Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics

Abstract

Recent political events around the world have raised the specter of an impending collapse of democratic institutions. Contemporary worries about the decline of liberal democracy harken back to the tumult of the 1930s and 1940s in Europe. Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in Germany during the rise of National Socialism, and each reflected on what the rise of totalitarianism meant for the aspirations of modern politics. Engaging the realities of totalitarian terror, they avoided despairing rejections of modern society. Beginning with Barth in the wake of the First World War, following Bonhoeffer through the 1930s and 1940s in Nazi Germany, and concluding with Barth’s postwar reflections in the 1950s, this study explores how these figures reflected on modern society during this turbulent time and how their work is relevant to the current crisis of modern democracy

Protestantism without Reformation: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Indictment of American Christianity

“…Separated from this Lutheran account of the two kingdoms, Bonhoeffer's account of resistance loses its integrity, becoming an empty shell susceptible to manifold uses and abuses. 28 "Two Kingdoms" Teaching in Europe and the United States What should we take away from this? Many of the appeals to Bonhoeffer as exemplar of resistance are made by individuals engaging in protests outside of the church.…”

Public Moral Discourse

“…In those forums, goods are defined, the means to secure them are identified, and responsibilities for them are allocated, and modern Christian social teaching has understood the need to formulate the Gospel's radical demands in terms that can be addressed by political means (Hinze 2021). Bonhoeffer not only envisioned a church that could resist the temptations of totalitarianism, but he also saw how important it was to maintain its integrity in the world of ordinary politics (Mauldin 2021).…”