Luther, Bonhoeffer, and Public Ethics: Re-Forming the Church of the Future
Ebook
Prompted by the 2017 commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, this book examines the legacy of Martin Luther in the life, work, and reception of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the most widely read modern Lutheran theologian. Framing the commemoration of the Reformation in conversation with Bonhoeffer’s legacy places much more than Bonhoeffer’s connection to Luther at stake. Given the fraught relationship of the Lutheran Bonhoeffer with the German Protestant Church under National Socialism, the question inevitably arises: “What happened to Luther’s church in Germany?” This in turn prompts the question: “How did the Protestant tradition play out in public life in other nations?” And these historical issues in turn encourage reflection on a question that exercised both Luther and Bonhoeffer: “What will be the shape of the church in the future?” In these pages, an international group of scholars and practitioners from both church and state pursues these questions.
Introduction: Reformation: Grappling with a Contested Legacy
Michael P. DeJonge and Clifford J. Green
1. Fatal Coincidences in 1933: Nazism’s Triumph and Luther’s 450th Birthday
Hartmut Lehmann
2. Looking for Luther, 1933–1939
Victoria J. Barnett
3. Luther in Catholic Perspective across Five Centuries
Euan Cameron
4. Justification, Ethics, and the “Other”: Paul, Luther, and Bonhoeffer in Trialogue
Brigitte Kahl
5. Radicalizing Reformation amid Today’s Crises, in the Spirit of Bonhoeffer
Karen L. Bloomquist
6. Worldly Worship: Reformation and Economic Ethics
Wolfgang Huber
7. Reformation: Freeing the Church for Authentic Public Witness
Heinrich Bedford-Strohm
8. Between Compromise and Radicalism: Luther’s Legacy in Bonhoeffer’s Political Thought
Michael P. DeJonge
9. Church, Racism and Resistance: Bonhoeffer and the Critical Dimension of Theological Integrity
Allen Aubrey Boesak
10. “On the Way to Freedom Land”: Bonhoeffer and Three Bright Lights of the Civil Rights Movement
Josiah U. Young III
11. Veni, Creator Spiritus! An Ecological Reformation
Larry Rasmussen
12. Reformation through Repentance: The Church’s Public Witness
Jennifer M. McBride
13. Bonhoeffer and the Re-Forming Church in a Globalizing Era
Esther D. Reed
14. Bonhoeffer, Truth, Ethics, and Politics
Kevin Rudd, interviewed by Serene Jones
This rich collection of substantive and expert essays explores both Bonhoeffer’s complex relation to the traditions of Lutheran faith as well as the ways in which, refracted through his own work, impulses from this same Reformation faith press upon important contemporary questions in church and public life. Students of Bonhoeffer’s theology and all those wrestling with the shape of public theology today will welcome the instruction, provocation, and encouragement this volume provides.
This volume is remarkable, and prescient. With chapters by an impressive array of international scholars, including historians, theologians, and activists, the book examines critical questions related to Martin Luther and the legacy and ongoing impact of the Reformation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the National Socialist context that shaped his life and thought, and the consequent implications of their work on contemporary issues in the church and the world. Michael DeJonge and Clifford Green have curated a book that seriously grapples with the past to form the future, that seriously grapples with global struggles for racial, social, and environmental justice. It is a book that matters.
There are two central challenges for theological scholarship. The first is the interpretation of past theological inheritances. The second is the constructive confession of new theological insights. One book that effectively accomplishes both tasks is Luther, Bonhoeffer, and Public Ethics: Re-Forming the Church of theFuture. . . . This volume provides an excellent and wide-ranging conversation on many subjects related to Luther, Bonhoeffer, and ethics. In looking to the past for the sake of the future, this book stands out as an important model of both theological interpretation and public confession.
This volume is thoughtful, and. . . . will be provocative for those concerned with the future of public theology in the Lutheran tradition. The editors and contributors lay the groundwork for more work on public theology, an important task that must be shared by those in the academy, and practitioners and theologians in pastoral and public ministry for the sake of the world.
- Title: Luther, Bonhoeffer, and Public Ethics: Re-Forming the Church of the Future
- Authors: Michael P. DeJonge, Clifford J. Green, Victoria J. Barnett, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, Karen L. Bloomquist, Allan Aubrey Boesak, Euan Cameron, Wolfgang Huber, Brigitte Kahl, Hartmut Lehmann, Jennifer M. McBride, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics Union Theolog Larry Rasmussen, Esther Reed, Kevin Rudd, III Josiah U. Young
- Publisher: Fortress Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2018
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781978703469, 9781978703452, 1978703457, 1978703465
- Resource ID: LLS:9781978703469
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-12-15T06:44:13Z
Michael P. DeJonge is professor and chair of religious studies at the University of South Florida.
Clifford J. Green is Bonhoeffer Chair Scholar at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and project director of the Early Career German-American Bonhoeffer Research Network.