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The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is also the most passionate, the wildest, and one might almost say the most revolutionary Advent hymn that has ever been sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary as we often see her portrayed in paintings. This Mary...is passionate, carried away, proud, enthusiastic. There is none of the sweet, wistful, or even playful tone of many of our Christmas carols, but instead a hard, strong, relentless hymn about the toppling of the thrones and the humiliation of the lords of this world, about the power of God and...

Nazi monster Dr. Josef Mengele is known to have ordered the murder of over 400,000 Jews at Auschwitz from 1943 to 1945. Thousands more he kept alive and mercilessly tortured to death during experiments intended to create an Aryan super-race. Much of Mengele’s “medical research” was conducted on children and newborns – especially twins. One witness described what happened after Mengele once delivered a Jewish “fetus”: “But when he saw that there was only one baby and not twins, he tore the baby right out of the mother’s uterus, threw it into an oven and walked away,” she said. “We...

A new biography is raising questions about the life and relationships of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an anti-Nazi dissident whose theological writings remain widely influential among Christians. Both left-leaning and right-leaning Christians herald the life and writings of Bonhoeffer, who was hanged for his involvement in the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. Bonhoeffer was engaged to a woman at the time of his execution, observing that he had lived a full life even though he would die a virgin. The new biography, “Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” from University of Virginia religious studies professor Charles Marsh, implies...

For the past several years toward the end of the Lenten season, I have been reminded of the sad yet heroic life and times of the brave German theologian and scholar, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Although rarely discussed in popular culture, it was on April 8, 1945, that Bonhoeffer, the young, patriot pastor, led his last worship service one week after Easter at a church associated with the Flossenburg concentration camp in the isolated Bavaria town near the Czechoslovakian border. So who exactly was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and what did he do nearly 70 years ago that he continues to be remembered as...

Today is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s birthday. Since my book on him was published three years ago, fascination with the young German pastor continues to grow. The interest is so great I’ve recently been asked to do a ten-city Bonhoeffer tour. I have to ask myself: Why are so many people intrigued by Bonhoeffer? The answer, I believe, is that the message of Bonhoeffer's life is hugely relevant today—especially when it comes to the growing threats against religious freedom. Thoughtful people see the handwriting on the wall: First there's the HHS mandate, which demands that religious organizations buy insurance that covers abortion-inducing...

America is a seething hotbed of “Islamophobia,” filled with ignorant racist rubes who irrationally fear the benign Muslim religion, according to the Obama administration’s lead investigator into the Benghazi atrocities. So said former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering in more polished, diplomatic language during an Oct. 23 panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The talk was on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia,” a make-believe mental illness that Islamists would love to have listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Radical Islam’s stateside defenders frequently accuse anti-terrorism hawks of “McCarthyism,” hurling...

Seekers of peace and social justice should take note of today's 100th birthday celebration of the life of German theologian and Nazi resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As much as anyone - and as early as anyone - Bonhoeffer spoke out against the wickedness of Adolf Hitler's regime and took some of the most significant actions to thwart it. It was Bonhoeffer and a small circle of Lutheran ministers who first condemned the virulent anti-Semitism and reawakened militarism in Germany. It was Bonhoeffer who most loudly denounced his country's suicidal summons for war. It was Bonhoeffer who attacked the timidity of German...

On April 9, 1945, 65 years ago today, just a few weeks before an allied offensive brought Germany to its knees and ended World War II in Europe, a young, mild-mannered Lutheran theologian was hanged by the Nazis in Flossenburg Concentration Camp. His crime ... conspiring to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theological genius of the 20th century, is now emerging as a war hero, martyr and spy. "What is so amazing about the story of Bonhoeffer is that he puts a completely different spin for us as Americans on World War II," says Eric Metaxas, author of "Bonhoeffer:...

In 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter from his prison cell in Nazi Germany to a young couple who had just married: Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which he wills to perpetuate the human race until the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom....

Pat Robertson made headlines this week when he offered his opinion that the United States should assassinate Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. What surprised me the most is that so many FReepers took offense to this statement. While nearly all of us fully support the war against Islamofascist terrorism, many here were outraged that a religious personality would call for the death of a totalitarian dictator. From the outset, let me say that I often disagree with Robertson. I live in Virginia Beach and have been listening to his outrageous statements for a long time. I remember ten years ago when...

I've read a bit about the German resistance to Hitler, of which Bonhoeffer was a key figure. It is not hard to find his views on NAZIism, and politics, but I haven't been able to find much on Bonhoeffer's actual religious views - besides being willing to stand up for Christianity in the face of NAZI atheism and attempted pagan/Christian fusion. So, by modern American standards would he be an evangelical? Main-line protestant (I find this doubtful)? Other? Thanks for the help freepers!

Barring the unlikely possibility of a stay, a Presbyterian minister who gunned down an abortion doctor will next week become the first American executed for anti-abortion violence. To a loyal core of admirers, Paul Hill is a martyr-to-be whose actions were justified by the Bible. To others, on both sides of the abortion debate, he is a zealot undeserving of respect or pity. "In a very significant way, it's a sad day," said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It's sad that people like Paul Hill would murder in the name of life." Hill, a 49-year-old...