Category Archives: History

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin – REVIEW

By | | Christian History, Current Thought, Filmmaking, History, Philosophy and Critical Thinking, Theology, Uncategorized
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by John Jackman

Movies are not academic documentaries; they are storytelling and drama.  Filmmakers must always take some license to fit a complex story into two hours, and indeed is it hard not to add embellishments that make for better cinema: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story” said Mark Twain.  Making a movie about a revered historical religious figure is a daunting challenge; someone will always be unhappy with the way you tell the story of their favorite religious leader.

I say this because I’ve done it; for my 2009 movie Wesley we struggled to compress just a few years of John Wesley’s complex story into two hours.  Many lauded the film, others hated it – often scholars who complained that their favorite hobby horse had been overlooked.  So I approach reviewing Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin with some caution, particularly because I have strong opinions about Bonhoeffer, who I studied extensively in seminary, and whose writings profoundly affected my own theology.

The timing of the release of Bonhoeffer is part of the problem, though the filmmakers might have foreseen that.  Eric Metaxas’ book Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2011) has been lambasted by scholars, and has been used by the Christian Right to support violent action.  Metaxas himself has deepened the controversy by seeming to call for violent bloodshed to defend Donald Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election, and his advocacy of what sounds like a totalitarian takeover.

Recently, a large group of scholars and the descendants of the Bonhoeffer family publicly decried the misuse of Bonhoeffer’s name and thought to support Christian Nationalism (links at end of article).  They condemned Metaxas’ book and the new movie – though unfortunately none of them had been able to preview the movie at the time.  The similarity of titles was a mistake, and poor decisions by Angel Films in the early promotion (showing Bonhoeffer holding a pistol, or wearing an explosive vest for instance) made it seem that the movie was based on Metaxas’ book.  A special preview at the Museum of the Bible in Washington last month stirred that pot even more, since Eric Metaxas was the speaker and host.

Todd Komarnicki

The film’s writer and director Todd Komarnicki (the writer of Sully and producer of Elf) denied any association. Komarnicki recently told podcaster Tripp Fuller that the movie was not based on Metaxas’ work at all. He seemed offended by the idea, maintaining that the movie was his personal interpretation of Bonhoeffer.  “I’m not trying to say this is the definitive Bonhoeffer,” he said, “but rather, this is the man that I encountered in his writing, and how it touched me as an artist and as a Christian.”  But this is the problem: despite his extensive writings, Bonhoeffer is at times a tabula rasa on which readers can project their own opinions. And I am willing to bet that Komarnacki read the Metaxas book before doing other research.

The timing of the release is also interesting because it happens just after an election that some feel marks the beginning of the end of the great American Experiment.  A man who openly admires authoritarian rulers, who keeps a copy of Hitler’s speeches on his bedstand, has now been elected president for the second time – but this time with many traditional guard rails removed.  Hitler was also regarded by the right as a “savior sent by God” and many German churches were swayed to not only acquiesce to Hitler, but to regard him as God’s agent and hand.  Nazi Bibles were published with revisions, including a couple of extra commandments.  Now, all this is shown clearly in Komarnicki’s movie; and most people watching the movie will note the similarities to recent events. 

I went to see Bonhoeffer at a preview just before the official wide release.   I felt that I had to see the movie for myself before passing any judgment.  First, let me address Bonhoeffer just as a movie; then I will look at where Komarnicki fails to capture the complex subject of his film.

The movie is actually pretty well done, especially when compared to the normal “faith film” of the past.  Production values are excellent, the acting is generally quite good, and the direction is mostly good.  Jonas Dassler (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) is compelling in many scenes, though there are places where the acting and the writing seem clichéd.  The film uses a “flashback” structure (from Bonhoeffer in prison) to collapse the time, but in online reviews many people found this confusing – some because they didn’t know the story, and other because they did know the story and were confused by liberties taken.

