Bonhoeffer: Agent Of Grace

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, is a Christian hero for many. Executed by the Nazis just days before the end of WWII for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer is hailed as a 20th-century martyr. But Bonhoeffer struggled with a moral dilemma – his religious views were in stark contrast to the evil he saw all around him. He chose to face possible imprisonment and execution and to remain faithful to the principles of his belief in God. Across the political and theological spectrum, Bonhoeffer is celebrated as an icon of true Christianity and his theological writings are classics throughout the Christian world.

“Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.

The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent.

In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.

This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison DBW Vol 8.

https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2021/11/19/bonhoeffer-aquinas-on-how-silence-feeds-evil-becomes-evil/

Functional stupidity refers to an absence of reflexivity, a refusal to use intellectual capacities in other than myopic ways, and avoidance of justifications.

#WhiteEvangelicalChristianNationalism

WHY ARE MAGA SUPPORTS SO DUMB? LET'S LOOK AT THEIR EDUCATION - AND WHERE THEY GOT IT...

The first segregation academies were created by white parents in the late 1950s in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954),which required public school boards to eliminate segregation "with all deliberate speed" (Brown II).

At the time, segregation under Jim Crow laws was still widely enforced in the South, where most adult blacks were still disfranchised and excluded from politics.

https://conspiranon.blogspot.com/2024/08/a-history-of-private-schools-and-race.html