The confessing church - part two...

Yesterday was the 65th anniversary of the execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer - martyred for his commitment to Christ during the triumph of Nazi hatred - on April 9, 1945. Many considered Bonhoeffer a traitor in his day:

+ He taught his congregations and students that Jesus was a practising first century Jew when his government was burning Jewish books and bodies.

+ He insisted that the ancient heresies of Marcion (who tried to discard the Old Testament and all traces of Jewish theology from the early Church) were no less deadly in his generation and made praying the Psalms - Christ's only prayer book - an essential part of his course on Christian formation.

+ He systematically challenged both his church and his government by forming an underground seminary to train new pastors; he also refused to submit to the Nazi's edict that Christians cease to study and publish everything associated with the Old Testament.

+ He eventually joined the July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler knowing that in a broken and sinful world not all sins are the same: his violence would save the lives of millions. He refused to rationalized his deeds, scape-goat others or hide behind his privilege. He understood the evil he embraced and accepted that in a broken world many of our deepest convictions are saturated with sin.

On the day of his execution, he was stripped naked and led to the gallows to be hung by the neck on a thin wire. He died just three weeks before the Russians liberated his death camp and a mere month before Germany surrendered. One of his prayers reads:

God of the day and of the night, in me there is darkness, but with you there is light. I am alone, but you will not leave me. I am weak, but you will come to my help. I am restless, but you are my peace. I am in haste, but you are the God of infinite patience. I am confused and lost, but you are eternal wisdom and you direct my path; now and for ever. Amen.

The testimony and witness of Bonhoeffer continues to haunt me as I consider the parallels and differences between the moral capitulation of the German Christian Church to the hatred and destruction of the Nazis and the burgeoning Palin/Bachmann tidal wave of mean-spirited Christian piety mixed with appeals to those hardest hit by our current social and economic troubles.

This is the parallel that worries me the most:

+ Erich Fromm's study of the German merchant and working class of the 1920s and 30s, Escape from Freedom, suggests that fear (real and imagined) and shame (born of defeat after WWI) were vibrant breeding grounds for demagogues. Appealing to both God and nation, therefore, gave the Nazis a language that found a receptive and even malleable audience.

+ And that is where the current demagogues are focused, too: economic chaos and social anxiety. What's more, like the Nazis before them, this current breed of hate-mongers are slowly and carefully demonizing their enemies. They question the President's birth certificate rather than openly use racial epithets. They exploit America's post-September 11th fears of Islam and insinuate that those who disagree are likely to be agents of Al Queda. They paint their opponents as advocates of class warfare rather than souls committed to the common good.

+ And they very carefully use slander and sound-bytes to dominate the public conversation around social welfare, national security and economic stability. In a word, they are seductive and dangerous and building momentum.

So where are their pastors? Where are their sacred teachers? Where are those who know scripture, history and the care of the soul? Bonhoeffer insisted that those training with him to become pastors learn the Psalms - and pray the Psalms - because they fill us with an alternative to our own fears and sin. They give us a chance to start with God's words rather than just our own emptiness. He writes:

The child learns to speak because the parent speaks to the child. The child learns the language of the parent. So we learn to speak to God because God has spoken and speaks to us. In the language of the Father in heaven God’s children learn to speak with God. Repeating God’s own words, we begin to pray to God. We ought to speak to God, and God wishes to hear us, not in the false and confused language of our heart but in the clear and pure language that God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ.

On Monday, April 12th we will start a new Eastertide gathering at 7 pm. We will pray the psalms together. We will talk to one another about how to go deeper into God's heart. And we will make a commitment to hold one another accountable to both daily quiet prayer with the Psalms and using a common liturgy. There is more - much more - to consider but for now this is our start.