Was religion a rational or emotional experience for Bonhoeffer?
Though he was an intellectual and first-rate theologian, Bonhoeffer was moved by emotion. He found it in the black churches of New York City. He heard songs that brought the congregation together and lifted them up. He discovered the raw, physical expression of love for God that he hadn’t felt in Germany. In Harlem, he also learned how churches could become an avenue for social change. That, too, had not generally been the case in Germany. Among New York blacks, he found a suffering people coming together to try and transform their world. He took that lesson of social action back and applied it to Jews in Nazi Germany. The emotional element of religion showed him a path he had never known. That passion gave him an opportunity to see his world in a different way. For many people, religion involves two worlds—the one we’re walking in now and the world to come that God promised us. Christians should thus be prayerful and get through the first as best they can, always keeping their main fo
