A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #16

Reflections from journal entries

Now for another set of reflections. These reflections have been selected/adapted from journal entries written during the years we lived and worked as a family in rural East Tennessee Appalachia (November 1997-July 1999).

64 [April 1998 journal entry] My transition from ‘insider’ to ‘outsider’ re the ‘religious’ sphere (in which I was born and raised) involved at least the following factors:

1. attending public schools,
2. attending a state university,
3. choosing history as my field of study for graduate/doctoral education,
   
4. being existentially near to my first wife (d. 1987) as she fought multiple sclerosis,
   
5. entering the medical education sphere as a prompter/interpreter,
   
6. focusing on society’s marginalized and dismembered.
   

At least for me, once fully ‘outside’ there is no way back to membership in the ‘religious’ sphere with integrity. I saw too much. I learned too much. Yet this ‘outside’ experience is daunting (e.g., the patience necessary as ‘religious’ language and experience die, as familiar places and relationships diminish, as the number of previous acquaintances with whom to talk shrinks, as what lies ahead remains uncertain).

The ‘outsider’ approach to ethics, spirituality, theology I am following

1. requires a critical/historical approach to Jewish scripture and Christian scripture,
   
2. has the ‘scrap heap’ Job and Ecclesiastes’ Koheleth as the entry/exit points for studying the life of ‘Jesus’,
3. regards organized ‘religion’ today to be equivalent to the organized ‘religion’ in Jesus’ day,
   
4. exercises an existential honesty and a face-to-face posture toward being human in concrete situations, with the focus on the most vulnerable,
   
5. measures ideas/convictions from the perspective of those in greatest vulnerability,
   
6. thinks and makes decisions ‘from below’.

65 [July 1998 journal entry] What would a ‘non-religious’ reading/interpretation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer be?

1. Note the ‘non-religious’ to ‘religious’ to ‘non-religious’ movements in his life story. The ‘non-religious’ perspective at the beginning of his life was not equivalent to the ‘non-religious’ thoughts expressed in the prison correspondence.
   
2. Note interpreters of his prison correspondence who hold positions within the ‘religious’ sphere predictably offer a ‘religious’ reading/interpretation of Dietrich.
   
3. Note Eberhard Bethge’s pointing in more than one of our conversations to the significance of Dietrich’s older brother Karl-Friedrich for the formation of Dietrich’s later ‘non-religious’ ideas.

66 [July 1998 journal entry] Further thoughts about be(com)ing ‘non-religious’:

1. Is the phrase ‘beyond religion’ better than the word ‘non-religious’? or ‘outside religion’?
   
2. Moving from denomination to denomination within the ‘religious’ sphere is not be(com)ing ‘non-religious’.
3. Critiquing ‘religion’ from another sphere is not be(com)ing ‘non-religious’.
   
4. ‘Non-religious’ reflects a set of experiences and/or a decision to see, listen, think, act with unqualified integrity (i.e., not compromised by institutionalized spheres).