IN referring to the Nazi regime, Bonhoefer , in Cost of Discipleship spoke of the “brtual attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of man alone”.

Quoted on p. 41 in Hauerwas’ Performing the Faith

Of course, Hitler made it a point to invoke God and enlist God in the Nazi cause, to “lift the German people”. But the verbal invoking of God, and the actual application of the ideas inherent in the “Kingdom of God” are two very different things.

Of course, there is no moral equivalency being implied in the direction you know this is heading as I explain this: which is, there are clear parallels and relevancies in the experience of the Confessing Church in Germany during the Nazi regime, and in Bonhoeffer’s approach to “the State” in contrat to the subservient Church of Germany ( I don’t recall the name of the newly chrsitned German Church that was instituted under Hitler).

I was drawn more than ever to this story of a Confessing Church and to Bonhoeffer when I bought the DVD Bonhoeffer on Thursday. I watched it when I got home that evening. It seems to me that the time has come for the Church in America to begin exploring this before things get much worse in America. NOT that I in any way believe that Bush is going to commence exterminating any certain group he considers threats here in America, but that a whole slate of regressive, repressive, and irresponsible policies have been instituted and corporate cronies have been “given the reigns” to move the direction of many areas of American life formerly held to be “public trusts” where the people have assumjed that the government is looking out for their interests.

One of the largest and most serious transgressions of this administration is , and continues to be, the continued occupation and violence imposed upon Iraq, where anywhere from 40 or 50 thousand to 100 thousand have perished due to our “pre-emptive” move. This is a Holocaust in its own way. These people are unrelated to us (except that they ARE, as a matter of fact, Citizens of the World, and precious to God, just as are we). I continue to be toally scandalized by the idea that we as Americans can justify this based on “theory”, while ACTUAL and unmistakable lives continue to be lost.

In 1936, Bonhoeffer declared that “The Government of the national Church has cut itself off from the Christian Church”. The Confessing Church is the true church of Jesus Christ in Germany”