Theological Journal: June 6 Were You There When They Suffocated George?

Were you there when they suffocated George? We all were. Some of us were the officers involved in subduing and mercilessly taking his life. Some of us were other cops on the scene who did nothing to stop this atrocity. Yet others of us were among the onlookers, fretting and repulsed or uncomprehending what they were seeing or silently approving or at least accepting the necessity of this (ab)use of state authority.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once made this famous comment about the church’s response to social and political evil:

“In the first place it can ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and in accordance with its character as state, i.e., it can throw the state back on its responsibilities. Secondly, it can aid the victims of state action. The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.”

Each of these responses need to be undertaken by the church. We can and should join others voices in our society demanding reform in policing policy. This is happening and the church must be a part of it. We also must take care of those whom society injures and crushed by the way it is structured. Some in the church and the larger world are also doing this and must continue this work. But there is another possible response: putting “a spoke in the wheel itself.”

This must mean more than political action demanding reform. It must also mean more than caring for the victims of societal injustice. Revolution would be the option many of us in the West would put in this category. But is this what Bonhoeffer meant? Perhaps not. Bonhoeffer scholar Glenn Stassen makes this case:

“Did Bonhoeffer say we should put “a spoke in the wheel” of the state in his famous political remark in 1933? . . . That’s not what his German says. The German says the church should fall into the spokes of the wheel. The footnote in my son David’s translation of Tödt’s essay on the decisive years in Studies in Christian Ethics 18:3 says: The phrase, ‘Die Kierche dem Rad selbst in die Speichen zu fallen’, is regularly mistranslated as ‘to put a spoke in the wheel itself’. This makes no sense, since wheels already were supported in their function by the spokes in them that held them together. Wheels already have spokes in them. ‘To put a spoke in the wheel’ would hardly stop the wheel of the state; it would help the wheel roll on. It also does not translate the German, in which the object of the verb is the spokes, not the wheel. For the church to throw itself into the spokes of the wheel is a self-sacrificial effort to stop the state’s unjust momentum. The German phrase has been used in other contexts, such as ‘to throw oneself into the spokes of the wheel of fate’ in order to try to stop fate. H. E. Tödt has pointed out a use of the phrase in Bonhoeffer’s sense by A. Stoecker in 1882 and by Max Weber in 1919 in Politics as Vocation." 

So, what might “fall(ing) into the spokes of the wheel” mean? Stassen says it is “a self-sacrificial effort to stop the state’s unjust momentum.” In a letter to his brother in 1935 he wrote:

“I think I am right in saying that I would only achieve true inner clarity and honesty by really starting to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. Here alone lies the force that can blow all this hocus-pocus sky-high-like fireworks, leaving only a few burnt out shells behind. The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together and do this.” (Keith Clements. London, 1933-1935 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 13) (Kindle Locations 3061-3065). Kindle Edition)

I suggest Bonhoeffer is arguing for a revolution here, but not the “kick the bad guys out and take control of things ourselves” top-down revolt we usually think of. He is suggesting a renewal of the church around the Sermon on the Mount, “uncompromising discipleship” which he expounded in his famous book Discipleship (popular version The Cost of Discipleship). That’s the kind of revolution he believed could subvert even the mighty Third Reich. He tried to gather the church around his vision but sadly found few takers. With no other options, no credible church to form and foment meaningful opposition, he joined the resistance movement to Hitler and participated in the plot to assassinate the German Dictator. And it cost him his life on the gallows. This is but the familiar worldly version of revolution and may have done some good had it succeeded but it was not the revolution to “blow all this hocus-pocus (the Third Reich) sky-high-like fireworks, leaving only a few burnt out shells behind.” The kind of revolution only the church can perform, willing to serve and suffer among the last and the least, to give up its life for the sake of the world, to find the risen Christ ruling from his throne, the cross and willing to take up ours behind him. This is “falling into the spokes of the wheel” and making it more difficult for it to roll. This, I believe, is that third possibility of witness Bonhoeffer wanted but did not see develop around him. And that is the real tragedy of the church’s struggle with Nazism. 

We were indeed there when they suffocated George. And the church has in some measure joined the protest for reform and the healing of the victims. But I wonder what might happen here if the church were to take up Bonhoeffer’s third possibility and become a worldly monasticism committed to undergo the disciplines and learn the dynamics of that way. No one knows, of course, but I wager it is well worth a try!