Bonhoeffer’s Message to America

On a hot night in early July 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat gazing out the window of his student dormitory at Union Theological Seminary, an endless stream of automobiles moving up and down Broadway, their din the music that now accompanied his existence. It was a far cry from his parent’s house in Berlin’s posh Charlottenburg suburb or the idyllic summers he had spent in the Harz Mountains, but that world was now tainted by a darkness of historic proportion. Straining against the ungodly humidity, he attempted to recollect the events of the past few weeks. He had come to the city in a state of supreme unease, having endured a six-year-long struggle for the soul of Germany’s church – a battle that was now lost.