Discipleship in the Life and Work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Part I)

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Happy Friday, friends. It feels like spring where I am, even though I know that isn’t the case everywhere. Spring stirs in me that energy of hope and desire to be outside and working for Earth healing. Although summer has now come to mean forest fires and heat waves where I live and storms of unpredictable intensity, spring still leaves me experiencing the unfurling of my internal winter coat, the budding of my leaves, and the awakening to early mornings of birdsong and new life. I am grateful.

This week, I have been deep in research for the book I am writing. I’m spending time learning more of the scary details of the climate and ecological crisis. It is what I want to be focusing on even as the information can be difficult to read and hard to bear. I have ways in which I cope with what I am learning, by grounding myself in my family and my cooking, in prayer and spiritual practice.

As I learn more, I wonder what it is that you, the reader, would like to hear from me. What are you interested in reading in these nudges and essays? I am continuing to work on the discipleship series; the next essay is below. What else would you like to read? Would you appreciate short summaries of some of the diverse aspects of the climate emergency, and how we might reflect as a people of faith? Are you interested in scriptural reflection? Would you like more examples of faith-based climate action? What else?

Please let me know. I have opened up the comments section for all subscribers, so please comment (or send me an email): What are you interested in reading in Faith. Climate Crisis. Action? This is your Friday Nudge!

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Discipleship in the Life and Work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Part I)

In the previous essay in this series, I introduced you to Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, communist and Catholic convert who lived a fiercely loving radical discipleship of community with the poor and marginalized in houses of hospitality.

Day is just one of several known Christian figures who lived out their faith in Christ in demanding and uncompromising ways. Day was a great influence on Sallie McFague, whose ecotheology I have studied in-depth, and in turn on me, as I consider what the idea of discipleship can offer to people of faith in our time of climate and ecological crisis.

As I have developed my thinking about discipleship further over the last ten years, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and work has been compelling to me. Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who has become remembered for his committed stance against Hitler and the Nazi regime which ultimately led to his arrest and execution. He is also remembered for the theology that he wrote out of his experiences as he watched his native country, Germany, come under the snare of Hitler, and in particular watching the Christian church become complacent about and, at times, complicit in the Nazi regime. For Christians in many denominations, this Lutheran scholar, minister and activist continues to be studied for the wisdom he offers, both then and today.

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