While writing from a prison cell, and waiting to be executed by the Nazis, Bonhoeffer wrote the following:

The church confesses that it has not professed openly and clearly enough its message of the one God, revealed for all time in Jesus Christ and tolerating no other gods besides. The church confesses its timidity, its deviations, its dangerous concessions. It has often disavowed its duties as sentinel and comforter. Through this it has often withheld the compassion that it owes to the despised and rejected. The church was mute when it should have cried out, because the blood of the innocent cried out to heaven. The church did not find the right word in the right way at the right time. It did not resist to the death the falling away from faith and is guilty of the godlessness of the masses. The church confesses that it has misused the name of Christ by being ashamed of it before the world and by not resisting strongly enough the misuse of that name for evils ends. The church has looked on while injustice and violence have been done, under the cover of the name of Christ. It has even allowed the most holy name to be openly derided without contradiction and has thus encouraged that derision. The church recognizes that God will not leave unpunished those who so misuse God’s name as it does.

—from Ethics 138-139

2 Responses to “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Perspective on the sins of the church”

1. Geoff says:

   May 18, 2009 at 12:46 pm

   wow… convicting.
2. Phil says:

   May 18, 2009 at 6:47 pm

   Yes, this passage was convicting, to say the least. Consider also that its substance is even weightier, it seems to me, because of the German church’s signing onto Hitler’s stratagem. This obviously upset Barth a great deal too.

   When the German church should have been declaring nein! to the fuhrer, that “great despiser of all humanity” (Bonhoeffer’s catch phrase for Hitler), it was instead saluting him. Thankfully, however, we have the witness of Barth and Bonhoeffer to the truth that Christ is the real fuhrer. Nothing else will do, because nothing else is the truth.