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JOHN ASKS:<\/strong><\/p>\n [Dietrich Bonhoeffer] was a hero and martyr for the faith, but is it possible evangelical Christians in America have lionized someone whose theology is not actually in sync with theirs?<\/p>\n THE RELIGION GUY ANSWERS<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n Books by and about Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906\u20131945) sell without letup, including no less than seven biographies since 2010, plus novels, plays, films, unending articles and even an opera. The German Lutheran pastor is one of the past century\u2019s most revered authors with must-read titles like \u201cThe Cost of Discipleship,\u201d \u201cLife Together\u201d and the posthumous \u201cEthics\u201d and \u201cLetters and Papers from Prison.\u201d Moreover \u2014 yes \u2014 he\u2019s lionized as a Christian martyr.<\/p>\n Everybody wants to claim this complex thinker as an ally, but where does he really fit? Was his theology \u201cliberal\u201d or \u201cevangelical\u201d or \u201cneo-orthodox\u201d or some mixture? Would he align with today\u2019s political Left or Right? With absolutists or relativists in morals? Was he a pacifist or not? And, the latest fuss, was he gay or straight?<\/p>\n A quick rundown of his eventful life: Brilliant student trained in academically fashionable liberalism. Inspired to a different and deeper faith by African-American Christians during study in America. Fierce foe of Nazi anti-Semitism in the Protestant \u201cConfessing Church.\u201d Teacher in a close-knit underground seminary. German military intelligence officer working secretly as a double agent. Part of the anti-Hitler conspiracy and executed as a political prisoner days before Allied troops arrived.<\/p>\n Ample Bonhoeffer buzz results from the much-purchased and much-debated biography \u201cBonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.\u201d Author Eric Metaxas is an evangelical successor to Charles Colson on \u201cBreakpoint\u201d radio commentaries and leader of Manhattan\u2019s intriguing \u201cSocrates in the City\u201d lecture series. He previously wrote \u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d a biography of William Wilberforce, the devoutly evangelical Member of Parliament most responsible for abolishing the slave trade across the British Empire.<\/p>\n Metaxas\u2019s Bonhoeffer continues that theme of uplifting Christian activism. It also typifies John\u2019s concern, since this biography is criticized for playing up Bonhoeffer\u2019s problems with liberal theology and his affinity with evangelical piety. (Metaxas did not answer a \u201cReligion Q and A\u201d e-mail seeking his response to critics.) Bonhoeffer was conservative enough that Theo Hobson at the Episcopal seminary in New York City calls him \u201cfumbling,\u201d \u201cfaltering,\u201d and \u201cdubious\u201d in a history of liberal theology. Yale University poet Christian Wiman, author of \u201cMy Bright Abyss,\u201d says Bonhoeffer\u2019s story distinguishes him \u201cfrom the watery \u2014 and thus waning \u2014 liberal Protestantism that has emerged since the 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n But Clifford Green, who organized the 16-volume edition of Bonhoeffer\u2019s works, savaged Metaxas in the liberal \u201cChristian Century,\u201d charging that he \u201chijacked\u201d Bonhoeffer by falsely portraying him as a conservative. In a 1993 evangelical journal article, historian Richard Weikart said the theologian was no conservative and followed up with the 1997 book \u201dThe Myth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Is His Theology Evangelical?\u201d Weikart, now teaching at California State University, Stanislaus, thinks Metaxas\u2019s \u201ccounterfeit Bonhoeffer\u201d ignores liberal thinking that breaks with conservative evangelicalism, for instance doubts that Jesus rose bodily from the grave or that the Bible presents literal history otherwise.<\/p>\n As for politics, David Timmer, religion chair at Central College, chides yet another biography for \u201cusing Bonhoeffer as a club to bash Republican policies.\u201d Problem is, he says, the man\u2019s actual political views \u201cwere far too complex to be easily assimilated to either the contemporary left or the right.\u201d<\/p>\n Then we have this patheos.com headline: \u201cBonhoeffer Was Flamingly Gay \u2014 Deal With It<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ex-evangelical blogger Frank Schaeffer bases his \u201cqueer\u201d Bonhoeffer on the brand-new \u201cStrange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer\u201d by Charles Marsh of the University of Virginia. It seems Bonhoeffer was a fastidious dresser and loved art (stereotypes, anyone?). Marsh never says Bonhoeffer was homosexual but does depict an intense if not obsessive relationship with his student and best friend, the late Eberhard Bethge. Of course this could have been a passionate but celibate Christian bond as depicted in the classic \u201cSpiritual Friendship\u201d by the 12th Century abbot Aelred of Rievaulx.<\/p>\n Bethge softpedaled all that in his own important Bonhoeffer biography (English translation 1970). But when asked, Bethge denied Bonhoeffer was homosexual. So a gay Bonhoeffer would undermine the truthfulness of his closest ally and Bonhoeffer\u2019s own ethical stature, since he was engaged to marry Maria von Wedemeyer just before his arrest. (Their prison correspondence is compiled in \u201cLove Letters from Cell 92.\u201d)<\/p>\n Liberals also claim Bonhoeffer as a fellow relativist in moral theology. Some contend he would have favored gay marriage, though heterosexual monogamy is assumed in Bonhoeffer\u2019s conservative treatment of abortion and contraception in \u201cEthics.\u201d The major example of flexibility is that Bonhoeffer moved from strict non-violence to support murder of Hitler in a context of tyranny and terror. <\/p>\n Or did he? Yet another dispute arises in \u201cBonhoeffer the Assassin?\u201d by Mark Thiessen Nation and two former students at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. These evangelical pacifists contend there\u2019s \u201cno evidence\u201d Bonhoeffer agreed with or was involved with plotting to assassinate Hitler alongside his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi. But most biographers say there\u2019s ample witness to Bonhoeffer\u2019s participation.<\/p>\n So, what are we to make of these competing Bonhoeffers? John Stackhouse Jr., a theologian in Canada, provides perceptive analysis in a review of Marsh\u2019s biography: Click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n