The Reformational

In a Washington Post Op Ed , Carl Truman takes a shot at James Talarico’s faith. Truman claims Talarico’s Faith is “not the future of Christianity”. Truman’s concern, of course, is gender and sexuality. Is Truman’s version of Christianity the future of Christianity? I’m not convinced. Get full access to The Reformational at reformational.substack.com/subscribe

How does Bonhoeffer's Discipleship speak about the love the Christian community owes our immigrant neighbors? Bonhoeffer explores what he calls an "extraordinary love"—the love Christians must show, not only to our enemies, but to those who are different from us. Love for those who are like us—our families, our community, our nation—this is natural love. The love of God revealed in Jesus Christ is...

What does it mean to follow Jesus in this strange cultural moment in the U.S.? Should the Christian community use political power to support their way of life? Bonhoeffer interprets the sermon on the mount as the heart of Christian discipleship. The call to be merciful is a call to let go of honor, to let go of power, and to go to the margins with the poor and suffering. This episode explores what...

The sermon on the mount is the heart of what it means to be a Christian disciple. For Bonhoeffer, this includes hungering and thirsting for God's justice. There are some who think Christians should not be concerned with justice, that somehow this is part of some woke liberal agenda. Yet, at the heart of the gospel is God's desire for justice--God's righteousness. To be a Christian means we must be...

In chapter two of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer talks about the first steps of faith. Discipleship is about action, about leaving our nets or getting up from the table, and following Jesus. This is not a program or an idea, but an action. It’s recognizing the concrete reality of my neighbor and the call God makes upon my life. This episode explores Bonhoeffer’s understanding of discipleship not as reli...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to his grandmother in which he says, "The issue is really Germanism or Christianity". Today, it seems, the question for the church is: Americanism or Christianity? Beneath this conversation is the issue of cheap grace that baptizes our culture and way of life. It is a grace that allows religion and doctrinal belief to be used as a weapon against anyone who doesn'...

Reading through Metaxas' Religionless Christianity: God's Answer to Evil , there are some things that Metaxas gets right. However, he misses something that central to Bonhoeffer's theology. This episode explores what Metaxas doesn't understand about Bonhoeffer's theology. Get full access to The Reformational at reformational.substack.com/subscribe

When you compare the book Religionless Christianity: God's Answer to Evil with Bonhoeffer's own writings, it raises questions about whether Metaxas and Bonhoeffer mean the same thing when they talk about the Kingdom of God. This episode compares Bonhoeffer's lecture Thy Kingdom Come! The Prayer of the Church-Community for God’s Kingdom on Earth with selections from Religionless Christianity: God's...

In the first chapter of his book Religionless Christianity: God’s Answer to Evil , Eric Metaxas uses Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity to criticize the secularization of the Christian faith. “To what secular pressures and narratives have Christian leaders acceded, thinking it will help them reach the unchurched?” The problem? He seems to misunderstand what Bonhoeffer meant. For Bonhoeffer, re...

In his lecture Thy Kingdom Come! The Prayer of the Church-Community for God’s Kingdom on Earth , Bonhoeffer challenges the “other worldly” tendencies of Christianity. He calls for the Christian community to recognize that in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God is coming into this world, not taking us out of it. What does this mean for the Christian community? That’s the focus of this podcast. Get ful...

In II Chronicles 20, the kingdom of Judah is attacked by a great multitude from the nations around them. Verse 3 says that “Jehoshaphat was afraid; he set himself to seek the Lord…” In the prayer that follows, he reminds the Lord of the promise made to Abraham. Then, in verse 12, we read: “For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but o...

Francis knew what he wanted—to become a knight. He wanted to become something more, to attain the honor and wealth that came with success on the battlefield. Things didn’t go as planned. Not only did he fail, but he returned to Assisi a broken man. For the early biographers of Francis, this failure was the beginning of his conversion. What does this failed knight, who today is most often thought o...

When I take students to Italy to walk in the footsteps of St. Francis, I have to confront their skepticism. St. Francis was part of a medieval world and social imaginary. Yet, most of my students, though Christian, experience the world differently. How does St. Francis fit with what Bonhoeffer calls a “world come of age”? What is the meaning of pilgrimage for young people shaped by the immanent fr...

