Bonhoeffer and Buchman: amazing common points

I just recently read the very interesting text by Mel Barger: Failure and Success in Stalking Hitler. (http://www.melbarger.com/Stalking_Hitler.html) Mel Barger compares Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Frank Buchman with respect to their actions vis-à-vis Hitler. I found myself writing back a few precisions and gradually a more complete paper which you are now reading for what it’s worth.

What is the point of comparing Bonhoeffer and Buchman I asked myself? If the question is to assess how much and why both were mistaken in their initiatives about Hitler, then it would be worthwhile to bring in an external comparison point, I'll use for that the French pacifist pastor André Trocmé who, although he had been sent to a minor rural parish, made the most of what he could have an influence on. Not only did he see the Holocaust coming but he managed to catalyse a whole network of people which saved several thousands of Jewish lives. But beyond the Hitler question the points of convergence of Bonhoeffer and Buchman can teach us many lessons.

To start with the Hitler question I found Mel Barger’s evaluation needlessly harsh on Bonhoeffer. Why the irony of the expression "a promotion to sainthood"? Bonhoeffer is indeed a martyr and no doubt a model for many Christians as theology, courage and consistent individual behaviour are associated within the same person. It is equally pointless to write that he was "probably unsuited for the brutal business of engineering a high-level hit on a highly guarded political leader", as Bonhoeffer did not even try to engineer any operation to kill Hitler. He was part of a resistance network hidden and protected by the counter-spying service of Admiral Canaris but he did not "advocate" violence against the person of Hitler, he tolerated it as a last resort – after due wresting with this moral dilemma. When Canaris fell, Bonhoeffer and many others fell with him. However courageous the work of the German resistance was it did not succeed in loosening the Nazis’ grip on German society. Too few people had seen early on the evil nature of Nazism and too few people were ready to risk their life in fighting it once Nazism had taken control. But may the German resistance's strategy failed by very little.

On Buchman Mel Barger does well to remind us that Frank Buchman was the main source of inspiration of the founder of the Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) and of the numerous other mutual help groups which recycled the methods of the AA. Although rather sympathetic to Buchman, Barger still undervalues Buchman’s contribution to post-WWII peace. Buchman’s greatest political achievement is twofold: first his personal role in saving the French-German reconciliation when it was breaking up in 1949-1950. He basically put Adenauer and Schumann in contact with a personal recommendation at a time when they did not know whom to turn to to establish a trust-based relationship at a time when hidden agendas and suspicions were undermining the French German rapprochement. This was a brilliant move, since the Adenauer-Schuman relationship was the base of the first European agreement, the European Coal and Steel Community, announced in May 1950. Then of course he brought many people to a process of personal healing which helped the two nations get reconciled at a deep level:
thousands of people were trained in reconciliation in Caux, the IofC conference center in Switzerland, or during trips by a mobile force in Germany (IofC stands for Initiatives of Change, a name which eventually replaced the rather confusing name of Moral Re-Armament more than 60 years after it was chosen by Frank Buchman to define his work). For these feats Buchman received the Légion d’Honneur from Robert Schuman and the Great Cross of Merit from Conrad Adenauer. On Hitler Frank Buchman did suffer from overconfidence. His direct life-changing approach had worked so many times! It rested on listening to the inner voice, to the principle of challenging oneself, on dialogue and aligning one’s behaviour on universal moral principles – tackling the Nazis with these tools was what you could call a long shot - although Gandhi, using the same fundamental philosophy, did fight efficiently against the English occupation of India. It is the privilege of visionaries to remain free of any form of cynicism and to always believe in the possible redemption of human conscience. If only a few top Nazi leaders had bought it, the effect would have been major. This strategy was no less legitimate than what the German Resistance tried to do (nor more). May be it failed by only a very little margin too.
Then there is the careless interview with the New York World-Telegram which shows that like so many others back in 1936 Frank Buchman was not fully aware of the Holocaust. From the tone of his declaration, it is obvious that he did not have outright extermination in mind. He also again overestimated his persuasion powers, here against a malicious journalist.

