Bonhoeffer and King: Speaking Truth to Power

Bonhoeffer and King: Speaking fact to Power. By J. Deotis Roberts. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Pres 2005 160 pages.

This work proves that despite the numerous writings upon Martin Luther King Jr., scholarship upon this national and international icon is far from exhaustion. Indeed, Roberts himself implies the ne for a more thorough and definitive research on King and Bonhoeffer, and upon Afrikan American and Jewish relations. In addition, ethicists should welcome a true copy on King's method of making moral decisions, although the author's treatment of the bring under rule is rather thin.

This true copy is comprised of three parts, inclusive of fourteen chapters, a conclusion, notes, and a fix upon bibliography. Most of the chapters are six to eight pages in extent and all are generally well written. Despite having base no evidence that King read or studied Bonhoeffer or that any of King's teachers taught Bonhoeffer the author does an admirable piece of work of noting similarities and differences between the sum of two units men. We find, for example, that they were house of worship theologians; experienced spiritual and theological disclosure earlier than many; completed doctorates in theology; were influenced in single way or another by Reinhold Niebuhr; had pastoral experience on the contrary felt called to ministry beyond the pulpit; emphasized have affection for in action; sought to speak reality to the powers; were well aware of human personal sin on the contrary focused on social and collective sins; and were influenced by the agency of the life, work, and witness of Gandhi (x 12 25 29 55 66)

Part 1 (chapters 1-4) introduces the social and historical connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss of each man. It also provides brief biographical discussions and considerations of their years of academic preparation, their spiritual disclosure as well as discussions upon their early experience in ministry. Part 2 (chapters 5-9) examines the various influences upon their theological development. We also find here an examination of racial and ethnic factors that affected and influenced each man and by what mode each responded to them. There is an important consideration of the meaning of Christian have affection for for King and Bonhoeffer, the pair in theory and in practice, as well as discussions upon how each experienced and answered to social or collective evils. Part 3 (chapters 10-14) provides a faculty of perception of how the two men viewed the nature and meaning of the relationship between house of god and state, how each made moral decisions, and the congeal meaning of each man's effort to be faithful in the neighborhood of the powers in his respective connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts The book ends with an informative summary and conclusion. In light of this I would say that the best way to approach reading this volume is to read carefully the preface and the conclusion, followed by the agency of the chapters.

The reader gains a good sense of the Christian social activism of Bonhoeffer and King, each of whom sought social justice to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice. one as well as the other men had a theologically cloded social vision and action, with Bonhoeffer possessing a high, and King a depressed christology. Roberts begins each chapter, save the eighth, with discussions upon Bonhoeffer, followed by King, primarily because Bonhoeffer was involved in ministry while King was still in the formative intellectual stage of his exhibition However, because King set forth his views upon collective evil so emphatically, Roberts discusses his stance first and Bonhoeffer's next to the first (55). Bonhoeffer's view of collective social evil is apparently more difficult to ascertain, which may explain partially on what account this discussion is not as sharp as that upon King (58-59).

Roberts notes the centrality of the exhortation on the Mount for Bonhoeffer King, and Gandhi, the latter whom the couple men respected and whose ideas and nonviolent practice they admired. We learn that Bonhoeffer had wanted to visit Gandhi in India and had made plans to do thus a number of times, on the other hand the tragic events of Nazi Germany impedeed it. King did not convenient Gandhi, but visited India with Mr King and others in 1957

I want now to make comments [i]or[/i] remarks briefly on several areas of belong to this book raises for me These have primarily to do with matters of scholarship. Although I am not as familiar with Bonhoeffer's work, there are a number of places where, surprisingly, Roberts either wanders or makes misleading claims about King. Moreover, there is not always shut attention to details, such as the citing of accurate page numbers in relations (see 141n5-8). In the following paragraphs I note a not many of Roberts's erroneous or misleading remarks

Roberts errs in stating that George W Davis, King's advisor and mentor in seminary, earned his graduate stage from Boston University (37). In fact, Davis earned the PhD stage from Yale. In addition, despite the author's informative discussions upon the Barthian and Niebuhrian influences upon Bonhoeffer and King, respectively, Roberts fails to examine the expanse to which King was influenced through the Christian realism-the emphasis upon the depth of individual and collective sin-as exhibited in the ministry of Daddy King, William Holme Borders, and King's Morehouse body teachers and mentors, such as Benjamin Mays, Samuel Williams, George Kelsey and Walter Chivers. Roberts is quite correct to emphasize the step to which Niebuhr influenced King (and Bonhoeffer who, thanks to Niebuhr, was introduced to black literature and music [126]); I would argue, however, that King was the recipient of a of domestic manufacture realism long before reading Niebuhr, and that this in part l to his athletic attraction to Niebuhr's emphasis upon the depth of sin upon every level of human achievement. Furthermore, it must be recalled that King himself experienced racism a number of times as a child and young man, directly and indirectly, and thus must have already had a of great depth sense of the prevalence of social sin.