[April 2003 journal entry]
During a breakfast conversation while visiting Berlin with Renate Bethge, I asked Renate when she noticed interest in Dietrich increasing after the war’s end. She pointed to the 1963 publication of John A. T. Robinson’s Honest to God and asked my thoughts as to the link. I described for her two competing and contrasting paradigms in the United States at that time – (1) a fundamentalist/nonscientific/‘religious’ paradigm that in the 1950s had considerable momentum and (2) a modern/scientific/secularizing paradigm that in the 1950s was beginning to show rapidly expanding breakthroughs, the results of which (along with the underlying information base) were trickling into public knowledge (in media and education) at a time when the US population was becoming less and less rural. We discussed what I understand to have been the core proposition of the Altizer, Hamilton, Vahanian, Cox, et al professional theologians who fueled a debate sensationalized by the 8 April 1966 Time issue with its ‘Is God Dead?’ cover and lead story – i.e., that the apparent vitality/momentum of fundamentalist/evangelical ‘religion’ in the United States distracted from the deeper reality that Sunday’s ‘God’ language was in fact ‘dead’ on Monday. I suspect these theologians assumed/expected that individuals when challenged (1) would want to live authentically ‘in the world’ and (2) would want to integrate Sunday and Monday. If so, they miscalculated on both counts. In the ‘religious’ sphere toward the fundamentalist/evangelical end of the theological spectrum, the ‘God is dead’ theologies/ians were dismissed (e.g., the God is not dead . . . I spoke to him last night bumper stickers). This dismissal was made easier by the fact that the theologians speaking of ‘God’ as dead were perceived as academic theologians rather than as pastors/ministers. ‘Religious’ leaders toward the liberal end of the theological spectrum who took seriously their ‘God is dead’ point risked losing many disturbed/insecure members to fundamentalist/evangelical churches by acting on such realization. Robinson’s Honest to God was jolting in at least two ways – (1) he was a churchman (though somewhat weakened as a influential witness to fundamentalists/evangelicals by being a liberal Anglican and at the end of his career) and (2) he referenced Bonhoeffer’s prison correspondence (when Bonhoeffer was known in the United States ‘religious’ sphere primarily by his pre-1939 Confessing Church years/writings).
During a breakfast conversation while visiting Berlin with Renate Bethge, I asked Renate when she noticed interest in Dietrich increasing after the war’s end. She pointed to the 1963 publication of John A. T. Robinson’s Honest to God and asked my thoughts as to the link. I described for her two competing and contrasting paradigms in the United States at that time – (1) a fundamentalist/nonscientific/‘religious’ paradigm that in the 1950s had considerable momentum and (2) a modern/scientific/secularizing paradigm that in the 1950s was beginning to show rapidly expanding breakthroughs, the results of which (along with the underlying information base) were trickling into public knowledge (in media and education) at a time when the US population was becoming less and less rural. We discussed what I understand to have been the core proposition of the Altizer, Hamilton, Vahanian, Cox, et al professional theologians who fueled a debate sensationalized by the 8 April 1966 Time issue with its ‘Is God Dead?’ cover and lead story – i.e., that the apparent vitality/momentum of fundamentalist/evangelical ‘religion’ in the United States distracted from the deeper reality that Sunday’s ‘God’ language was in fact ‘dead’ on Monday. I suspect these theologians assumed/expected that individuals when challenged (1) would want to live authentically ‘in the world’ and (2) would want to integrate Sunday and Monday. If so, they miscalculated on both counts. In the ‘religious’ sphere toward the fundamentalist/evangelical end of the theological spectrum, the ‘God is dead’ theologies/ians were dismissed (e.g., the God is not dead . . . I spoke to him last night bumper stickers). This dismissal was made easier by the fact that the theologians speaking of ‘God’ as dead were perceived as academic theologians rather than as pastors/ministers. ‘Religious’ leaders toward the liberal end of the theological spectrum who took seriously their ‘God is dead’ point risked losing many disturbed/insecure members to fundamentalist/evangelical churches by acting on such realization. Robinson’s Honest to God was jolting in at least two ways – (1) he was a churchman (though somewhat weakened as a influential witness to fundamentalists/evangelicals by being a liberal Anglican and at the end of his career) and (2) he referenced Bonhoeffer’s prison correspondence (when Bonhoeffer was known in the United States ‘religious’ sphere primarily by his pre-1939 Confessing Church years/writings).