How many walked out of the Prayer Breakfast the other morning when DT got up to speak?
Thank you Tripp, for your sharing of what Bonhoeffer really meant standing up to power, not standing with power and pretending you are following Jesus.
Yeah to me when I read Acts 2:37 and Acts 9, the fundamental act of Christian conversion originally was converting from Team Crucifiers to Team Crucified. Long before the revivalist nonsense of slavemaster Christianity.
If people are being crucified and you’re not walking with them and sharing their burden, you’re not walking with Jesus.
Well said. My great uncle Carl refused to let his daughter join Hitler's Youth. The SS came for him one night and he disappeared with them. His reasons are lost to us, but I find his actions compelling. And I often ask myself the question: Have I the courage of my convictions to draw such a line in the sand?
"This reading isn’t exactly wrong. But it’s dangerously incomplete." Is the story of Evangelicalism. Thanks for the phrase, I have been looking for an adequate way to address what I find wanting (especially in the way the Bible is treated by the so-called Bible believing Christians)
Excellent write up. You’ve filled in a major blank for me in my examination of the gap between those who know Bonhoeffer’s writing but have effectively no understanding of context. I couldn’t quite place why this was as I never experienced seminary first hand.
I am early into the 600 page Bonhoeffer biography and already find it completely changed my interpretation of Cost of Discipleship.
Thank for this essay. I live in the UK where, whilst it’s not quite so politically fragile, there are moves from far right activists to put ‘Christianity back in Britain’. They are using the same tactics to weaponise faith in Jesus. Not to love others as yourself but to ‘other’ others, to scapegoat and to blame. I am thankful for those like you who will call out the corruption of the teachings of Jesus.
Thank you. The argument, I think, becomes even more unsettling if we widen the frame and place Bonhoeffer alongside Walter Benjamin, because both men were diagnosing the same historical sickness from different intellectual and theological angles—and both were writing while watching Europe collapse into sanctified violence.
Bonhoeffer helps us see how theology is corrupted when it blesses power. Walter Benjamin helps us see what that corruption does to justice itself.
Benjamin draws a brutal distinction between law-preserving violence and law-founding violence—both of which serve power—and what he calls divine violence, which shatters unjust orders rather than legitimating them. The state, Benjamin argues, is always tempted to dress its violence up as necessity, order, or destiny. When religion sanctifies that move, justice doesn’t merely fail—it is inverted. What presents itself as righteousness becomes the management of guilt on behalf of the powerful.
That’s where your Bonhoeffer analysis cuts deepest. Project 2025 doesn’t just steal Bonhoeffer’s language; it performs precisely the kind of mythic, law-preserving violence Benjamin warned about. “Costly grace” is conscripted to justify the maintenance of an unjust order, not its interruption. Grace becomes a badge worn by those who enforce boundaries, punish the vulnerable, and call that enforcement obedience.
Benjamin insisted that justice is never visible from the standpoint of the victors—it flashes up only from the perspective of the crushed, the excluded, the defeated. Bonhoeffer’s “view from below” names the same truth theologically. Where they converge is devastating: any Christianity that cannot see justice from the side of the victim has already aligned itself with violence, even if it speaks in biblical tones.
So yes—this is theft. But it’s worse than misquotation. It is the conversion of prophetic language into an alibi for injustice. And that, for both Benjamin and Bonhoeffer, is the surest sign that judgment—not faithfulness—is already at work.
"Bonhoeffer taught that the church’s truth depends on its form of existence."
That's the problem even with this form of progressive Christianity. It's center the existence of the church, as a community apart, rather than resistance beyond its walls , in the struggles of this world. Often what is meant by "solidarity" in these spaces is just "charity." Often by "service" is amounts to the "service" of the non-profit service provider.
Ultimately, functionally, this theology, even if it may come at a cost, is not inherently oppositional, and more and more I see how in practice it is just as "functionally" if not consciouslyaligned with the darker forces it seeks to distance itself from.
Bonhoeffer is a "Rorschach blot" because he lacks an ontological center. His "religionless faith" is an endogenous annihilation of the Gospel, replacing the Living God with a social function. Stop fighting over a Ghost-God.
Your 'costly grace' argument is merely an aestheticization of suffering, replacing SOTERIOLOGY with sentimentality. Bonhoeffer’s ‘powerless God’ is a nihilistic gadget for modern man who refuses to submit to a Higher Will.
How many walked out of the Prayer Breakfast the other morning when DT got up to speak?
Thank you Tripp, for your sharing of what Bonhoeffer really meant standing up to power, not standing with power and pretending you are following Jesus.
Thanks!
