The Most Dangerous Song Ever Sung

In Advent of 1933, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood before his small German-speaking congregation in London and made a stunning claim. Mary's song, he told them, was "the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung." This was no safe devotional thought. Across the channel, the Third Reich was tightening its grip on Germany, and Bonhoeffer understood exactly what the Magnificat declared — that God delights in toppling the arrogant from their thrones and lifting the forgotten from the dust.…