Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Prioritization of Church Unity (Oekumene)

Abstract

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, following Karl Barth, broke with the “liberal school” of German Protestant theology, led by the famous Adolf von Harnack, he discovered that the Ecumenical Movement could be an agency for bringing about world peace, and he argued energetically for this in the various forums of the then ecumenical movement. However, to only partial avail. With the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, the urgency for the ecumenical movement to declare solidarity with the Confessing Church in Germany became acute. This was because the Nazi-supported Reich Church and the so-called German Christians were trying to align Christianity with Nazi ideology. Bonhoeffer proclaimed forcefully that the latter group were acting in the service of the Antichrist, driven by entirely worldly ambitions. He argued that this situation made it doubly incumbent on the churches associated in the ecumenical movement to support the Confessing Church. Indeed, he made such a declaration of solidarity the touchstone of the credibility of the ecumenical movement. This paper seeks to trace the course of Bonhoeffer’s campaign, for which he only had the limited support of men such as Bishop Bell of Chichester. But he failed not only to persuade the Ecumenical Movement; he was also unable to convince the majority of the Confessing Church to declare unequivocally for peace against the Nazi leadership. The article concludes with the observation that the present-day ecumenical movement has remembered Bonhoeffer’s original plea for an Ecumenical Peace Council, and that it now recognizes that Bonhoeffer confronted the Churches with a challenge that will remain on its agenda for the foreseeable future.