Book Description

"This book aims to show how and why for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from the conclusion of his student years in Berlin to his death on the Nazi gallows at Flossenburg, the ecumenical movement was central to his concerns. Of course during these years he fulfilled several distinct roles: academic theologian and teacher, leading protagonist for the Confessing Church, pastor, seminary director and - most dramatically and controversially - willing participant in the German resistance and the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. But it is his commitment and active involvement in the ecumenical movement that forms the most continuous thread of his life and activity, and links all his various engagements. Equally, the challenge that he laid down to that movement in his time remains a legacy which has still to be fully claimed by the ecumenical world today." -- from the Preface *** "One of my theological heroes is German Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. What I have not known but learned by reading Keith Clements' new book, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ecumenical Quest, was how important Catholicism was in shaping his view of the church universal and, indeed, his own theology. So now those of us who have long seen Bonhoeffer as a model of how to stand against evil in tortuous times can add to that picture Bonhoeffer as a model for how to learn from and engage with a faith tradition different from our own." -- Bill Tammeus, National Catholic Reporter, June 2015 [Subject: Religious Studies, Christianity, Biography]