A biopic and misuse by Christian nationalists reignite battle for Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor, theologian and college professor in Germany when the Nazis took power in the 1930s. He argued that Adolf Hitler's demand for total allegiance was a threat to the church, because only God is worthy of total allegiance. He taught pastors in an underground seminary who were members of the Confessing Church — a small group who resisted the Nazi regime's efforts to unite all Protestant churches behind its persecution of Jews — until he was stopped by the Nazis.

Metaxas wrote a biography of Bonhoeffer in 2010 and has a history of making connections between Nazi Germany and present-day America. He emceed a "Jericho March" in support of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12, 2020, in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that interrupted Congress's proceedings to accept the results of the 2020 election.

American Letter Productions, the film division of Metaxas Media, produced a 2024 documentary titled "Letter to the American Church" featuring Metaxas, who wrote a 2024 book of the same name. Boise Bible College Professor John Whittaker described it as "alarmist," saying, "The overwhelming tone in both word and image is militant. One speaker contends that ... real men are warriors who do hard things, and what it pictures simultaneously on screen are military images and hand-to-hand combat training."

Writing in The Christian Century, Victoria Barnett, one of the general editors of the English edition of Bonhoeffer's voluminous writings, decried the "attempt to conform the Bonhoeffer story to our preconceptions."

The Bonhoeffer society presidents labeled a section of the Foreword to the Heritage Foundation's "Mandate for Leadership," known as Project 2025 as a "perfidious appropriation of Bonhoeffer." They said it misuses Bonhoeffer's teaching on "cheap grace" to "discredit protection of refugees and care for the environment," which Bonhoeffer would not have done.

Bonhoeffer's 1937 book, The Cost of Discipleship, is most famous for its analysis of the difference between "cheap grace" and "costly grace," the latter of which calls us to take up our cross and follow in the way of Christ.

Bonhoeffer takes the Jesus of Matthew's Gospel at his word. Like the rich young man, he would say, we are called to sell everything and give the money to the poor. When Jesus tells us to love our enemies, that means we must actively do good to them, not just pray for them. When we are mistreated, we are to relinquish our personal rights by turning the other cheek, never responding to violence with violence.

But most famously, Bonhoeffer joined the German resistance as a double agent and supported an effort by some of his family members to develop a plot to assassinate Hitler.

Did this make him a Christian nationalist? No. Bonhoeffer agonized over the contradiction between his prior teachings and his conclusion that Hitler needed to be stopped to prevent the killing of millions of Jews and the evisceration of the church. He accepted that his participation in the plot was worthy of God's judgment against him, even though he believed it was necessary.

It is "the free responsibility of the free man," he said, to put one's faith into action in the real world despite the spiritual risks. But those without power in society were central to his thinking. In a letter to members of the resistance, he wrote: "We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering."

It is perhaps this trademark belief that defenders find most lacking in those who misappropriate Bonhoeffer's legacy today.

There is much more to be gained from the teachings of Bonhoeffer. 

Bonhoeffer loved his enemies, cared for the outcast, and never tried to promote or elevate himself. The real Dietrich Bonhoeffer is still worth emulating today. 

See "Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Discipleship, Responsibility, Transformation" for a fuller analysis from the author of what Bonhoeffer taught and how he lived.