Radical Integrity: A concept worth Exploring, the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor born in 1906. He was one of the few who resisted the rise of Hitler and the subsequent subordination and obedience of the ”national” churches to Hitler himself. He had many chances to escape Germany before the War. Bonhoeffer visited the United States several times and he was, in fact, in New York City to give some lectures in the summer of 1939. He was urged to take refuge there until things ”died down” in Germany. Bonhoeffer felt it cowardly to abandon the struggle and to leave it to his few brethren to take up the resistance without him. To “survive” the war would leave him empty. He felt he had to think not of survival, but of confronting evil at all costs.

He came back to Germany and later, very non impulsively, helped in the plot to kill Hitler. He was captured, imprisoned, and later hung. Bonhoeffer was always searching for the (right) way to address all issues. The (right) way to conduct himself. In Bonhoeffer’s personal instance, it was always an inner search for the “divine” response.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil:
God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer