News Archives - 2009

Coming to Bonhoeffer

Lori Brandt Hale says that in "Bonhoeffer circles," they say you either come to Bonhoeffer slowly or all at once. Knowing her, it may be hard to imagine that she came to the German theologian slowly.

Brandt Hale, an associate professor of religion at Augsburg, encountered Bonhoeffer's work during her undergraduate studies and then again in graduate school. Her primary interest, however, was in community, so she focused her research on other philosophers and theologians.

"People kept saying 'If you really want to read about community, you need to read Bonhoeffer,'" but the more her colleagues suggested it, the more she resisted the idea. "Finally I said, 'Ok, fine. I'll read Bonhoeffer.'"

She started reading everything, not just Bonhoeffer's theology but his life story as well. When it came time to writer her doctoral dissertation, the topic of her writing was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work on what it means to love one's enemies.

A German Lutheran pastor, Bonhoeffer considered himself a pacifist. Brandt Hale says that because of the Nazi atrocities during WWII, he got involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. He was imprisoned the last two years of his life and was executed as a war criminal about three weeks before the end of the war. He was 39 years old when he died.

This week Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes to Augsburg as the College hosts the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Lectures in Public Ethics, held annually by the International Bonhoeffer Society. Brandt Hale and John Matthews, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Apple Valley, helped bring the lectures to the Twin Cities for the first time ever.

Bonhoeffer Lectures in Public Ethics – Genocide: Past and Present

Thursday, October 8, Temple Israel, Minneapolis

7 p.m. "Genocide in Rwanda: Living Through and Learning From . . ." General (Ret) Romeo A. Dallaire, Force Commander of UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda, 1993-1994

Friday, October 9, Hoversten Chapel, Foss Center

8:30 a.m. "The Ongoing Genocide of Native Americans: Gender-Based Violence" Suzanne Koepplinger, Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center

10 a.m. "Truth-telling & Advocacy Regarding Genocide" (Darfur), Mark Hanis, Genocide Intervention Network

12:30 p.m. Sabina Zimering, Holocaust Survivor

2:30 p.m. "Bonhoeffer's Witness During the Holocaust: Its Meaning Then – Its Significance Now" Victoria Barnett, United States Memorial Holocaust Museum

4:30 p.m. "Resistance and Rescue: Applied Ethics against the Armenian Genocide" Hermann Goltz, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

7:30 p.m. "Who Remembers the Armenian Genocide?" H. Goltz

Visit the Camp Darfur exhibit in the Christensen Center.