Slowly But Surely, the Right Is Taking One of My Heroes for Their Own. It’s Very Hard to Watch.

They say: “Don’t meet your heroes. If you meet your heroes, you’re always going to be disappointed.”

Like all great sayings, that one has been attributed to a number of people. The specific line above comes from author James McBride, who I wasn’t surprised to learn was a minister’s kid.

As a pastor myself, and the grandchild of a pastor, I know that those of us in such families are well-versed in disappointment. Part of growing up, and part of spiritual life, is having the proverbial scales fall from your eyes, as you learn that many who promise love and good fortune end up being deceitful charlatans and grifters, only after your fidelity and your money.

Still, we all have our heroes, including me.

When I became a pastor, many of my heroes fell. I learned to read Scripture passages with an eye toward context and fuller truths, and I watched as some of my colleagues in the American church used Scripture not as a book of faith but instead as a weapon meant to divide people against one another, and incite hatred and violence.

In times like these, you cling to your remaining heroes, wherever you can find them.

For a long time, one of my few remaining heroes has been Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a German Protestant pastor, theologian, and leader in the Resistance movement against the Nazis. Bonhoeffer, about whom an eponymous biopic is being released this week, became famous for that resistance and for his assassination by the Nazi regime in a concentration camp, where he was hanged on April 9, 1945, after two years of imprisonment.

In an age of rampant access to information but elusive truth, we are all searching for quick ways to categorize one another, and to claim the best heroes for our own personal camps. Such is also the case with Bonhoeffer, whose most popular biography was written not by a German theologian, but by American conservative radio host and prominent Trump supporter Eric Metaxas. In 2011, Metaxas published a No. 1 New York Times bestselling biography of Bonhoeffer. The Bonhoeffer film that comes out this week is not officially based on Metaxas’ book, but it is being released by Utah-based Angel Studios, producer of the 2023 Christian child-sex-trafficking thriller Sound of Freedom, which starred Jim Caviezel as vigilante rescuer Tim Ballard—a man who is, in real life, beleaguered by scandal. The movie is, then, yet another claim conservatives are making to Bonhoeffer’s legacy.

Ever since I was ordained as a pastor in 2013, I’ve been carrying a copy of Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together whenever I preach or speak. Bonhoeffer’s encouragement to Christians to speak boldly on behalf of the Gospel, even at personal and social cost, and his uplifting of the injunction of the “theology of the cross,” impelling Christians to act and to avoid the promises of “cheap grace,” have been central to my writing and speaking work about the dangers of Christian nationalism. As Bonhoeffer wrote in 1937’s The Cost of Discipleship, in an assessment that applies today to much of American preaching and teaching about Christianity, cheap grace is “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” I see “cheap grace” around me when Christian leaders tell people they’re inherently good and righteous as long as they’re a mainstream, politically conservative, middle-to-upper-middle-class American, regardless of how these American Christians treat the poor or love their neighbors.

I was dismayed, then, to see Metaxas’ version of Bonhoeffer pop up in the conservative political playbook Project 2025, which uses Bonhoeffer’s argument against “cheap grace” against American progressives who argue for protection of refugees and care for the environment (without—the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin D. Roberts, who wrote the foreword, would argue—paying the economic price incurred). The foreword to Project 2025 uses Bonhoeffer as a sort of Christian martyr, giving his theological blessing on the document.

I see this as quite the Orwellian twist. To me it’s the definition of “cheap grace” to suggest that righteous Christians have no compulsion to care for migrants and those in need, and should instead spurn the desperate poor who approach America’s borders, as well as treat the Earth, God’s creation, as merely another means of capitalist production and wealth creation.

To describe Metaxas’ and Roberts’ interpretations and mine as “far apart” would be to undersell it. And among people familiar with Bonhoeffer, I’m not alone. Months later, as the election drew nearer and Metaxas continued to urge Christians (with implied support from Bonhoeffer, given his status as the man’s biographer) to vote for Trump, the Bonhoeffer family and leading Bonhoeffer scholars spoke out. In October, I received an email from leading Bonhoeffer scholars alerting me to a petition titled “Stop Misusing Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Support Political Violence and Christian Nationalism.”

That petition was supported by a statement from more than 80 Bonhoeffer descendants, published in German media, urging the signing of the petition and warning against the misuse of Bonhoeffer’s story and theology to support Christian nationalism.

It was not until I read the petition and family statement that I realized that Bonhoeffer was not the only member of his family who was killed by the Nazis. Bonhoeffer’s brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher were also executed. As the family says, they were “driven by the search for truth, honesty, humanity and the struggle for freedom, the rule of law and democracy. They repudiated religious zealotry, nationalism, militarism, and blind obedience.”

When I read the Bonhoeffer family statement and scholars’ petition, I immediately replied and requested a few interviews. At this point, I was motivated by a search for truth and adherence to the Gospel, but also, I think there was a sense inside me that I needed to reclaim Bonhoeffer for American German Lutheranism. A descendant myself of a German Evangelisch (Lutheran) pastor who immigrated to Minnesota in the late 19^th century, I felt a sense of ownership: a need to defend my Lutheran tradition against encroachment on “our” theology by conservative American evangelicals.

