JWK: Is it fair to say, Religionless Christianity grows out of Letter to the American Church?

Eric Metaxas: Basically, it does, yes, but, at the same time, it stands on its own.”Religionless Christianity” is a phrase made famous by the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Many people know that I wrote a biography  of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was the first time that I became acquainted with the term “religionless Christianity.” What I didn’t realize was that it was a very controversial term because it was misinterpreted.

In the book Religionless Christianity I tell the story of how Bonhoeffer used this phrase. He was in the Gestapo prison in the last year of his life before he was murdered by the Nazis. He used this phrase in a letter to his best friend Eberhard Bethge. Eberhard Bethga was his best friend and really carried his legacy after he died. Bethga was, like Bonhoeffer, a theological genius and somebody that understood Bonhoeffer, being very close to him.

So, in this letter Bonhoeffer say, deceptively, “What happened in Germany? Here we are, I’m in this Gestapo prison, Germany has been lost to the evil of the Nazis. How did we fail?” Bonhoeffer, answering his own question really, says “What we needed – and what we didn’t have – was a religionless Christianity.” In other words, he’s using the word “religion” as a pejorative – saying that it was just religiosity. It was just playing church, people saying that “Oh, we just want to preach the Gospel. We don’t want to get involved in standing against the Nazis.” He said “If we had had a real Christianity – a religionless Christianity – that was willing to live out that faith heroically, as God calls us to do, we would not have ended up here.”

So, he uses that phrase “religionless Christianity” as the idea of what could have stood against evil. I say we need to use that phrase – and we need to understand that concept. What does it mean, on the one hand, to really live out your faith, to live out religionless Christianity the way Bonhoeffer says, and then what does it look like when Christians fail to do that? What does it look like when we are being merely religious? When we’re playing at religion. When we’re playing at church? We’re playing church rather being the Church? It strikes me that that is the central issue of our day. It is why evil is prevailing in our culture – because many Christians have somehow adopted this false “religious” idea of the faith versus the actual faith that martyrs have died for, that Jesus and the Apostles gave to us.

JWK: When it comes to applying the lessons of Nazi Germany to America and the world today, have you found that people have been agreeing with you or have you been meeting with resistance? What sort of response have you been getting? 

EM: I have to say that the response has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s been extraordinary to see people not just getting this but wanting to be the solution – wanting to really be the Church, as I say, and not play at being the Church. I think there are many people also that realize that they have been going to churches that have just been playing church.

I refer to, in the book Religionless Christianity, this apocryphal story of the early part of World War II. Jews are being taken in boxcars to the death camps. A particular church heard the cries of those in the boxcars which ran very near the church. The pastor just said “Sing louder,” in a sense, to drown out this unpleasant sound “Let’s just sing for the Lord!”…Bonhoeffer actually said that “He who does not speak out for the Jews has no right to sing Gregorian chants, has no right to sing hymns to God, if he is not doing what God has called him to do in the first place.” That’s a dramatic statement and it’s a dramatic indictment of the German Christians at a time when God was calling them to be His voice against evil. We know what happened in Germany. The question is do we see it happening today?

I see the same thing happening today. Many people are saying “We don’t do politics in our church. We don’t want to get involved in anything controversial.” God is calling you to get involved in these controversial things for the sake of people who are suffering. We’re commanded to love our neighbors. If you’re commanded to love your neighbors you’re gonna do anything you can, including get involved politically if necessary, to make sure that you’re neighbors are blessed and that they can live in a country where there is justice for all, where there is religious liberty, where is love for those who are suffering and that we would do what we can. That doesn’t happen by itself. God’s people have always been central in those kinds of things.

So, there are times when the Church says “We don’t want any trouble.” Well, God calls us to that trouble. It’s why we were born into the world and why He died for us on the Cross. This is really a moment in America where we get to decide which side do I want to be on? Do I want to be just playing church and be guilty the way that many Germans were guilty at that time or do I want to be part of the solution. I really think that the stakes could not be more dramatic, unfortunately.

JWK: What you’re saying reminds me of “good trouble,” a phrase associated with the late Rep. John Conyers regarding the Civil Rights movement. (He once said “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”) Are you saying the same thing, more or less?