The Plumb Line of Finkenwalde

In 1935, Dietrich Bonhoeffer opened an underground seminary at Finkenwalde, a small town on the Baltic coast of Germany. The Reich Church had made its peace with Hitler, draping swastikas alongside crosses and rewriting theology to suit the regime. Most clergy went along quietly.

Bonhoeffer refused. He held Scripture as a plumb line against the crooked walls of German Christianity and declared them dangerously out of true. For this, church officials told him what Amaziah told Amos: Go somewhere else. Stop making trouble here. Your message is unwelcome in this sanctuary.

Like the shepherd-prophet from Tekoa, Bonhoeffer had not chosen this calling for comfort. He had studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York, pastored congregations in London — he could have stayed safely abroad. Instead, he returned to Germany because he believed God's standard of righteousness could not be softened to accommodate power.

The Gestapo closed Finkenwalde in 1937. Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed at Flossenburg in April 1945, just weeks before liberation.