Partners Book Reviews

Partners Book Reviews
by Lawrence R. Wohlrabe, book reviewer

This article appeared in January / February 2007 • Volume 23 • Number 1

See also current and past Partners Book Reviews

During the 2006 centenary of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s birth, a plethora of commemorative volumes appeared, many from Fortress Press. One of the more intriguing is The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint by Stephen R. Hanes (Fortress, 2004, $22).

Haynes, who teaches at Rhodes College in Memphis, explores how Bonhoeffer has been interpreted since his 1945 martyrdom. He describes four dominant strains among Bonhoeffer interpreters:

Seer — This portrait of the radical Bonhoeffer was drawn by the “death of God” theologians of the 1960s and 1970s who latched on to his notion of “religionless Christianity” in a (secular) “world come of age.”
Prophet — This liberal view of Bonhoeffer makes much of the theologian’s critical patriotism, ecumenical impulses, and liberating ethics.
Apostle — This conservative understanding of the theologian takes seriously his “ecclesiastically anchored, Scripture-guided, and Christ-centered legacy” (p. 75).
Bridge — This appropriation of Bonhoeffer stresses how he has gained stature across ecumenical, interfaith, and universal audiences.

Besides sketching these four perspectives, Haynes also critiques them. All are found wanting, leading Haynes to his preferred summation of the Bonhoeffer legacy: Bonhoeffer the Protestant Saint.

The author grounds his argument in a description of elements common to the lives of saints. A saint typically has a notable birth and childhood, followed by a period of intense commitment to the church. Concern for the marginalized leads to a defining conflict, suffering, and often death. Utterly devoted to God, the saint dies courageously — bequeathing a testament for survivors.

Bonhoeffer’s story, according to Haynes, measures up to these “hagiographic features” at every point. Moreover, a veritable cult has grown up around Bonhoeffer’s memory — with pilgrimages to Bonhoeffer sites and various commemorative events.

The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon summarizes well the key ways Bonhoeffer’s memory has been preserved. Though Haynes presents an impressive case for viewing Bonhoeffer as a “Protestant saint,” one suspects that no single interpretation will ever do full justice to the richness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s remarkable life and stirring witness.

Don’t be fooled by the brevity of John W. Matthews’s book, Anxious Souls Will Ask... (Eerdmans, 2005, $13). Author Matthews, an ELCA pastor in the Twin Cities, mines the prison writings of Bonhoeffer, distilling from them a profound “Christ-centered spirituality.”

Matthews proposes a unique framework to bring coherence to the “unsystematic” writings of Bonhoeffer. The heart of the book, chapters 2 and 3, focuses on five pillars of the church that were crumbling during World War II:

primarily individualistic modes of faith,
stress on divine transcendence,
God’s self-revelation only in certain parts of life,
social privilege protecting the church, and
an immature overdependency, by humans, on God.

Bonhoeffer recognized that each of these crumbling pillars needed to be replaced with something truer to Jesus Christ. So, for Bonhoeffer, to be in Christ is always to be in community — indeed, the church is “Christ existing as community” (p. 33). In contrast to an earlier emphasis on divine transcendence, Bonhoeffer described God as “beyond in the midst of life” (p. 36). The new third pillar locates the presence of Christ in the “wedding” of prayer and righteous action. Eschewing its former privileges, the church that follows Jesus Christ participates “in the powerlessness of God in the world...sharing in the suffering of God in Christ” (p. 40). Finally, Bonhoeffer called for “authentic maturity of life with God in Christ” — fully embracing the advancement of knowledge and culture (pp. 40-41).

Matthews offers some superb handles for interpreting Bonhoeffer’s writings and appropriating them for the 21st century church.

If you want to dig deeper into the life behind the theologian, check out Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures (Fortress, 2006, $25). Editors Renate Bethge (Bonhoeffer’s niece) and Christian Gremmels weave together over 200 photos with illuminating captions and biographical notes.

“The collisions of faiths, or the collisions of peoples of faith, are among the most threatening conflicts around the world in the new millennium” (p.1). So Martin E. Marty begins his contribution to the Blackwell Manifestos series in When Faiths Collide (Blackwell, 2005, $16.95).

Collisions of faith increase as the planet shrinks, with a transient population continually bringing immigrants into alien territory. Those already established in a community — the “belongers” — tend to regard the “strangers” as potential menaces. So the seeds of strife are sown.

When it becomes clear that religious diversity is here to stay, people may adapt themselves to it. This is religious pluralism: when “persons or groups come to an awareness that the presence of others who are strangers will endure and that they will have some impact on each other” (p. 69).

How, then, shall we best live in a climate of religious pluralism? One option is the way of tolerance. But Marty does not see this as the most fruitful path. Why? “Those who tolerate often have the power or the will to remake ‘the other’ into some manageable image” (p. 124).

Rather than tolerance, Marty advocates for “the aggressive risk of hospitality and the consequences that can follow upon the taking of the risk” (p. 124). Hospitality allows people of differing faiths to know one another deeply and truly, as they are. Quoting a scholar of comparative religion, Marty contends that welcoming the stranger “inevitably involves us in a sympathetic passing over into the other’s life and stories and a coming back into our own life and stories enriched with new insight. To see life through a story which requires us to welcome the stranger is to be forced to recognize the dignity of the stranger who does not share our story” (p. 132).

Although Marty calls forth examples from a variety of faith groups, he is acutely aware of the challenge Muslims face in the United States. This book makes a persuasive case for Christians extending hospitality to their interfaith neighbors — while also offering a vision for how to do that with honesty and integrity.

Lawrence R. Wohlrabe is book review editor for Lutheran Partners and senior pastor at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Following hot on the heels of The Lutheran Handbook, which appeared in 2005, Augsburg Fortress has released four similar volumes: The Christian Handbook (2005, $14.99),as well as The Lutheran Handbook for Pastors, The Lutheran Handbook on Marriage, and The Christian Handbook on Marriage (each published in 2006 and available for $14.99).

All four books have the same look as The Lutheran Handbook. They are practical, theologically sound, and witty. Each book contains numerous brief chapters — complete with easy-to-read, numbered points in red, and clever drawings. As with the initial book, the winking Luther appears on the handbook for pastors, as well as on the Lutheran marriage handbook, alongside a winking “Katie Lu.” The Christian handbooks feature on the cover a smiling Christian fish (ichthus).

The Christian Handbook provides a useful survey of Christian basics, including the Bible, common Christian symbols, and advice on how to select and participate in a congregation. The book also suggests ways folks can deepen their relationship with God and drive away the Devil, along with guidance on crucial matters such as “How to Avoid Getting Fed to the Lions” (p. 52).

The Lutheran Handbook for Pastors contains wisdom for helping pastors to be leaders without being domineering, over-functioning, passive, or burned-out. Especially amusing chapters are “Ten Things You Should Never Say to a Parishioner” (p. 123), “How to Listen to the Same Story for the 100th Time and Feign Interest” (p. 160), and “Ten Things You Should Never Say During Worship” (p. 166).

The Lutheran Handbook on Marriage and The Christian Handbook on Marriage both address what to look for in a spouse and how to negotiate the stages of marriage.The books warmly address issues such as children, sex, finances, the death of a spouse, and retirement. The Lutheran edition also has sections on the relationship between Martin and Katie Luther and on Luther’s view of marriage. Especially valuable are the chapters that guide couples on how to have a stronger spiritual life together.

Reviewer David P. von Schlichten is pastor of St. James Lutheran Church in Youngstown, Pennsylvania.

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