That is where the comparison with André Trocmé is valuable. He served as a pastor in the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in South-Central France. He had been sent to this rather remote parish before WWII because of his pacifist positions which were not well received by the French Protestant Church. Following closely the developments in Germany as well as in France, he often preached against the mounting anti-Semitism and urged his congregation to help fight it. In 1938, with his colleague Edouard Theis he founded the Collège Lycée International Cévenol ostensibly to help prepare local country youngsters to enter university. Soon after however the first refugees arrived and the Collège cévenol took in many young Jewish refugees, enabling them to continue their secondary education. When France fell to Nazi Germany, André Trocmé and his wife Magda became instrumental in a wide rescue network organizing the escape of Jews. Acting as a catalyst and as an example they led Le Chambon and the surrounding villages to become a unique haven in Nazi-occupied France, saving several thousands of Jews (no exact figures are known). There were difficulties and a few arrests among which Daniel Trocmé, André's second cousin, but on the whole the community remained remarkably united and refused to give any information to the authorities, following the example set forth many time by the pastors and teachers of the village (“We know no Jews, only human beings,” they used to answer when queried.)
The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem chose exceptionally to honour the whole village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the neighbouring communities. The village and the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon have become a symbol of the rescue of Jews in France during WWII, highlighted again in 2004 by President Jacques Chirac in a highly symbolic visit.
While André Trocmé was in no position to stop the Nazi machine - although it would have been seriously derailed if there had been more Le Chambon - he certainly scores high on clear-sightedness. How was he able to foresee so clearly what was brewing and to prepare so efficiently for what would follow? I can think of several objective and subjective factors: he was multi-cultural, his mother was German, his wife was Italian and Russian; he had lived in occupied territory during WWI in the north of France; he was a keen observer of Germany because of his contacts with German pastors through his pacifist network; subjectively, as a pacifist, he was on high alert with respect to anything militarist or to any preparation for a possible new conflict. With these spectacles on, his evaluation of Hitler must have exceeded his worst nightmares long before WWII!
Bonhoeffer and Buchman also had spectacles on, which, as spectacles always do, helped them see certain things but prevented them from seeing a few others. I would suggest that Bonhoeffer had evangelical specs which helped him detect the wrongs of the basically pagan Nazi ideology while Buchman had anti-communist specs on, which blinded him partly regarding Nazism (“My barber in London told me Hitler saved Europe from Communism.”) The lesson from this comparison is clear for today: use our international networks to keep abreast of any development of agressive policies, beware of any preconceived idea, prepare for whatever storm may be coming our way as soon as possible.

Finally beside the Hitler question it appears that Bonhoeffer and Buchman shared many theological points, had the same intuition about where society was headed but acted differently.
Bonheoffer remained strongly connected to the German Evangelical theological tradition. However the tough period of Nazism, Jewish holocaust and war brought him to interesting conclusions about what tomorrow’s church would be like: he produced the theory of irreligious Christianity, a reality which he claimed to only start to understand himself. (“But we too are being driven back to first principles. Atonement and redemption, regeneration, the Holy Ghost, the love of our enemies, the cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship all these things have become so problematic and so remote that we hardly dare any more to speak of them. In the traditional rite and ceremonies we are groping after something new and revolutionary without being able to understand it or utter it yet. That is our own fault. During these years the Church has fought for self-preservation as though it were an end in itself, and has thereby lost its chance to speak a word of reconciliation to mankind and the world at large. So our traditional language must perforce become powerless and remain silent, and our Christianity today will be confined to praying for and doing right by our fellow men. Christian thinking, speaking and organization must be reborn out of this praying and this action. By the time you are grown up, the form of the Church will have changed beyond recognition.” (Thoughts on the Baptism of D.W.R. in Prisoner for God, Letters and Papers from Prison.)

