Bonhoeffer as Martyr: Social Responsibility and Modern Christian Commitment. By Craig J. Slane. Pp. 256. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press (a division of Baker Publishing Group), 2004. isbn 1 58743 074 6. Paper $20.99

Abstract

In June 1945, two months after the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote an article with the title ‘The Death of a Martyr’. Yet sixty years later Slane feels moved to write specifically to revise our understanding of Christian martyrdom so that Bonhoeffer can be recognized as such. Is he pushing at an open door? Does this book add anything to our increasing knowledge about Bonhoeffer, whose statue is over the west door of Westminster Abbey, along with nine other ‘modern martyrs’? Slane is a committed enthusiast, admitting to finding Bonhoeffer ‘haunting’ even ‘rapturous’, which is presumably why he wanted to prove him a Christian martyr, given the opposition of Bonhoeffer's own church in Berlin-Brandenburg to accepting his memory once his conspiratorial activities had become known. In my own visits to Berlin in the early 1960s I was amazed that the only street named after Bonhoeffer was a part of a derelict bank of the river. Not until 1996 (!) did a Berlin court exonerate him of high treason. Slane also refers to the difficulties some of his students have in accepting Bonhoeffer as a Christian martyr.