Resisting the Bonhoeffer Brand

“Charles Marsh’s latest book is essential reading for anyone interested in the ongoing, nothing-if-not-spirited debates over the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Readers will find in these pages so much more, including the kind of searching, stirring reflections on the meaning of history and biography that we have come to expect from one of our era’s most brilliant theological minds.”


—Heath W. Carter, Princeton Theological Seminary





“Bonhoeffer warned against being infatuated with a self-made idea about Christian community but not loving the actual community as it is: gritty and human, complex and wondrous. What a turn then—now we need Marsh to offer the same warnings about how we read Bonhoeffer himself. We like our saints to fit tidy boxes and rubber-stamp our presumptions. Marsh, with his historian’s eye and novelist’s pen, won’t let us make this mistake.”


—Winn Collier, Western Theological Seminary





“Charles Marsh offers deep insights about the relationship between theology and biography, and he makes an eloquent, compelling case for reinterpreting Bonhoeffer’s extraordinary life. And as he confronts his fiercest critic, Marsh lifts the lid on the territorial passions simmering beneath a scholar’s patient labors.”


—Clare Carlisle, King’s College London