Amazingly Buchman, the pragmatist, started to experiment what Bonhoeffer predicted. By launching Moral Re-Armament in 1938, Buchman put his foot in the door of irreligious Christianity. For Buchman, who may still have been moved by his missionary training, it was essential to put the core of the Christian experience at the disposal of everyone, no matter their beliefs, to put people in touch with God and let Him do the rest. Today, the international network called Initiatives of Change gathers people of all spiritual and philosophical backgrounds around what is at heart the essence of Christian philosophy as we will see later. Nevertheless, the successive global leaders of this network, which was incorporated internationally only in 1999, have been Cornelio Sommaruga a Swiss Catholic, then Mohamed Sahnoun an Algerian Muslim and then Rajmohan Gandhi, an Indian Hindu. The additional challenge however is to accommodate non-believers as well as believers in the same spirit of unity.

When I say the essence of Christian philosophy, it is not to be taken lightly. Amazingly again Bonhoeffer and Buchman lead us on the same path, the one outlined by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount: living by demanding moral values first, then acknowledging our shortcomings and then searching for help from a superior power.

Frank Buchman offers the essentials of the Sermon on the Mount in the guise of the famous Four Absolutes or Four Standards. They were originally formulated in a book entitled The Principles of Jesus, by American Presbyterian missionary Dr. Robert E. Speer. Citing verses from the Bible for each proposition, Speer laid down four principles which he believed represented the uncompromising moral principles taught by Jesus. The term “four absolutes” was popularized by a proper theologian, Professor Henry B. Wright of Yale University Divinity School, who cited and enriched Speer’s work. And Wright’s immense influence on Frank Buchman resulted in the adoption of the Four Absolutes by himself and by his spiritual offspring, the AA and the Oxford Groups. (Bill Wilson of the AA claimed they were incorporated into his Steps Six and Seven.) The word absolute was brought in to underline the utmost importance of concretely aligning our life with the demands of Jesus.

The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer's most widely read book, begins by opposing cheap grace and costly grace: "Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. (…) Cheap grace is the justification of sin, not of the sinner. Since grace is automatic, everything can just remain as before. (…) Cheap grace is forgiveness without repentance. (…) Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field: because of it, the man who found it went and sold joyously all he had; it is the pearl of great price: to acquire it, the merchant gives up all his belongings; it is the reign of Christ: because of it, a man gouges out the eye which causes him to sin; it is the calling of Jesus Christ: upon hearing it, the disciple leaves his nets and follows Jesus." At the center of his thesis of costly grace we find a fairly strict interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount: what Jesus demanded of his followers we are supposed to really do – now. The keyword of the first part of the book is obedience, concrete, total and joyous obedience, putting one’s feet in the footstep of Jesus, becoming a real disciple of Jesus. The life of discipleship advocated by Bonhoeffer is the exactly one advocated by Buchman in a more universally accessible language.

Although he thought and talked about irreligious Christianity, Bonhoeffer made it plain that he could not appreciate the absence of explicit Christian content within the Oxford groups; at the same time he recognised that the Oxford Groups were onto something. “People like, for instance, Schütz, or the Oxford Group (…) are dangerous reactionaries, retrogressive because they go straight back behind the approach of revelation, theology and seek for 'religious' renewal. They simply do not understand the problem at all, and what they say is entirely beside the point. There is no future for them (though the Oxford people would have the biggest chance if they were not so completely devoid of biblical substance).” Letter, June 8th, 1944, in Prisoner for God, Letters and Papers from Prison. This passage shows that Bonhoeffer’s information was mostly hearsay. We can only regret that Buchman and Bonhoeffer never met.

Both Bonhoeffer and Buchman left us with a message of great significance for our largely irreligious society. Bonhoeffer writings keep better – and there are many more of them; he thought and wrote with amazing clarity albeit in theological language. I definitely recommended reading his books. Buchman’s legacy is embodied in the modest but persistent and now developing again network called Initiatives of Change which is as close as one can get to irreligious Christianity and to the need for a meeting space open to the whole world, allowing humankind to build trust beyond race, nation or religion and to consider how to best tackle the daunting challenges of human survival in the 21st and 22nd centuries.