When Seminary Becomes a Threat

Crucial to our response to all this, however, is a fundamental question: Are we confronted today simply by another set of vexing economic and social developments that require our attention? Or is something deeper at stake Are we facing forces that constitute a spiritual assault on the integrity and truth of Christian faith in today’s world? Is this a time when our response, however well intended, will be inept unless it is grounded in a spiritual resilience that confesses faith in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Spirit, who unmasks and defies powers that would subdue and crush the public integrity of the gospel in the world?

This is, in truth, the crucial question for us to discern. And it is deeply serious. I’d pose it this way: When rising forces of nationalistic exclusivism are fueled by racial bigotry, when a naked global struggle for money and power shreds bonds of human solidarity, and when unbridled greed threatens planetary survival, is the truth and integrity of our faith at stake? Is the only response capable of addressing the roots of this crisis one of spiritual resistance and renewal rooted in what it means to confess Jesus Christ as Lord? In other words, is it a kairos moment calling us to a clear discernment of what it means, in this present context, to confess our faith? And must such a confession then shape the communities of those who believe the gospel? In my view, the answer is yes.

When a seminary becomes a threat

The most cogent historical lessons for framing the church’s mission and witness in this time might be found in the soil and history of Germany where, of course, were birthed the passion, faith, and truth that propelled the Protestant Reformation. We recall the courage it took at Wittenberg to confess God’s Word and Truth in the face of a prevailing system whose corruption seemed matched only by its unassailable power.

But also significant is the story of Finkenwalde. This city lies on the east side of the Oder River. Today it’s in Poland, and named Zdroje. But before 1945 this was part of Germany, and Finkenwalde was a suburb of Stettin. It was here, in 1935, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer founded an underground seminary of the Confessing Church.

An heir of the Reformation, Bonhoeffer struggled to discern the shape and character of the church’s mission and witness in the context where he found himself, during the rise of the Third Reich. He witnessed a nationalism that was becoming chauvinistic and exclusive, contaminated by racial pride and exploiting economic grievances through bigotry and rejection of those who were different. Political and economic power were married and harnessed to obstruct dissent and reinforce a mindset of cultural superiority in the name of rectifying national grievances.

In all this Bonhoeffer and others saw the established church as deeply complicit, functioning with inexplicable comfort toward this emerging order, whose values so clearly violated the message of the gospel. The conflict intensified as the National Socialist government moved to establish direct control over the “German church.” This led to the Barmen Declaration, drafted primarily by Karl Barth and adopted in 1934, laying the theological foundation for establishing the Confessing Church, with the leadership of Martin Niemöller and other German pastors.

Bonhoeffer went to Finkenwalde in 1935 to start an underground seminary that would train pastors to serve in the Confessing Church. He perceived that established Christianity in Germany was failing the test of that time. It did not produce the depth of discipleship, the strength of commitment, nor the spiritual foundation deep and resilient enough to offer the witness that was required to face the fearsome idolatries propagated by an emerging evil empire.

In response, life together at Finkenwalde focused on building a Christian community capable of nurturing Christian faith that understood the cost of discipleship and nurtured the means for its practice. Students were encouraged to dwell in the Word, rest in prayer, support one another, and turn in solidarity to those most vulnerable in society. Bonhoeffer sought to create a Christian community capable of instilling and forming a depth of faith capable of resisting the onslaught of evil he saw arising in his country’s life.

In 1937, the Gestapo shut down the underground seminary at Finkenwalde and arrested many of its students. Apparently, the authorities recognized the threat posed by those who simply read the Bible and prayed about the nature of God’s mission in the specific context of their time. Dietrich Bonhoeffer continually asked this question: “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” That question, asked at any time and accompanied by a clear discernment of the times, will undermine the power and authority of any regime intent on imposing a reign based on the prerogatives of privilege, race, wealth, and might.

Faith with the power to confront

It is also our question at this kairos moment as we discern the shape of God’s unfolding mission in today’s world and our participation in this work of the Spirit. Asking this question drives us, like those at Finkenwalde, to seek those practices and form those communities whose life and work embody a faith with the power to confront and overturn the idolatries of this era. That rests on a resonant and fresh confession of our faith and propels us to embrace those ways of discipleship that can sustain our witness in the long run.

This requires far more than the right words. We know that words matter. But the danger is to believe that once we say it correctly, and get the words planted in our heads, then our hearts will automatically follow, shaping our lives.

It requires more than the persuasion of well-crafted words analyzing our present context and commending action to prompt participation in God’s mission in such a time as this. This takes the unfettered allegiance of people’s hearts and the formation of their lives of discipleship. Countless pernicious forces press in the opposite direction, lulling the church back into complicit comfort, condoning narrow, nationalistic loyalties, offering the subtle idols of personal success and material reward, and promoting forms of spiritual escapism. It takes spiritual resistance, nurtured in communities of faithful disciples, to confront and overcome those forces. That was Bonhoeffer’s lesson at Finkenwalde and should be our own today.

I am not maintaining a simplistic parallel between the rise of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler’s attempts to directly suppress and subvert the church with political realities faced today. Times and contexts are different. But the similarities of forceful appeals to nationalistic chauvinism, racial bigotry, and cultural exclusivism as manipulative reactions to economic anxieties, particularly in the United States and Europe, are chilling.

What is parallel between that time and this, for all of world Christianity, is the call to freshly confess faith in ways that shape the church and form disciples with enduring capacity for the spiritual resistance, renewal, and transformation required for this moment in the world’s history.

Our response to God’s mission has its roots in communities of discipleship, expressions of the body of Christ in local congregations. It is here, in the congregations where you and I worship, that the shape of the gospel is to be seen and understood, in flesh and blood, by others. That’s why it is said that “the local congregation is the hermeneutic of the gospel.”

People don’t just want to hear about faith. They want to see what it looks like in the communities of men and women who claim and are claimed by this faith. When participation in God’s mission is placed at the heart of a congregation’s life, the living God renews and transforms us. Yet God’s mission is never something that the church confines and controls.

Thousands of congregations are struggling with the call to respond faithfully to the pernicious forces shaping so much of our world. But that can’t be done in isolation. Just as individual members cannot live independently from others in a local church, congregations cannot thrive in their witness if they are isolated from others.

Could we imagine ways that take seriously congregational journeys in vastly different regions and situations that all strive for costly and faithful engagement in God’s mission? Could we connect such congregations in a virtual electronic community, sharing and networking together, and answering from their own contexts the question, “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?

From frenzied activity to building community

The church today faces the challenge of embarking on a pilgrimage, a journey from the necessity of words to the formation of lives, from the announcement of our declarations to the pronouncement of our discipleship, and from the frenzy of our activity to the building of Christian community.

This pilgrimage poses these questions along the way: Are we ready to live into our identity as a communion, expecting that we are covenanted together as communities of faithful discipleship obedient to the kairos nature of this time? Can we truly place our commitment to join in the movement of God’s mission at the center of the church’s life and identity? Are we willing to direct the church’s material and spiritual resources toward learning from the practices at Finkenwalde and all the places like that today?

Can we nurture the formation of Christian faith in communities of missional discipleship that can stand the test of this time? And can this compel us to participate courageously and joyfully in God’s reconciling and redeeming mission in the world? That is the pathway for the living God to renew and transform us.

This article is adapted from the author's address to the general council of the World Communion of Reformed Churches in July 2017.