But when I spoke with Bonhoeffer’s grand-nephew, Ruggero Schleicher-Tappeser, one of the authors of the family statement, and Bonhoeffer’s grand-niece, Sabine Moffet, daughter of Bonhoeffer’s closest associate, Eberhard Bethge, I had an unexpected revelation.

While Bonhoeffer’s theological writings remain foundational for Lutherans today, when I spoke with his family, I was reminded that Bonhoeffer’s and his family’s most ardent hope is not a sectarian one. For Schleicher-Tappeser and Moffet alike, what drives them is not a self-glorifying religion, but instead a desperate belief in humanism itself: a simple desire that we might be kind and loving toward one another, regardless of our beliefs (or not) about God; a decided commitment against hatred and violence of all kinds.

In their decision to step forward and publicly warn Americans about Metaxas’ and other conservative evangelicals’ misuse of Bonhoeffer’s theology, Bonhoeffer’s descendants were not hoping to lift up Lutheran theology itself, or place one form of Christianity (in this case, progressive mainline denominations) over and against another (conservative, mostly white evangelicals). Instead, Bonhoeffer’s descendants told me that they were motivated by the same bravery, courage, and love that motivated their great-uncle and his parents and siblings, all of whom joined courageously together in a Resistance movement that would cost them their lives, and mark their family for future generations.

Moffet, who was born in 1947, says that even though she did not live through World War II and Nazism in Germany, “that time is kind of in your DNA … it came with expectations of how to live and how to be, with an emphasis on honesty, humanity, and telling the truth.”

“Bonhoeffer would, as they say, turn in his grave,” she said of watching American Christian nationalists claim Bonhoeffer’s support for their crusades against transgender and LGBTQ+ Americans, or immigrants, or women’s reproductive rights.

Moffet said that despite her nervousness about public speaking, she felt compelled to speak, especially leading up to the U.S. presidential election. She said something next that’s gotten a bit familiar over the years since 2016, but that acquires new weight when coming from a German descendent of Bonhoeffer.

“In 2016, I thought, actually, this man is Hitler,” she said of Trump. “I have a visceral repulsion to seeing him so frequently on the screen.”

Schleicher-Tappeser, whose grandfather was killed by the Nazis along with Bonhoeffer, said his motivation to speak out came when he saw the trailer for the Bonhoeffer film depicting Dietrich as a violent assassin carrying a gun. (The historical Bonhoeffer was aware of an assassination plot to kill Hitler, and his brother-in-law participated, but, as Myles Werntz writes in a skeptical review of the film in Christianity Today, “evidence surrounding his direct involvement remains murky and contested,” and the film is “overconfident” in its depiction of Bonhoeffer’s evolution into a “would-be assassin.”)

Speaking from Berlin with typical German detachment, mixed with emotional outrage, Schleicher-Tappeser told me: “It was outrageous. Dietrich with a gun! We were aware of these cultural fights in America. He was being instrumentalized. … [Metaxas] always pretended to know exactly what Bonhoeffer was thinking. It raises some suspicions.”

Schleicher-Tappeser wants Americans to know that Bonhoeffer’s story was one of liberal humanist pacifism, and of membership in a broad coalition of Germans who came together to resist the Nazis at great personal risk, beginning with Social Democrats and Communists, alongside very conservative military leaders. Bonhoeffer and his family members were initially against using force of any kind.

“The longer the whole Resistance evolved, the more they had to rely on the military people, and that was a difficult thing. My family were quite distanced from military thinking. But Hitler had killed so many people. Eventually they had to join the military people to stop him, and they decided to use force as a last resort.”

Perhaps it is part of American culture, and certainly of Hollywood culture, to reduce stories to a hero’s journey: one heroic man against the world, triumphing, with his weapon, against tyranny. In Angel Studios’ description of the Bonhoeffer film, one phrase stood out to me: “A man of honor.” A singular man. One hero to worship.

Whatever intentions the filmmakers may have had to tell Bonhoeffer’s story as a fight against the Nazis, I’m struck by the family’s warning—to me and to all of us—about worshipping our heroes, even Bonhoeffer himself. To reduce his story to his alone risks leaving out the truth about the movement that truly toppled Hitler: a vast alliance of humanity and inclusivity against fascism, violence, and the racist rhetoric of blood and soil. That’s why the victors in World War II called themselves “allies.”

Throughout my own investigation into Bonhoeffer’s true story, I was most moved and changed by the truth that his story was not his alone. He was one of eight siblings, including a twin sister, and the women of his family had incredible stories of heroism all their own, stories too often lost to history because they were not “men of honor.”

To paint Bonhoeffer’s story as a triumph of one kind of Christianity over another risks feeding into the same culture wars that distort the story of God. I was reminded, in the end, of the central doctrine of the Christian faith: a shared witness to the triune God; one God in three persons, named traditionally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—also as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. None of these exist without the others. God’s best work, then, is in relationship and partnership.

Don’t meet your heroes? In this case, in meeting the Bonhoeffer family, I was not disappointed but instead given another warning, one essential in this moment of American history.

Don’t worship your heroes. Idols are meant to be smashed.

Schleicher-Tappeser told me this was the message he hoped Bonhoeffer’s legacy would send: “Don’t prosecute people. Be good to your neighbor. … Be completely anti-nationalist, against this hate which they have professed now in Bonhoeffer’s name.”