Historically, the script is pretty accurate for a film of this nature – but that’s quite a low standard!    Komarnicki takes many historical liberties that were not needed for condensing the story.  The film does show Bonhoeffer’s time at Union Seminary in New York and his friendships in Harlem with the Abyssinian Baptist Church.  This is mostly fictionized, however, and while it shows his exposure to American racism, it falls short in conveying the strong pacifist resistance to racism that Bonhoeffer witnessed, which was a huge shaping influence on his theology.

So here’s where the film goes astray: Bonhoeffer was a profound pacifist, and I have the feeling that (like many people), Komarnicki doesn’t adequately understand pacifism.  Bonhoeffer had been in touch with Mahatma Gandhi in the early 1930s, and learned more from the saints at Abbysinian Baptist Church (MLK didn’t invent peaceful resistance).  Adam Clayton Powell Sr. has been credited with teaching Bonhoeffer about love of enemies, resisting systems of injustice, Christ’s presence with the poor, and the idea of “cheap grace”. Like Gandhi, Bonhoeffer believed “There are many causes that I am prepared to die for, but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”  In the movie, Bonhoeffer enthusiastically abandons that position, and the complex, carefully thought out theology he had espoused, and participates actively in the plot to kill Hitler. Komarnicki’s Bonhoeffer talks about the necessity to have “dirty hands,” an ethical concept that the real Bonhoeffer never used or referred to that I can find.  Miles Werntz writes in Christianity Today,

Rather than depicting a man of deep theological convictions and subtle intellect, Bonhoeffer tells the story of a man for whom moral convictions are a flexible and useful tool, a man whose actions are determined not by concerns for the church’s witness but by perceived historical necessity. It is the story of a Bonhoeffer willing to do anything—including disavow the teachings of Jesus as he understood them—to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Christianity Today


Victoria Barnett, the editor of Bonhoeffer’s collected works, describes the movie “as a very romanticized ‘Christian hero’ fantasy.”

[Bonhoeffer’s] legacy is actually a very critical one of the failures of his church in Christianity. How would we read him if we were not looking for a hero story, but reading him for insight and guidance into how to be a good person in this world? It’s a fantasy. They’ve made lots of things up to actually contradict who he was and what he did.”

The Forward


But – didn’t Dietrich Bonhoeffer actively participate in the plot to kill Hitler?  That’s the popular view.  His brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi did.  But much of the popular myth of Bonhoeffer is imagination, people filling in blanks.  Scholars today point out that there is no evidence that Dietrich actually helped or actively participated in the plot.  He probably knew about it, but even that is speculation.  He was active in the resistance, and knew many people involved in the plot, but he certainly did not abandon his own theology, as he seems to in the movie.  Instead, he confirmed his continued belief in pacifism in letters from prison.  Bonhoeffer’s own actions of Christian resistance—spreading information to international contacts, and assisting with sending Jews to Switzerland—were consistent with his long-standing convictions.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer: Preacher, Spy, Assassin does not seem to promote Christian nationalism (as some feared), and does indeed get many things right.  However, it fails to hit the mark in significant ways, in particular understanding how profound Bonhoeffer’s bravery was.  Like Jan Hus, he stood publicly and courageously against the might of empire, knowing that he would likely pay the ultimate price. He proclaimed truth in the face of fascism.  Miles Werntz, writing in Christianity Today, concludes:

What we needed was a film about a man concerned with how God might be calling the church to be steadfast amid the great temptation to mold our faith to our politics.

Christianity Today

Warren Throckmorton voices a slightly different perspective:

It is good that the movie is triggering discussion about how to respond to a totalitarian regime. We are now living in the shadow of that possibility. This is new ground for American Christians and we need to deal with it.

The Throckmorton Initiative


I would encourage church groups to see the movie, but to be forearmed with solid information and an awareness of the inaccuracies  — and use it as a springboard for conversation.  I can see some very fruitful discussions happening on difficult topics, especially in our current times.  I would also encourage Christians to read Bonhoeffer’s actual writings rather than third-party interpretations.  In our time, the Church needs to wrestle with his profound thought in a significant way.

