(From WHO IS CHRIST FOR US? Dietrich Bonhoeffer
writings / lecture excerpts, pages 40-41, Publisher
FORTRESS, 2002)
What inexorably moves me is the question:
what Christianity is or who Christ really
is for us today. The time when one
could express this to others through
words -- be they theological or pious
words -- is gone. Likewise gone is the time
of inwardness and of the conscience;
that means in general the time of
religion. We are entering into a fully
religionless time. People, such as they
once were, can simply no longer be
religious. . .How can Christ also become
the Lord of the religionless?. . .What do
the church, congregation, preaching,
liturgy, or the Christian life mean in
a religionless world?. . .How do we
speak "secularly" about God? How
can we be religionless/secularized
Christians? How can we be ek-klesia
[Greek for called out ones] those
who are called out, without under-
standing ourselves religiously as
the privileged ones, but rather as
those who belong entirely to the
world? Christ then becomes no
longer the object of religion
but something entirely different,
truly the LORD of the world.
Bonhoeffer wrote these
paragraphs while imprisoned
1944.
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