Yeah to me when I read Acts 2:37 and Acts 9, the fundamental act of Christian conversion originally was converting from Team Crucifiers to Team Crucified. Long before the revivalist nonsense of slavemaster Christianity.
If people are being crucified and you’re not walking with them and sharing their burden, you’re not walking with Jesus.
Well said. My great uncle Carl refused to let his daughter join Hitler's Youth. The SS came for him one night and he disappeared with them. His reasons are lost to us, but I find his actions compelling. And I often ask myself the question: Have I the courage of my convictions to draw such a line in the sand?
Thanks for sharing about Uncle Carl.
"This reading isn’t exactly wrong. But it’s dangerously incomplete." Is the story of Evangelicalism. Thanks for the phrase, I have been looking for an adequate way to address what I find wanting (especially in the way the Bible is treated by the so-called Bible believing Christians)
You know, Tripp, there's another red hat on the scene these days:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/ice-knitting-protest-immigration
I wore my Twin Cities hat in the video, but didn't know that was an option ;)
I love this Sue, thanks for sharing that link.
Thanks Tripp. Another good word for this day we find ourselves in.
Excellent write up. You’ve filled in a major blank for me in my examination of the gap between those who know Bonhoeffer’s writing but have effectively no understanding of context. I couldn’t quite place why this was as I never experienced seminary first hand.
I am early into the 600 page Bonhoeffer biography and already find it completely changed my interpretation of Cost of Discipleship.
Bravo!
That was excellent Tripp. Clear, concise and right to the point. Thanks for putting this out there. More people need to listen to this.
Thank for this essay. I live in the UK where, whilst it’s not quite so politically fragile, there are moves from far right activists to put ‘Christianity back in Britain’. They are using the same tactics to weaponise faith in Jesus. Not to love others as yourself but to ‘other’ others, to scapegoat and to blame. I am thankful for those like you who will call out the corruption of the teachings of Jesus.
Thank you. The argument, I think, becomes even more unsettling if we widen the frame and place Bonhoeffer alongside Walter Benjamin, because both men were diagnosing the same historical sickness from different intellectual and theological angles—and both were writing while watching Europe collapse into sanctified violence.
Bonhoeffer helps us see how theology is corrupted when it blesses power. Walter Benjamin helps us see what that corruption does to justice itself.
Benjamin draws a brutal distinction between law-preserving violence and law-founding violence—both of which serve power—and what he calls divine violence, which shatters unjust orders rather than legitimating them. The state, Benjamin argues, is always tempted to dress its violence up as necessity, order, or destiny. When religion sanctifies that move, justice doesn’t merely fail—it is inverted. What presents itself as righteousness becomes the management of guilt on behalf of the powerful.
That’s where your Bonhoeffer analysis cuts deepest. Project 2025 doesn’t just steal Bonhoeffer’s language; it performs precisely the kind of mythic, law-preserving violence Benjamin warned about. “Costly grace” is conscripted to justify the maintenance of an unjust order, not its interruption. Grace becomes a badge worn by those who enforce boundaries, punish the vulnerable, and call that enforcement obedience.
Benjamin insisted that justice is never visible from the standpoint of the victors—it flashes up only from the perspective of the crushed, the excluded, the defeated. Bonhoeffer’s “view from below” names the same truth theologically. Where they converge is devastating: any Christianity that cannot see justice from the side of the victim has already aligned itself with violence, even if it speaks in biblical tones.
So yes—this is theft. But it’s worse than misquotation. It is the conversion of prophetic language into an alibi for injustice. And that, for both Benjamin and Bonhoeffer, is the surest sign that judgment—not faithfulness—is already at work.
Wow, powerful!
Excellent!
"Bonhoeffer taught that the church’s truth depends on its form of existence."
That's the problem even with this form of progressive Christianity. It's center the existence of the church, as a community apart, rather than resistance beyond its walls , in the struggles of this world. Often what is meant by "solidarity" in these spaces is just "charity." Often by "service" is amounts to the "service" of the non-profit service provider.
Ultimately, functionally, this theology, even if it may come at a cost, is not inherently oppositional, and more and more I see how in practice it is just as "functionally" if not consciouslyaligned with the darker forces it seeks to distance itself from.
Peace be with you!
Bonhoeffer is a "Rorschach blot" because he lacks an ontological center. His "religionless faith" is an endogenous annihilation of the Gospel, replacing the Living God with a social function. Stop fighting over a Ghost-God.
Your 'costly grace' argument is merely an aestheticization of suffering, replacing SOTERIOLOGY with sentimentality. Bonhoeffer’s ‘powerless God’ is a nihilistic gadget for modern man who refuses to submit to a Higher Will.