figure found the Book of Revelation who will have extraordinary powers and usher in the Apocalypse.

No one knows exactly what will happen, but if you’re thinking thermonuclear war, total annihilation of our planet, literal hell come to earth — you’re looking at the right dystopia.

Sarah continued. “So I’m right there with my colleague: Trump bad, Hillary good. Which is why I voted for Hillary.”

“So I asked, ‘What did you do?’ To which he replies, ‘I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hillary.’”

“Imagine my shock,” Sarah concluded, “when it hit me — ‘Wait! Hillary is worse than the Antichrist?’”

Apparently, 81% of evangelical Christians came to this conclusion on Nov. 8, 2016.

IT’S BEEN A painful year for our family.

Let me state upfront: I’m a Democrat. I’m also a professing Christian, raised as an evangelical, but now attending a Lutheran church on our little island in the Pacific Northwest.

Like half the country, we didn’t seriously consider the impossible. It was so clear — Americans would never elect a man like Trump to our highest office. As Hillary put it, "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."

Then America elected Donald J. Trump.

After that dark night, that week, that month — after I came to grips with the reality that every news organization I trusted, every friend with whom I had discussed the election, every poll taken … had been dead wrong — I took stock of my life.

It was my worst nightmare.

ONE PRIMARY CONCERN LOOMED in my mind.

Could Trump tweet us into a nuclear war? It was a fairly common concern. And it didn’t help when conservative, evangelical friends who had voted for Trump seemed okay with the ultimate nightmare.

One of my deeply conservative friends — who considers herself a prophetess — told me the summer before the election she had a dream. In her dream, President Trump triggered the Apocalypse.

But she had decided to vote for Trump anyway.

It wasn’t a difficult decision. Trump was pro-life. He would act as God’s agent for change. He would bring about the End Times.

Like all orthodox Christians, I’m looking forward to Christ’s Second Coming. But I’d rather keep that event out of the restless hands of Trump.

As former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop once put it, “I’m not ready to give up on the human race quite yet.”

THIS ISN’T THE first time evangelicals thought the Antichrist was an okay choice. This isn’t the first time a political figure exhibited the signs of the Antichrist, but was elected anyway. This isn’t the first time evangelical Christians got it wrong.

I’ve known for quite a while that Germans elected the Fuehrer democratically.

What I did not know was this: the majority of Christians supported Hitler’s nationalistic spirit, his promise to make Germany great again.

They had their reasons. Germany had been humiliated after World War I, and the Great Powers who defeated them were pretty mean-spirited in victory.

So when Hitler came along, blaming a certain ethnic group for Germany’s economic woes, it seemed like a pretty good reason to get rid of them. Okay, sure, Hitler was a tad extreme, but hey — tough times call for tough action.

So Christian churches mostly lined up behind him. They even got annoyed at progressive Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke out strongly against Hitler. They were a little put off by his negativity.

The Cost of Discipleship? What was he talking about? No wonder the Fuehrer arrested him.

And then they found out Bonhoeffer was involved in an assassination plot against Hitler.

Of course he deserved to be hanged.

I’VE THOUGHT A lot about Bonhoeffer lately. I suspect a lot of people have. In particular, I’ve been struggling with the following question: How should people of faith react to our current administration?

I posed that question to Dr. Gerald Mast, a close friend who teaches communications at Bluffton College, a Mennonite liberal arts college in Ohio.

Please know, I am coldly furious about Trump’s poisonous stew of hatred and nationalism, which he tweets regularly.

But I’m also disturbed by Antifa, and their embrace of violence. I believe that when it comes to civil discourse in the public square, violence doesn’t work. What makes the situation especially frustrating is the Democratic Party’s hypocrisy. We railed at the violence at Trump’s rallies.

But now it’s okay to use violence at Democratic ones?

I turned the conversation with Gerald to our background, specifically its emphasis on peace and nonresistance.

And that’s when Gerald surprised me.

It was a shock — one that didn’t feel better as I looked at the research.

