Post by Navahang.com.
I've been enjoying Charles Marsh's brilliant new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Strange Glory. Nearing his 30th birthday, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to organize an alternative seminary for pastors determined to resist the nazification of the German church. "The damage done to the credibility of our preaching by our life and by our [hesitation and] uncertainty," he said in 1935, "compels us to think again and to embark upon new practical ventures." At Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer's experiment in the gospel truth, young seminarians "longed for something more than slogans and abstractions, more than new wine in old wineskins" (Marsh, 234).
Marsh describes the "life together" of Finkenwalde and the generous and almost monastic commitments of the seminarians. At the heart of their daily practice was music: reclaiming the great hymns of the ancient church and embracing the courageous spirituals of the American south. In singing together, the dissident pastors found both beauty and the spirit of Christ--and the power to take a dangerous and faithful stand against bigotry and nationalism.
Watching the video above, I'm struck again by the power of music to evoke and inspire. And I pray that the peoples of the world--all over the world--might find in singing a new sense of purpose.
