Stephen Haynes's provocative study articulates the many motives and agendas that readers and scholars have brought to their study of Bonhoeffer, making it difficult to assess objectively the relationship of his political and religious commitments, the real meaning of his theology, and his words and actions on behalf of Jews. Reading Haynes's book helps us learn not only what Bonhoeffer has to teach us but also what it is we most desire to learn.

Should this would-be assassin be considered a Christian martyr? Find out why many think so and what martyrdom means today.

The youth ministry focus of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life is often forgotten or overlooked, even though he did much work with young people and wrote a number of papers, sermons, and addresses about or for the youth of the church. However, youth ministry expert Andrew Root explains that this focus is central to Bonhoeffer's story and thought. Root presents Bonhoeffer as the forefather and model of the growing theological turn in youth ministry. By linking contemporary youth workers with this epic theologian, the author shows the depth of youth ministry work and underscores its importance in the church. He also shows how Bonhoeffer's life and thought impact present-day youth ministry practice.

The figure of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) has become a clay puppet in modern American politics. Secular, radical, liberal, and evangelical interpreters variously shape and mold the martyr’s legacy to suit their own pet agendas. Stephen Haynes offers an incisive and clarifying perspective. A recognized Bonhoeffer expert, Haynes examines “populist” readings of Bonhoeffer, including the acclaimed biography by Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. In his analysis Haynes treats, among other things, the November 2016 election of Donald Trump and the “Bonhoeffer moment” announced by evangelicals in response to the US Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage. The Battle for Bonhoeffer includes an open letter from Haynes pointedly addressing Christians who still support Trump. Bonhoeffer’s legacy matters. Haynes redeems the life and the man.

"Stephen Haynes, whose volume The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon probed the many conflicting ways in which Bonhoeffer has been understood by Christians for their own uses, now brings new clarity to the vexed and controversial question of Bonhoeffer's relationship to Jews and the Jewish people. Haynes's text analyzes the historical record and Bonhoeffer's maturing theology and offers an analysis of Bonhoeffer himself, his work, and his legacy for a generation learning from the Holocaust."--BOOK JACKET.

From National Book Award–winning author Martin Marty, the surprising story of a Christian classic born in a Nazi prison cell For fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison is unmatched by any other book of Christian reflection written in the twentieth century. A Lutheran pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer spent two years in Nazi prisons before being executed at age thirty-nine, just a month before the German surrender, for his role in the plot to kill Hitler. The posthumous Letters and Papers from Prison has had a tremendous impact on both Christian and secular thought since it was first published in 1951, and has helped establish Bonhoeffer's reputation as one of the most important Protestant thinkers of the twentieth century. In this, the first history of the book's remarkable global career, National Book Award-winning author Martin Marty tells how and why Letters and Papers from Prison has been read and used in such dramatically different ways, from the cold war to today. In his late letters, Bonhoeffer raised tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in an increasingly secular world. Marty tells the story of how, in the 1960s and the following decades, these provocative ideas stirred a wide range of thinkers and activists, including civil rights and antiapartheid campaigners, "death-of-God" theologians, and East German Marxists. In the process of tracing the eventful and contested history of Bonhoeffer's book, Marty provides a compelling new perspective on religious and secular life in the postwar era.

How does one read the signs of the times? What does it mean to resist? How do we engage faithfully in struggle? Dietrich Bonhoeffer has achieved iconic status as one who epitomizes what it means to struggle and resist tyranny and fascism and how one acts in faithful witness as a religious and political commitment. Bonhoeffer‘s witness and example is more relevant than ever. A testimony to that is a crucial essay penned by Bonhoeffer in 1942; "After Ten Years" is a succinct and sober reflection, and remains one of the best descriptions ever written about what happened to the German people under National Socialism. This volume presents this timely and unique essay in a fresh translation and a penetrating introduction and analysis of the importance of this essay-in Bonhoeffer‘s time and now in our own.