By Johnny Zokovitch
Events in this country have, on occasion, given me reason to seek out the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor and theologian whose discipleship to Jesus led him to resist the Nazi regime. His resistance eventually cost him his life; Bonheffer was executed by hanging at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp by the SS just days before the camp was liberated in the waning days of World War II.
I find myself turning to Bonhoeffer because of his demonstration of what it means to be a Christian when you’re surrounded by a culture that stands in direct opposition to every tenet Jesus proclaimed in the gospels. Despite the claim that we hear every so often about the United States being a “Christian” nation, evidence of the influence of Jesus on our nation’s policies seems to clearly not be the case. No one – without living in a deep state of denial – could believe that what we are seeing transpire in this country today resembles in any fashion Jesus’ proclamation of the reign of God, a reign Jesus distinguished by its mercy, compassion and love, a love extended to both neighbors and enemies.
Bonhoeffer had the opportunity to wait out the war from a safe distance. His friends, fearing for his life, had encouraged him to go to the United States, beyond the reach of the Nazis. He could continue his critique of the Nazi state from across the ocean, raise the alarm about what was happening to the Jews, and organize the resistance among the German diaspora, all while also working to support those resisting in secret back at home. But Bonhoeffer realized that he could not claim a role in the rehabilitation of Germany if he didn’t also suffer and risk alongside those who were not afforded the chance to flee as he had been. So he returned. It is this profound sense of responsibility that has always moved me about Bonhoeffer.
And such then is the question for any serious follower of Jesus in the United States at this time – namely, how will we act out of our own responsibility as disciples of Jesus in a culture that is diametrically opposed to the gospel message we hear every Sunday in the pew.
Two Episcopal bishops say clergy may have to put ‘bodies on the line’ to resist ICE (Religion News Service, January 15)
I know that there is a risk in equating Nazi Germany with what is transpiring today in the United States, but the parallels as I read Bonhoeffer’s writing are too easy to make. The scapegoating of Jews in 1938 has become the scapegoating of immigrants in 2026. We witness the birthing of a police state in the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere, with specially empowered militarized forces carrying out extra-judicial campaigns seemingly answerable only to the president, with little pushback from a weak Congress and ineffectual judiciary. Propaganda that flies in the face of every fact is peddled in the daily pronouncements coming from the White House. World War II began in earnest when Hitler ignored the sovereignty of neighboring countries and took them for Germany’s own self-interest; President Trump launched a military campaign against Venezuela, asserting that their oil belongs to the US,and days later threatened to take over Greenland for resources in the service of US self-interest.
But the current administration needn’t be an exact facsimile of Nazi Germany for US Christians to recognize with determined clarity that we have the same duty as Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller, the White Rose, and the Confessing Church movement, all Christian-based resisters to the atrocities of the Nazi program. Our resistance to what is happening in the US should be based on the same premise that Bonhoeffer and his acolytes based theirs on: Jesus – and the question of whether or not we will be his followers, his disciples. Bonhoeffer warned the Church of his time of the cost of discipleship, that Christianity without discipleship is indeed Christianity without Christ. For his own commitment to that discipleship, Bonhoeffer would go to the gallows, in imitation of the Savior he followed.
This moment then is when we learn if we are a church of disciples or just a bunch of people who go to church. Because the only authentic Christianity in this country today is a Christianity expressed in resistance to those more interested in crucifying than following the Crucified.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis.
Photo of Dietrich Bonhoffer by Wissen911 – Bettina Rott: Wilhelm Rott, 1908–1967: Lebenszeugnis, Pro Business Verlag, 2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52692413
Cover photo (seen on social media) used with Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Attribution: Fibonacci Blue