LET ME BE clear.

I don’t believe Trump is a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Not even close. Hitler planned out his war. He planned for the extermination of the Jews, the homosexuals, the undesirables, the “Untermenschen.”

Trump bumbles his way through the day, addicted to cable television, angry at the unfairness of the World. He demands that millions of people pay attention, all the time, every time he tweets.

As Michelle Goldberg notes after reading Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury, Trump, Wolff’s reporting shows, has no executive function, no ability to process information or weigh consequences.”

He maintains an angry demeanor because — as he announced in one of his books — it makes him look strong.

No, I don’t think Trump will plan out a thermonuclear war. He’ll flounder into one.

Probably after Kim Jong-un insults his family one too many times.

I furiously condemned them. So I don’t intend to do the same thing.

No, I’m sure our Republic will survive Trump. I’m sure the military nursemaids who surround him will keep him from realizing he can’t fire a nuclear weapon by pushing a Big Red Button. I’m sure they’ll keep us all out of war. I’m sure of that.

Most days.

On other days, I worry about Trump’s fragile ego. I’ve had experience with men who hold explosive tempers close to the vest.

I worry about Trump’s Big Red Button.

Especially when he brags about it.

I THOUGHT AGAIN about how Bonhoeffer would have responded to Trump. I think Bonhoeffer’s concerns would have come down to three basic policies that define Trumpism:

  1. Illegal immigration exposes America and makes us vulnerable. Thus, Trump heaps hatred and scorn upon the strangers among us — illegal immigrants.
  2. Economic growth is a sign that we are favored by God. Thus, he believes we must build a powerful economy, which also ensures national security.
  3. Winning is the ultimate moral virtue, and thus, when Trump wins, it proves he is morally right.

These issues show me America’s center of moral good has shifted. This makes him dangerous as a leader.

No, Trump isn’t running concentration camps to gas millions of illegal aliens, Muslims, or transgender people. But with America’s unmatched nuclear arsenal at the ready, he could stumble into a nuclear exchange that makes Hitler’s nine-million kills look like a minor prequel.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating. After all, Trump used the main stage of the United Nations to threaten to rain down “fire and fury” on an entire nation, North Korea, if they don’t behave.

WHEN PEOPLE TALK about the way the Germans supported Hitler, they speak as if the “right” response to him is obvious.

He was evil. It’s shocking that people voted for him.

But consider the context. When Hitler took charge in 1933, Germany was in bad shape. Unemployment was rampant. The military was nonexistent. Immigrants were flooding the place, taking away German jobs. Under his plan, he would transform Germany.

And he did. So German citizens thought Hitler had the right ideas:

  1. Make Germany “great” again. The country was done being humiliated by the Great Powers.
  2. Get rid of immigrants, everyone who isn’t Aryan. Nazi propaganda promoted the idea that Jews were dangerous to the “Father Land,” terrorists who needed to be eliminated.
  3. Make every decision with one end in mind — what would bring the greatest good to the greatest number of Aryans? Thus, killing off the minority was good for the majority.

Of course, it wasn’t until the end of the war that most Germans realized the many concentration camps across Europe even existed. Most Germans claimed they didn’t know ethnic cleansing was taking place.

To the average German, Hitler was a take-charge leader who was reviving Germany’s world status. They were overwhelmingly impressed with their Fuhrer. They loved him. He took them from being the world’s pariah to being a world superpower. All in less than a decade.

God was on Hitler’s side.

BONHOEFFER DIDN’T HAVE access to the post-war documentaries. All he knew was what he saw. Around him, his fellow pastors believed Hitler’s economic and military success meant God was smiling. Militarily, Germany had become once again the most powerful nation on earth.

But Bonhoeffer was disturbed by Hitler’s policies. He saw Hitler herding Jews into ghettos. Hitler might be bringing order to Germany, but it didn’t mean he was godly. Bonhoeffer saw the Nazi rejection of traditional Christian values — “Inasmuch as ye have done to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Bonhoeffer believed the Church and his nation would be judged by the way it treated the poor, the immigrant, the weak.