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John Jackman is pastor of Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, NC and organizer of the Debt Jubilee Project.  He wrote and directed Wesley (2009) and Newton’s Grace (2013) as well as numerous documentaries.  He studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings under Dr. Charles Hargis at Moravian Theological Seminary.

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LINKS

Letter from the Bonhoeffer Family:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SIKs7_yO3nbPFjRb4FV8wi-WKwghBvUP/view

Letter from Bonhoeffer Scholars:
https://bonhoeffersociety.org/2024/10/16/sign-our-petition-stop-misusing-dietrich-bonhoeffer-to-support-political-violence-and-christian-nationalism/

Lead Actors of Movie Condemn Christian Nationalism:
https://bonhoeffersociety.org/2024/11/04/statement-lead-actors-in-bonhoeffer-spy-pastor-assassin-speak-out-together-against-the-misuse-of-bonhoeffers-legacy/

There’s No Such Thing As A Bonhoeffer Moment – Victoria Barnett

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Recommended Reading:

Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, Daniel P. Umbel (Baker Academic)

Dietrich Bonheoffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge (Fortress Press)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Spoke in the Wheel by Renate Wind (Eeerdman)

Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Christiane Tietz (Fortress Press)

Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. By Charles Marsh (Knopf Doubleday Publishing)

Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance by Reggie Williams (Baylor University Press)

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Recommended Viewing:

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister a documentary by Martin Doblmeier.

Remembering Ed Martin

By | | Current Thought, Economy, History, Philosophy and Critical Thinking
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I stopped by Bethlehem last week to have my last look at Martin Tower.  The next time I visit it won’t be there.  As the implosion of the iconic landmark approaches, I thought we should take a moment to look back at the man who it was named after.

I got to know Edmund Martin in 1980 when I married into the family, and knew him the rest of his life.  He was a charming man, a man who loved golf and fishing.  He had a pretty wide streak of temper, but was tremendously loyal to his “people,” the company he spent his life working for, and his community.  His impact on the Lehigh Valley, largely forgotten today, was enormous.

When Ed Martin became President of “the Steel” in 1960, and then also Chairman in 1964, it was clear that the corporation needed a new headquarters.  There was strong pressure from many on the board of directors to move the headquarters to New York City.  But Ed was adamant that Bethlehem Steel should remain headquartered in Bethlehem, a city he had grown to love.  Plans were begun for the construction of a landmark headquarters that would be the tallest building in the Lehigh Valley.  The decades of the 70s and 80s would have been drastically different if Steel had moved its headquarters.  Literally hundreds of executives and their families would have moved out of the Valley, and those rough decades (immortalized in Billy Joel’s song) would have been far more depressing.

Part of keeping the headquarters and administration in Bethlehem was making sure that Bethlehem was a great place to live.  Downtown Bethlehem was not so pretty in those days.  The Moravian Industrial Area along the Monocacy Creek was an ugly automobile junkyard.  Ed and his wife Frances (a tiny but energetic lady better known to friends as “Mighty Mouse”) were instrumental in the efforts for historic preservation and cleaning up the eyesore behind the Hotel Bethlehem.   He was a board member of Historic Bethlehem, served as leader of the Committee for Greater Bethlehem, and was a member of the Bethlehem Area Foundation.

Ed Martin was a CEO of another era, a time when the top brass made perhaps thirty times what a line worker made – not 600 times.  He had worked his way up in the company, starting not quite at the bottom, but in a pretty menial job as a machinist.  He would have viewed the obscene CEO salaries of today as representing disloyalty to the workers and the company.  It’s forgotten today that one of his first actions when taking over as president was to reduce the salaries of the top executives – he actually made more as VP than he did as president.  Many Steel employees called his economies “Martinizing.”

Edmund F. Martin inside the Bethlehem Steel blast furnace in 1964.

In 1963, Lehigh University recognized Ed Martin for “distinguished service to the welfare and progress” of the community; in 1980, Mayor Paul Marcincin honored him as a “community leader who has inspired support for the preservation of Bethlehem’s history.”

