How The Bonhoeffer Institute Was Born

This is part one of a two part blog to help interested pastors and Christians leaders understand a little bit more about The Bonhoeffer Institute. Some of this information can be found on the Bonhoeffer web page which is linked directly with this personal blog site by simply tapping on the MENU. The Bonhoeffer Institute vision, goals, and mission can be read at that site to understand clearly where this organization is headed and why it exists.

I have been involved in cultural reformation as a calling since 2006 when the Lord began to deal with me about the national sin of abortion. Much could be said on that front alone, but almost at the exact same time I ran into government tyranny and corruption on several other fronts. I faced, as a pastor, some challenges on my first amendment right to freedom of speech with regards to the pulpit and what was considered “political” substance and electioneering. I was also in the process of developing church property which included mitigating wetlands and trees which opened the door to other examples of government tyranny and I was forced to threaten RLUIPA (Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act) laws to move forward. Finally, the assault on biblical marriage and the attack on Christian business people exercising their conscience to refuse service to events violating that conscience came to a head with a member in my congregation. All of these events awakened me to the need of a cogent, intelligent Christian response to these government challenges. While there are many organizations that would certainly help a pastor navigate the crisis they might find themselves in, it was clear that pastoral influence and engagement in almost every civic area was sorely lacking. In 2012, I started a state pastors alliance (South Carolina) in hopes of coalescing pastoral influence throughout the state in the civic arena. Many good things were accomplished, but pastors hesitancy to be involved was evident from the very beginning. Some of that hesitancy was due to the fact that pastors lacked training in biblical worldview and the theological foundations of cultural reformation. Pastors also needed resources and biblically reasoned principles that could be applied to public policy questions and elections. Again, there are some organizations working in this area but there was no organization modeling, motivating, and strategizing practical ways for a pastor to use their influence in this arena. I had what seemed like a hundred ideas on what a training organization and think tank might look like, but my thoughts were not coalescing until early 2015.

I was invited to an Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) week long cruise that would host approximately 25 pastors and perhaps 50 lawyers from around the nation. The ADF is a phenomenal national legal organization of upwards of 3,000 attorneys assisting (mostly pro bono) pastors and churches with legal threats to their ministry. This group is the legal firepower for which pastors and churches can be grateful. They protect our liberties to speak and freedom of religion as sacrosanct. It was on this cruise which we (pastors) were provided the opportunity to watch how practicing lawyers were trained to litigate and present their cases before appellate courts. The ADF called this The Blackstone Legal Fellowship, named after the famous William Blackstone who wrote a set of legal commentaries footnoted with Christian Scripture. They literally set up a mock-courtroom and attorneys articulated and argued cases before judges. Some pastors were obviously disconnected from the moment, but my internal wheels began to spin and I thought, “If practicing lawyers need training and practice to engage the legal system on behalf of righteousness, how much more would practicing ministers need to be trained to engage the civic and political system on behalf of righteousness?” The structure of the ADF Blackstone Legal Fellowship became the beginning template of a pastors academy that would train ministers and Christian leaders in engaging the civic arena.

It was from this conviction that the name “Bonhoeffer” was chosen to identify such a training organization. As will be discussed in part two of this blog, the face of Dietrich Bonhoeffer represents clergy courage in the face of evil tyranny as he stood up against a compromised church in Germany as well as an evil personified in Adolf Hitler and Nazism. Bonhoeffer paid the ultimate price in his courageous stand by his martyrdom for these very things. The Bonhoeffer Institute, while not subscribing to the theology of Bonhoeffer in total or uncritically, certainly embraces the courageous example he provides in his engagement with civil authority.

As time moved forward it became equally evident that pastors were (as a whole) ill-equipped to deal with media questions and aggression as well as providing the intellectual acumen and courage to present the biblical viewpoint or precept on current cultural challenges. Pastors are usually quite good at presenting the Gospel with regards to salvation and even personal piety; however, when it comes to the application of biblical law and precept to contemporary issues and election concerns there is a great deficiency in this area. The Bonhoeffer Institute endeavors to help those who are not only called to the front lines of service, but to every pastor who recognizes that cultural reformation is a part of the church’s mandate unto God. The Bible is not sealed off from certain areas or subjects, but speaks to every area and their pastor is God’s mouthpiece in this regard on many occasions.

In the next blog, I want to distinguish Bonhoeffer’s theology from the theology of this institute.