{"id":9133,"date":"2024-12-16T16:39:25","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T22:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=9133"},"modified":"2024-12-16T16:39:25","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T22:39:25","slug":"religion-and-resistance-dietrich-bonhoeffer-and-the-african-american-spiritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2024\/12\/16\/religion-and-resistance-dietrich-bonhoeffer-and-the-african-american-spiritual\/","title":{"rendered":"Religion and Resistance: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the African American Spiritual."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Bonhoeffer with Students in 1932.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran Pastor and theologian who was executed in 1945 was executed by Nazis in 1945 for his involvement with a plot to kill Hitler. In 1930, Bonhoeffer came to America to pursue a fellowship at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Bonhoeffer was introduced to the Abyssinian Baptist Church by a fellow seminarian. Bonhoeffer served in the ministry there while he was in the U.S. and formed a love and affinity for the Black Church.

Theologians love to draw the connection between Bonhoeffer\u2019s encounter with the Black Church and his resistance work back in Germany. For a detailed treatment of this subject see Reggie L. Williams\u2019s excellent book Bonhoeffer\u2019s Black Jesus.

Bonhoeffer was apparently quite moved by Black Spirituals during his time in America, and even recorded them (Williams 80-1). He said that spirituals were \u201csome of the greatest artistic achievements in America\u201d and described them as having a \u201cstrange mixture of reserved melancholy and eruptive joy\u201d (Williams 80). He would later, according to one his biographers, play these Spirituals for his students in his underground seminary back in Germany. His friend and biographer Eberhard Bethage wrote \u201cWe hummed \u2018Swing low, sweet chariot\u2019 twenty years before the radio and concert halls made it familiar here.\u201d (Bethage, quoted in John W. Doberstien\u2019s introduction to Bonhoeffer\u2019s Life Together 9).

The affinity between Bonhoeffer and the Spiritual tradition isn\u2019t surprising. Both share theological roots in resistance to oppression. The original religious context of Spirituals was in clandestine meetings where enslaved people would sing and worship together. Bonhoeffer\u2019s resistance seminary was also underground. It\u2019s hard not to see the resonance with the early church as well. The type of Christianity these three movements express is an imminent and liberation focused Christianity, which requires \u201cCostly Grace,\u201d an idea developed by Bonhoeffer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cCostly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: \u2018My yoke is easy and my burden is light\u2019\u201d (Witness to Jesus Christ \u201cThe Cost of Discipleship\u201d 158).
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Such grace exists perhaps especially in the midst of oppression. Grace, christian or otherwise, does not release us from our ethical duties to each other, but instead strengthens them.


Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. trans. Doberstein, John. Harper & Brothers. 1954.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ. ed. John De Gruchy. Collins Liturgical Publications. London. 1988.

Williams, Reggie L. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and An Ethic of Resistance. Baylor University Press. 2014.



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Bonhoeffer with Students in 1932. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran Pastor and theologian who was executed in 1945 was executed by Nazis in 1945 for his involvement with a plot to kill Hitler. In 1930, Bonhoeffer came to America to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-2nj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9138,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9133\/revisions\/9138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}