This year we celebrate 80 years since the end of the Second World War. It’s a remarkable gift from God that countries that were once in conflict have found a way to not only reconcile their differences but work, trade, cooperate, and live together in peace.
It’s a peace we perhaps have come to take for granted, and, with conflict once again rearing its brutal head in Europe and the Middle East, I fear it is also a fragile peace.
Ironically, the fear that neighbouring conflicts bring is re-energising the toxic populist nationalism that marked pre-war Europe in the last century. Once more immigrants are a convenient scapegoat, as demonstrated by the current tide of opinion that suggests we should simply close our borders to migration. Anti-immigration evangelists are telling us that we don’t want our Judeo-Christian heritage being diluted by all these foreigners coming here from such places as Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Of course, there would be no Christian heritage in the UK if it weren’t for a Middle Eastern former child refugee – Jesus. His family’s flight to Egypt was no coincidence. Not only did it fulfil ancient prophecy recorded by the prophet Hosea, but it also speaks powerfully to us 2,000 years later, in a world where over 120million people are forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence and human-rights violations.
How do we, as individual Christians, stand up for truth, compassion and justice in a time of fragile peace? In my own reflection on this question, I have been drawn to the work of the German Christian leader Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who stood against the increasing populism and racism that paved the way for Hitler’s tyranny. He is most well-known for calling the church to the costly discipleship that the cross of Christ demands, but he also called the church to be a community of resistance.
In a sermon on 2 Corinthians 12:9, given in London, Bonhoeffer said: ‘Christianity stands or falls by its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power, and by its apologia for the weak.’ I feel that Christianity is doing too little in making these points rather than doing too much. Christianity has adjusted itself much too easily to the worship of power. It should give much more offence, more shock to the world, than it is doing. Christianity should take a much more definite stand for the weak than for the potential moral right of the strong.
Bonhoeffer tried to live this out at great personal cost. He courageously spoke out against the xenophobia and antisemitism that he saw both in the country’s leadership and in the church. Eventually he was arrested and imprisoned. Two weeks before the end of the war he was executed – this year marks the 80th anniversary of his death.
Perversely, some have sought to commandeer Bonhoeffer’s life and legacy to support toxic Christian nationalism. However, from my own reading of his work, I believe we should hear afresh Bonhoeffer’s call to discipleship and resistance of evil. Let’s take a definite stand for the weak as our revolutionary protest against violence and abuse of power.
Re-examining the call to love the stranger
In 2015, one image of a three-year-old boy washed up on a beach in Turkey changed the way the world …