Baker and Bonhoeffer: Responsibility and Community Organizing

This paper argues for the practice of community organizing as a contemporary model of Bonhoeffer’s ethics and political theology. It analyzes connections between Bonhoeffer’s ethics and the model of community organizing practiced by Ella Baker, an organizer for racial justice during the civil rights struggle. It concludes by suggesting ways that Baker's model of community organizing amends for shortcomings in Bonhoeffer’s own engagements with politics and race.