The Pastor Who Grieved for Germany

In the summer of 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat in a New York City apartment with a ticket to safety and a heart splitting in two. Friends had arranged his escape from Nazi Germany — a teaching position, a quiet life far from the Gestapo's reach. He had every reason to stay in America.

He lasted twenty-six days.

"I have made a mistake in coming to America," he wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr. "I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people."

Bonhoeffer returned to a country careening toward its own destruction. He watched congregations embrace an ideology that desecrated everything holy. He saw pastors trade the gospel for patriotism. And he grieved — not from a safe distance, but from within the wound itself.