Bonhoeffer and King

Short Review: Bonhoeffer and King is a series of 18 essays that all look at different aspects of how King and Bonhoeffer together left a legacy on modern Christian social thought. I have read a number of books about both of them and I still learned a number of new things about both. Even though their deaths were 24 years apart, they were both 39 when they were killed, both in April. Both had PhDs but were known for their practical theology as well as their intellectual work. Both were significantly impacted by the Black church, although that is probably an under-appriciated fact for Bonhoeffer. And both were far from perfect. Part of what is helpful about this book is that it is attempting to keep the look at these two from narrowing how we allow them to speak to us.

Saints or heroes can have their influence become idealized. It is I think easier to see with MLK, but we often want to see King as having a dream but not as one that spoke as much about poverty and against war and violence as he did about other subjects. The fact that one of King's famous speeches, against the appeal to materialism and for the more important things to live could be turned into a Superbowl commercial to sell trucks shows how far we are from actually understanding what King was about.

Because these are independent essays, I meandered through the book over about 10 weeks. But it is worth reading and frankly one of the better books I have read on either of them. It isn't perfect, no book of essays by 18 different authors is. But it is good.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/bonhoeffer-and-king/