In other local involvements, he was a trustee of Lehigh University and St. Luke’s Hospital.  His influence beyond the Lehigh Valley was broad.  He served on the Board of Directors of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. of New York; a trustee of the National Safety Council, and the United States Council of the International Chamber of Commerce.  Sweden made him Knight Commander of the Royal Order of the North Star, while Liberia awarded him Grand Band of the Order of the Star of Africa and Brazil recognized him with the order Knight Commander of the Southern Cross.

The plans for the new headquarters were nothing if not ambitious; originally, two towers were envisioned.  Designed by architect Haines Lundberg Waehler, the tower was built by George A. Fuller Construction Co. of New York, the same company that built the Flatiron Building, the CBS Building, and Rockefeller Center.   The innovative “plus sign” design allowed many more executives to have a corner office.   The framework was completed in 1969 and there was a halt in construction for a couple of years.  The building was completed in 1973, when it was named in honor of Ed, who had retired at that point.

After his retirement from Steel in 1970, Ed remained very active in civic affairs.  He died at home in 1993, and did not live to see the bankruptcy and dissolution of the company he had led and loved.

I have followed the meandering tale of what would happen to Martin Tower closely; and while it presented significant challenges, none were insurmountable.  As a current resident of the Winston-Salem, NC area, I have seen several historic structures here that were far more challenging successfully repurposed and preserved.   The Reynolds Building, rife with lead and asbestos and lacking any modern safety features, has been successfully and profitably repurposed as a luxury hotel and condominium.  The unique mid-century design of Martin Tower deserved such attention.

It is a shame that owners Lewis Ronca and Norton Herrick did not have the vision, drive, and determination that Ed Martin showed in saving Bethlehem’s older historic buildings, and then exhibited in building the tower that would bear his name.  Following the implosion on May 19th, Martin Tower will be the dust of history, to be replaced with inconceivably boring vanilla commercial development that could be in a suburb of Dallas or Charlotte or somewhere in Peculiar, Missouri.  Bethlehem will have lost its most visible and recognizable landmark, an iconic architectural achievement which could have served the community for generations to come.

 

  • The Rev. John Jackman is a Moravian pastor, author, and filmmaker. He lived in Bethlehem from 1977-1982.

The Refiner’s Fire

By | | Current Thought, Economy, History, Philosophy and Critical Thinking, Uncategorized
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This morning I preached on Malachi 3:1-20, a passage made famous to moderns by the aria in Handel’s The Messiah:

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

Listen to the aria: http://youtu.be/g8RmuvkwGrI?t=1m27s
This video is a recording of Mark Wesley Brax, 23, of Columbia, S.C. who died tragically in an auto accident in Ripley County, Indiana on April 14, 2012.  He was a student at the University of Cincinnati.

But as with a great many Old Testament prophecies, we are quick to ignore the call for justice that follows:

Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished.

If I were to ask the average man or woman on the street how this Old Testament judgment applies to our world today, most of the working people would be quick to draw a connection to the evisceration of the middle class by the super-wealthy.  This is a very real part of the “major fail” trajectory of our nation, hastened by the sad access the super-wealthy have to manipulate laws, regulation, and control the media.

Consider for a moment these graphs, which are based on easily verified data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Over the last thirty years, the super-wealthy have found a variety of ways to use their connections, influence, and power to game the system, to create an environment where they can corner the market on money.

In the same year that corporations have announced record profits, they are still seeking to cut back on basic benefits and wages for the average worker, begging fictional poverty and inevitable market forces.  But these are not inevitable at all; they are artificially created by the very people whom they benefit.  The strategy of the last couple of decades has been to bear down on the average worker, to cut benefits, pensions, and wages so that enormous profits can be taken by vulture capitalists and market manipulators.  The amazing thing to me is that these folks, with their stranglehold on the media, have been able to convince so many “rank-and-file” of the fundamental lie that if the super-wealthy are not allowed to have everything they want, the jobs will go away.  They have perfected the art of the spin, of playing on fears, of distracting with Honey Boo-Boo.

