Bonhoeffer gay

His own psychological struggle with homosexual attraction may help explain how Bonhoeffer, a person of privilege, became such a strong ally of the oppressed. Revered by both the secular Left and the religious Right, he was executed by the Nazis for opposing Hitler.

When the U. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Feb. They had a humanistic outlook and discouraged him from studying theology, but he did it anyway. The possibility of a gay Bonhoeffer is especially significant because conservatives use him as a role model for government resistance in their opposition to marriage equality.

Brave and brilliant, Bonhoeffer is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century.

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What struck me in reading [the Bonhoeffer-Bethge letters], perhaps in contrast to Marsh and Stackhouse’s views, was how unwieldy our categories are—either “homosexual” or “just friends”—when it comes to classifying a relationship as profound as Bonhoeffer and Bethge’s was.

Green and Michael P. Bonhoeffer practiced what he preached, and his anti-Nazi activities eventually led to his imprisonment. I think that Bonhoeffer’s love of Eberhard was one that he, Bonhoeffer, wanted to define as a kind of spiritual marriage, but Bonhoeffer’s love of Eberhard was also deeply romantic.

Some still accuse him of expressing the anti-Jewish bias of Christian tradition. The cover features a rare photo of the two soulmates together. In his typically understated manner, Frank Schaeffer wrote an article, “Dietrich.

A new biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Strange Glory, implies that the German theologian experienced same-sex attraction bonhoeffer Eberhard Bethge, his friend and confidante who later wrote a biography of Bonhoeffer and oversaw the collection of his works.

The response to the biography has been interesting. Eberhard Bethge Aug. Otherwise such an intensive correspondence was hardly imaginable. Bonhoeffer is honored as a saint, martyr and theologian on the anniversary of his death April 9 by the Lutheran, Episcopal and Methodist churches.

His work helped motivate liberation movements, including the U. Civil Rights movement, the South African anti-Apartheid movement and the anti-communist democratic movement of Eastern Europe. The challenge for trying to narrate this complicated relationship is, on the one hand, it was a chaste relationship.

(RNS) A new biography is raising questions about the life and relationships of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an anti-Nazi dissident whose theological writings remain widely influential among Christians. Last Updated on April 8, by Kittredge Cherry. Influential German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an anti-Nazi dissident whom a few scholars believe experienced same-sex attraction.

No, we were all quite ordinary. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, left, and Eberhard Bethge. Dietrich Bonhoeffer appears with a rainbow halo in a portrait by queer iconographer Jeremy Whitner. In his will, Bonhoeffer bequeathed Bethge his money, car, music, clothing and books, while granting his female fiance only a memento of her choice from his belongings.

Speculation about his likely gay orientation focuses on his love gay Eberhard Bethge, who was his best friend and biographer. Bonhoeffer is also popular with evangelical conservatives, who identify with his theology of resisting immoral government. Our struggle today is for costly grace.

The new biography, “Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” from University of Virginia religious studies professor Charles Marsh, implies that Bonhoeffer may have had a same-sex attraction to his student, friend and later biographer Eberhard Bethge.