Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century

I have been meaning for the last month or so to address the rise of anti-Semitism taking place here in the United States. As a Christian dedicated to nonviolent resistance and anti-racism movements, one would be left to wonder why I have not fallen into deep despair over recent events. I see a pattern, whether it is the mainstream media showing only positive stories of the terrorist organization Hamas in Palestine or whether it is Jewish professors in academic setting being silenced because they exposed the hidden history of anti-Semitism in early and current Protestant liberalism. Last month, The United Nations Conference on Racism actually became the UN conference against the nation of Israel and Judaism. Just this week, Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright blames the Jews for keeping President Barack Obama away from him. The recent shooting shooting at a Holocaust museum proves that violence against Jews here in the United States is a symptom of an anti-Semitism that has yet to be confronted in American culture.

The problems lies with the North American church which struggles with not only the history of racism in the United States, but also the anti-Semitic history of both here in the U.S.A. and the history of the Church universal (oh, say, the Crusades and the Holocaust, for instance). Many Christians in the ecumenical circles try to whitewash over the differences between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam claiming that these are the three great Abrahamic faiths and that really, as monotheistic religions founded upon different prophets, we should all just get along and not even address histories of racial violence and real theological differences. But there is a problem with this approach: difference is viewed as PROBLEMATIC! On the other side of the coin, some in evangelical circles have particular readings of the New Testament in which the Church REPLACES Israel as God’s chosen people. This conclusion can only be drawn if one first presupposes that it is necessary to read the New Testament into the “Old” Testament. The Old Testament, then, and therefore the Jewish Scriptures, are viewed as not being a source of revelation with its own history and integrity outside of the Christian tradition. Thus, when Barack Obama and James Dobson argue over certain passages in Leviticus , we could hear Christian leaders on Fox News claiming that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount SUPERCEDES the Jewish law.
UNIVERSALISM nor SUPERCESSIONISM are proper options to addressing the current predicaments faced by many North American Jews or the people of Israel. The church should look for a theological answer in the tradition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the leaders of the Confessing Church movement during Nazi Germany. In one of the documents he helped to author, the Bethel Confession, protested against the Aryan Clause that the German Christians were trying to enforce in churches, having segregated church services for Jewish Christians, etc., etc. It is important to note, that even though Bonhoeffer says that the Church living among all nations takes the place of the Old Testament people of the covenant, it is a theological argument against a NATION-STATE (Germany of the Third Reich) which claimed to be the new Israel. In Bonhoeffer’s European context, state churches still held sway over and against free churches. The freedom of conscience was a foreign idea. Notions God’s faithfulness and our faithful response are the keys to understanding Bonhoeffer’s political theology; this requires living out the biblical narrative of God’s suffering love in solidarity with victims. Christian support for Israel should not be a blind, uncritical love affair, but grounded in the recognition of God’s faithfulness in the story of Israel and Jesus the Messiah.

“God abundantly shows God’s faithfulness by still keeping faith with Israel after the flesh, from whom was born Christ after the flesh, despite all their unfaithfulness, even after the crucifixion. It is God’s will to complete the salvation of the world, which began with the election of Israel, through these selfsame Jews (Romans 9-11). Therefore God continues to preserve a ‘holy remnant of Israel after the flesh, which can neither be absorbed into another nation by emancipation and assimilation, nor become one nation among others as a result of the efforts of Zionist and other similar movements, nor be exterminated by Pharaoh-like measures. […]
No nation can ever be commissioned to avenge on the Jews the murder at Golgotha. ‘Vengeance is mine, says the LORD.’ (Deuteronomy 32:35, Hebrews 10:30). We reject any attempt to misuse the miracle of God’s especial faithfulness toward Israel after the flesh as an indication of the religious significance of the Jewish people or of another people. […] The special element in the Jewish Christians does not lie in their race or their character or their history, but in God’s special faithfulness toward Israel after the flesh and in that alone. The way in which the Jewish Christians have a special position in the church which is not based on any legal ruling in itself makes them a living memorial of God’s faithfulness with the church and is a sign that the barrier between Jew and Gentile has been broken down and that faith in Christ may not be perverted into a national religion or a racially determined Christianity. It is the task of the Christians who come from the Gentile world to expose themselves to persecution rather than to surrender, willingly or unwillingly, even in one respect, their kinship with Jewish Christians in the church, founded on Word and Sacrament.” (Bonhoeffer, 136-137)


In other words, the Christian response to the anti-Semitism should not a joining in of the chorus of liberal and conservative antipathy towards the story of the Jews, but a joining in solidarity with those being persecuted. The cross of Christ, the historical revelation of God's complete and unalterable faithfulfness, deserves no other.



Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Geffrey B. Kelly, and F. Burton Nelson. A Testament to Freedom : The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Rev. ed. [San Francisco, Calif.]: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.

UPDATE: NPR COMMENTARY ON ANTI-SEMITISM-- COMMENTARY

He didn't even say a mumblin' word?

There is an old slave spiritual that goes, "He never said a mumblin' word My LORD, He never said a mumblin' word My LORD" "Not a word, not a word, not a word."

This song would give the impression that Jesus died passively, dying as only as a silenced victim, and therefore, all who follow him, it could be derived from this interpretation of his death, must die as quiet, passive victims, never speaking out on and/or against things that offend God. But it is not quite that simple; Jesus never complained against God his Father. The slaves were saying that like Jesus, they would never blame God for their plight; it was the wickedness of humanity that put Jesus on the cross and the Africans into chattel slavery. Asking God why, and pointing the finger at God for intentional sins that humanity does is unbiblical and very bad theodicy. As Jesus is dying, he quotes Psalm 22:1, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" but the whole context of Psalm 22 is a psalm of trusting in God alone for deliverance. Psalm 22:19 reads, "But you, Oh LORD, Be not far off; o my strength, come quickly to help me." In his very last breathe, even when superficially for those who do not have faith it seems as if the divine has abandoned Jesus the Messiah, Jesus is still proclaiming the Gospel, the Good News that God is still here. That is what Good Friday is all about: God is in our midst.