Thanks for reading and offering comments! Its hard for many of us today to relate to Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on the Reformation doctrine of church and state. Many of my online friends are Anabaptists who believe that Luther and Calvin got it exactly wrong. I’m following a conversation now that maintains that we’re in a Post-Christendom era in which the values of the Radical Reformation can finally be clearly appreciated. I think you’re right that the US has changed since Bonhoeffer’s day. But I appreciate his insight into the naive US idea that the church can use the state as it’s apparatus, a technical means for making the Kingdom here in the US. I don’t think the church can bring the physical Kingdom anywhere here on earth and that’s clear from history.

-Chris

Thank you for posting this. As usual, I’m a little more critical of Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of things, though I cannot express enough my admiration for his idea that true Christianity lies beyond ethics or so-called morality. This quote, however, drew my special attention:

“The dignity of the state, which is developed in Reformation doctrine more strongly than anywhere else, grows weaker in American thought. The interplay of state and church becomes a relationship of subordination in which the state is merely the executive of the church. The state is essentially a technical organisation and administrative apparatus. But the dignity of the divine office of the sword ‘to avenge the evil and reward the good’ appears to be lost. It is the enthusiastic doctrine of the state, whose destiny it is to be taken up into the church even on this earth, which governs American thought and at the same time provides a firm Christian foundation for American democracy.”

In short, I think that either D. B. was being somewhat ironic (doubtful, in my opinion, as he doesn’t seem to me to be that sort of person), or his observation exactly reversed things. I am sure that most Christians in this nation might also read it as he read it vis a vis the nexus between an ascendant church and submissive state. However, as I read the above, I can’t help thinking the exact reverse has occurred. Christianity has ended up being subsumed by the State, American policy of our “Christian President” being ratified as God’s Will. Of course, our situation now and the one existing in his day here were quite different. There was effectively no powerful “Christian Right” in intellectual circles, the theological liberals at that point holding the day. (Fundamentalism existed, but largely was dismissed by the folks around Bonhoeffer, at least as I understand his Union Seminary surroundings.)

I could easily be wrongly reading this. So please don’t take this comment as an idea set in stone — far from it. But on first read, anyway, it hit me that way. This young German pastor really got it about racism in America, but as far as the exact interrelationship between church and state, I’m not so sure.

Anyway, thanks for the helpful, thoughtful post.

Jon

http://derevth.blogspot.com