He joined Operation 7, a daring plan to smuggle Jews out of Germany. This put him on the Gestapo’s radar, and on April 5, 1943—after the conspiracy led two failed attempts on Hitler’s life — Bonhoeffer was arrested in Berlin.

We mostly remember Bonhoeffer for his assassination attempt, which ultimately got him hanged. But Bonhoeffer’s actions came straight from his belief that true Christians support the oppressed.

I guess Bonhoeffer eventually decided he needed to do more than pray.

WHAT DISTURBS ME most about Trumpism today is the hatred and intolerance I see for the immigrants who take shelter among us. It’s disguised as a concern for law and order, yet nowhere in the Bible — Old or New Testament — do I see homeland security as superior to Christ’s law of love.

People who talk about America’s need to protect our borders aren’t getting that from the Bible. That language comes from fear.

I come from the Amish and Mennonites — Anabaptist root stock. We fled from Germany, Switzerland, Russia and the Netherlands to America in the seventeenth century to escape persecution.

Other than the Jews, we are among the most persecuted groups in history. Look to the 17th century book, Martyrs Mirror, if you need proof.

That’s why I struggle to understand why some of my brothers and sisters can support a political leader whose favorite campaign line was this:

NO, ACTUALLY, I do understand.

The reason is called abortion. It has become one of the single, most polarizing issues in politics today. And until Democrats allow political candidates to have a choice in this area, we will continue to lose the evangelical vote.

No, Evangelicals didn’t lose their collective minds. They have their own talking points. Pastors in evangelical churches tell their congregants Trump is “anointed by God,” a “flawed vessel of God — a man like King David.” Trump is “spiritually weak, but his heart is right with God.”

If you question this, I give you Roy Moore. The evidence against him, his inappropriate relationships with teenage girls — all that meant little. Once again, 80% of white evangelicals voted for Roy Moore. That was almost enough to win him a Senate seat.

HOW DID BONHOEFFER reconcile his decision to assassinate Hitler with Jesus’ demand that his followers commit to nonviolence? Bonhoeffer preached the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7). He believed Christians should live a life of peace.

However, according to John D. Godsey in “Bonhoeffer’s Costly Theology,” he also believed “ethical thinking can no longer be done in terms of two spheres, one sacred and one secular.” Living for God means living fully in this world.

Which apparently meant assassinating a tyrannical dictator.

It’s reassuring, actually. It means Bonhoeffer was human, and humans constantly live out contradictions. It isn’t easy to believe in God when it looks like the world is out of control and nothing is being done about it.

By now, we should all know.

TRUMP MAY NOT be Hitler, but he is a dramatic departure from what evangelical Christians claimed they wanted in a President. (Take a look at their rants against Bill Clinton, and then just switch out Bill for Donald).

It’s too late to claim evangelicals disapprove of Trump. They own him now, and he owns them. They made the devil’s bargain. They figured they’d get another conservative Supreme Court seat if Trump won.

They did.

Now they have to deal with his impulsive, offensive and dangerous behavior, as evidenced by his taunting tweets. Now they have to deal with an amoral leader whose language has coarsened American religious and civil discourse.

Over the last decade, American evangelicals have reincarnated a blasphemous, Republican Jesus.

And like the evangelical church in Germany, they’ll be held accountable for the millions of people he may annihilate in a thermonuclear war. Based on what I’ve seen so far, the chain of events leading to that war will likely begin with an insulting tweet from an impulsive Trump.

Who would listen to American evangelicals in the nuclear winter that will follow?

It’s easy for us to say the Germans should have known not to give Hitler power. But how could they? Is there a lens they should have used to evaluate Hitler — before they elected him Chancellor, before he took the reins of power, before he revealed himself as a monster?

Perhaps, before it’s too late, we should train that same lens on Trump.

Please follow me on Facebook and Twitter. My new Soul Teachers website is coming soon.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot