Charles Marsh’s Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer has received much attention since its release several months back, partlyfor two reasons. First, Marsh discusses Bonhoeffer’s apparently homoerotic relationship with Eberhard Bethge at considerable length. For a figure beloved by many American Christians themselves uneasy with same-sex attraction, this is controversial terrain. Second, Marsh’s biography follows Eric Metaxas’s Bonhoeffer in relatively short order, thus attracting inevitable comparisons.
For the most part, though, Strange Glory has received the praise it deserves. [See Randall Balmer's recent review in the New York Times, for example]. I had the good fortune to read Marsh’s biography while in Germany (never hurts to be closer to the subject matter) and shortly after reading a newly published, brief, German-language biography. Strange Glory distracted me from other tasks for an entire week. I have long been a Bonhoeffer “fan” of sorts. After an earlier stay in Germany, I fell in love with “Von Guten Mächten,” a Bonhoeffer poem now in the German Protestant hymnal. My daughter likes it as a lullaby, which provides me with endless satisfaction at bedtime.
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