This is fundamentally a structure imposed by the methodology of Wall Street, which demands artificial increases in share price from publicly traded companies in a manner which most economists will readily admit is unsustainable – and which is based on a completely amoral and short-sighted philosophy.  One CEO I used to work with had come to the conclusion over a decade ago that the only way to run an ethical company in the 21st century was to keep it private; publicly traded companies were automatically subject to a system that was fundamentally amoral and in its practical application became immoral.  When we play this game and participate in this system without challenging its “winner-take-all” crony capital rules, we continue to further a system that God has outlined for judgment.  Again from Malachi:

I will be swift to bear witness… against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.

I do not believe in Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.”  But I do believe that God judges our nation, and in my read of the Scriptures I do not think God’s judgment is based (as some say) on a couple of isolated passages in Deuteronomy or on whether or not life begins at conception, an idea which the Bible does not actually support at all.  Instead, if we count the number of statements made by the prophets, we will be judged instead on our treatment of the poor, the downtrodden, the powerless, the widow, the orphan.

How that judgment will come I cannot say.  It may come through the natural process of labor rising in numbers against oppression, as happened a century ago at the end of the “Golden Age.”  It may come through the ultimate failure of an economy and political system that has long since lost touch with ethics and sustainability.  The collapse of the economy in 2008 may only be a warning shot; and the continuing inability of our politicians to behave like rational adults instead of posturing bullies does not bode well for our nation.

In a recent Washington Post editorial, Ruth Marcus reminded us that the originally temporary tax cuts currently being argued over were created prior to 9/11 because there was a projected budget surplus!  Now that we are dealing with massive deficits, that fact has been conveniently forgotten and we are so in love with low taxes that we will invent new and spurious reasons why the temporary measure must stay in place long after it was intended to expire, and even longer after it had outlived its original intent.  When 9/11 happened and the nation decided (whether rightly or wrongly) to go to war, I was asking then, “Where is the war tax?”  How were we going to pay for the massively expensive war?  More tax cuts and more plastic at the mall?  I ask those who were alive in World War II to tell their children stories about War Bonds, to explain rationing, to remind us how the war against fascism was paid for sixty years ago – by pulling together, by sacrifice, by hard work.  Anyone today own any war bonds?  Nope, I didn’t think so!  Whether you were in favor of the longest duration war America has ever fought or against it, one thing is sure: it was really expensive and we passed the cost off to our children rather than shouldering the burden ourselves.

Another lesson from history: capitalists today would do well to read up on the period from 1895 to 1930, for they will catch a prediction of what will happen if the poor and the middle class are squeezed harder while the überclass continues to revel publicly in more than Oriental splendor.  People have forgotten that there were bombings, riots, blood spilled.  There is only so much that the common worker in a supposedly democratic society will put up with before rebelling.  We are not far away from repeats of incidents like the bombing of the LA Times in 1910.  As a Moravian pacifist, I always oppose such violence, but I recognize that when people are pushed too far, violence will happen.  I‘d love to see it not happen!

The Conservatives are right: the deficit is a looming monster which will destroy us.  But their willingness to fall on their swords in defense of continued tax cuts for the wealthiest betrays that they aren’t really that concerned about the deficit, only about “keeping theirs.”  The Liberals are right: we can’t let the economy be balanced on the backs of the poorest while the rich jet off to check on their bank balances in the Cayman Islands.  But their unwillingness to confront the deficit and reveals a lack of understanding that the current system of entitlements is unsustainable.

Most Americans recognize that the truth is somewhere in the middle.  A society that continues to live on borrowed time, money, and environmental damage is not a Biblical society at all.  The nasty fundamentalist Christian “hot-button” issues of the last thirty years ignore the genuine, clear clarion call of the Bible to sustainable, responsible life that does not leave our children and grandchildren with a ruined planet and financial burdens of unpaid debt.