Bonhoeffer and Obama

Eric Metaxas has just published the first biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in forty years: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. This review at Fox News has an illuminating quote from Metaxas that should sound alarm bells in the age of Obama:

But the legacy that Bonhoeffer leaves future generations is of the untold dangers of idolizing politicians as messianic figures. Not just in the 1930s and ’40s, but today as well.

“It’s a deep temptation within us,” says Metaxas. “We need to guard against it and we need to know that it can lead to our ruin. Germany was led over the cliff, and there were many good people who were totally deluded.”

Bonhoeffer, says Metaxas, was a prophet. He was a voice crying in the wilderness. He was God’s voice at a time when almost no one was speaking out against the evil of the Nazis.

For further reading on Bonhoeffer:

Here is the International Bonhoeffer Society’s English language page, and here is a good article by a member of that society.  Here is a general biographical article from the Wikipedia.  Here is a list of his books, many of which have a limited preview available.  Here is a short selection from his most famous work, The Cost of Discipleship.  And here is the poem, “Who Am I?”

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