In his essay Aristocratic Christendom: On Bonhoeffer and Nietzsche, Frits de Lange writes this: "Bonhoeffer tries to develop a theology that integrates the heart of Nietzsche's critique of religion--a Christianity that might respond to the call of Zarathustra: 'I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!' A dignified fa...

Bonhoeffer writes, "One only learns to have faith by living in the full this-worldliness of life." In this letter, Bonhoeffer describes a different version of Christian spirituality--to live as human beings. We're called to let go of our desire to make something of ourselves, to become saints, and learn to take responsibility for living in this life in the midst of it all. This is where God is fou...

In his letter dated July 18, 1944, Bonhoeffer writes: "It is not a religious act that makes someone Christian, but rather sharing in God's suffering in the worldly life." To make this point, Bonhoeffer recounts all the times Jesus welcomes people, eats with them, even heals them, without any confession of sin, or declaration of their sinfulness. Instead, the gospel overcomes the false binaries cre...

In a letter dated July 16, 1944, Bonhoeffer writes: "Before God, and with God, we live without God." What does it mean to live without God in a world come of age? This is the heart of Bonhoeffer's religionless faith—we must grow up and learn to live in a world come of age without the hypothesis of God.  Get full access to The Reformational at reformational.substack.com/subscribe

This past weekend I attended a Metallica concert in Minneapolis. The experience has me thinking about how a heavy metal concert provides and example of Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity. This episode explores the relationship between Bonhoeffer's thought and heavy metal music using excerpts from my book Christianity and Heavy Metal as Impure Sacred within the Secular West: Transgressing the S...

In a letter written to Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, "The Christian hope of resurrection is different from the mythological in that it refers people to their life on earth in a wholly new way...Christians do not have an ultimate escape route out of their earthly tasks and difficulties into eternity." In other words, the gospel is not good news about life after we die, it is good new...

In his letter to Bethge dated June 8, 1944, Bonhoeffer writes: “The fact that the world has come of age is no longer an occasion for polemics and apologetics…” The problem with both liberal theology and the conservative response, is the world remains unaddressed by the gospel. Yet, as Bonhoeffer discusses throughout these letters, Christ is at the center of human life. Religion, for Bonhoeffer, ar...

In a letter to Bethge dated June 8, 1944, Bonhoeffer writes, “I consider the attack by Christian apologetics on the world’s coming of age as, first of all, pointless, second, ignoble, and third, unchristian.” The problem with religion, for Bonhoeffer, is that it doesn’t all the world to be the world, it always tries to freeze the world at a particular historical moment, never affirming the develop...

In a letter written to his friend Eberhard Bethge on May 29, 1944, Bonhoeffer writes about the importance of a "multidimensional, polyphonic" life. He goes on to affirm that in Jesus Christ, God is at the center of human life. Too often, religion pushes God to the periphery as a stop gap, turning Christian faith into a solution to a problem. For Bonhoeffer, Christianity is not just the solution to...

In one of his letters, Bonhoeffer writes: "Hasn't the individualistic question of saving our personal souls almost faded away for most of us?" Yet, for many Christians, the idea that Jesus died for my sins so I can go to heaven is central to Christianity. As Bonhoeffer thought about the future of Christian faith, he believed the point of Christianity is about the restoration of our humanity; it is...

In one of his letters, Bonhoeffer writes, "My opinion of it today would be that [Bultmann] went not 'too far' as most people thought, but rather not far enough." He is speaking of Bultmann's emphasis on demythologizing the New Testament. What does Bultmann mean by mythology, and how does it relate to Bonhoeffer's call for a religionless Christian faith? That's the focus of this episode. Get full a...

In one of his letters, Bonhoeffer says that he finds it easier to talk about God with unbelievers than religious people. Religion, for Bonhoeffer, is an abstraction that distracts us from human life. In Jesus Christ, we discover God at the center of human life, not the periphery. In Jesus Christ God calls us to live as human beings, which means taking responsibility for our lives. This episode exp...