Lessons From Bonhoeffer On Speaking Up For The Voiceless

Pro-lifer Randy Alcorn has an engaging post up about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian of Hitler’s day who was put to death for plotting to assassinate Hitler. He discusses the similarities in the failure of Christians of Bonhoeffer’s day to stand up for Jews and the failures of Christians today to stand up for the Unborn.

There are remarkable similarities.

Here’s just a sample of Randy’s posting.

Bonhoeffer did what God’s people in any country at any time should be willing to do: stand up for the true Jesus, the only Savior. Jesus, God’s Son. Jesus, the Jew. They should speak up for the disadvantaged, who God loves. In Germany, that included the Jews. In America, that includes the poor, disabled, those suffering from racial discrimination, and unborn children, who cannot defend themselves against the atrocities of today’s death camps, the abortion clinics. (It is always far easier to see the bloodshed of another country of another time and wonder why the Christians didn’t stand up, than it is to see the atrocities of one’s own place and time, where we are failing to stand up.)

Unborn children in America are our equivalent of Jews in Germany sixty-five years ago. The church’s indifference to them, and failure to stand up in their defense, is a shame of huge proportions. Self-righteously we decry the German church’s failure to stand up for the Jews. Meanwhile we fail to stand up for the unborn. We shake our heads in disgust at the German church’s tolerance of one holocaust while ignoring our own tolerance of another.