Christianity and The USA

Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear … Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. We must finally stop appealing to theology to justify our reserved silence about what the state is doing — for that is nothing but fear. ‘Open your mouth for the one who is voiceless’ — for who in the church today still remembers that that is the least of the Bible’s demands in times such as these? We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I love this man so much, he was safe, working and studying in America. When Hitler rose to power he gave up his safety and went back to Germany. With Karl Barth and others they wrote swift condemnations of the government, and the churches. They aired radio sermons against Hitler. Bonhoeffer even founded an outlaw theological community to be resistance to Nazi power.

In the country today I consistently feel the need for these words to speak once again. This man gave his life for a political and theological reason. The Church could not be complicit in evil. Where is the church today? Where are the majority of Christians today? Are they not aligning themselves with oppressors, are they not calling others to be silent and are they not enacting laws against the least and most oppressed? Are they not standing in solidarity with men who are accused of rape, are they not finding ways to support Kavanaugh, are they not aligned with a party that is building and using concentration camps for children at the border? None of these speak like Bonhoeffer declared we must. Many Christians today are the ones in power, and they are building more wheels and systems of oppression. These same Christians like Senator Graham, tell the assaulted to be silent. They say that those who speak out are in the wrong. They are aligning themselves with acts that deny the inherent message of the Gospel.

Today I am reminded my passion must speak. For me to not cry out against injustice is injustice itself. May we all take to heart these words of Bonhoeffer and find the power to speak out against the evil being perpetrated throughout this country.