The Pastor Who Refused Cheap Grace

In 1935, Dietrich Bonhoeffer opened an illegal seminary in Finkenwalde, a small town on the Baltic coast of Germany. The Reich church had already capitulated, draping swastikas over altars and preaching a gospel scrubbed of anything that might offend the state. Most clergy kept quiet. They had not abandoned the faith exactly — they had simply made it invisible. Bonhoeffer called this "cheap grace" — the kind of religion that costs nothing and changes nothing.…