Constructive explorations of Bonhoeffer’s theological, practical, and ethical legacy have proven generative for a range of liberative theologies and praxes. The four papers in this session advance new constructive engagements through examinations of Bonhoeffer in conversation with Ella Baker’s model community organizing, Edward Said’s critique of orientalism, Hannah Arendt’s anthropology, and contemporary shame theorists.
This paper offers a critical reading of Bonhoeffer’s 1932 lecture “Right to Self-Assertion” by arguing that his otherwise laudable attempt to make sense of the violence underpinning modern Euro-American society is nonetheless limited by his problematically orientalist understanding of “the East.” Though his analysis of the modern Euro-American struggle to assert one’s (white settler) life over and against the life of others remains incisive, I argue that there is a fundamental gap in Bonhoeffer’s wider political and theological imagination of the actually-existing lives of those living in the Majority World. I argue that this gap is mirrored in the ongoing erasure of actually-existing Palestinian life by Christian theologians otherwise committed to freedom and justice in Palestine, suggesting a dire need for alternative theological approaches that decentre the Western liberal tradition whose limits have been laid bare in Gaza and beyond.
This study examines Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological anthropology in response to the modern prioritization of biological life over human freedom, a phenomenon Giorgio Agamben describes as “bare life.” It argues that Bonhoeffer, through his contemplation of God’s condescension in Christ, uncovers a new foundation for divine preservation, offering a renewed vision of humanity. The study is structured into three parts. Part I explores Bonhoeffer’s critique of human existence through a Christological interpretation of creation and fall, tracing his reflections on divine preservation from Creation and Fall to Ethics. Part II examines how Bonhoeffer connects God and fallen humanity through the motif of God’s condescension in Christ, forming the basis for preservation. Part III analyzes his vision of preserved humanity in Ethics, emphasizing natural life, divine mandates, and the flow of life. The study concludes with a critical engagement with Hannah Arendt, reflecting on Bonhoeffer’s insights in light of her political thought.
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.
This paper examines Bonhoeffer’s theology of shame, and the practice of confession as a means through which shame becomes a basis for community solidarity, and resistance against an unjust system. Unlike contemporary shame theorists who narrowly define shame as a toxic experience that erodes individual and community esteem, or a primitive state that must be overcome, Bonhoeffer describes shame as a complex and relational affect, both as the sense of estrangement from God and fellow creatures, but also as a goad meant to push the Confessing Church and German Christians toward resistance against the Reich. It examines how Bonhoeffer developed this theology of shame, in the context of political oppression and genocide, in order to better understand how the Christian practice of confession through shame builds the solidarity necessary for resisting oppressive orders.