Most of us think we know the moving story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life--a pacifist pastor turns anti-Hitler conspirator due to horrors encountered during World War II--but does the evidence really support this prevailing view? This pioneering work carefully examines the biographical and textual evidence and finds no support for the theory that Bonhoeffer abandoned his ethic of discipleship and was involved in plots to assassinate Hitler. In fact, Bonhoeffer consistently affirmed a strong stance of peacemaking from 1932 to the end of his life, and his commitment to peace was integrated with his theology as a whole. The book includes a foreword by Stanley Hauerwas.

In 1937, on the threshold of Nazi Germany's war on the world, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote what turned out to be one of the most influential books of the century, The Cost of Discipleship. In it, he challenged the flabby faith and compromises of German Christians, famously writing, "When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die." Now, seventy-three years after the book was first published, Jon Walker writes Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. Walker brings to a new generation the timeless message of Bonhoeffer against the background of today's political upheaval and societal change and what it means to those who claim to follow Christ's teachings.

Most of us think we know the moving story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life--a pacifist pastor turns anti-Hitler conspirator due to horrors encountered during World War II--but does the evidence really support this prevailing view? This pioneering work carefully examines the biographical and textual evidence and finds no support for the theory that Bonhoeffer abandoned his ethic of discipleship and was involved in plots to assassinate Hitler. In fact, Bonhoeffer consistently affirmed a strong stance of peacemaking from 1932 to the end of his life, and his commitment to peace was integrated with his theology as a whole. The book includes a foreword by Stanley Hauerwas.

Perfect for fans of suspenseful nonfiction such as books by Steve Sheinkin, this is a page-turning narrative about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor and pacifist who became an unlikely hero during World War II and took part in a plot to kill Hitler. Written by two-time National Book Award finalist Patricia McCormick, author of Sold and Never Fall Down and coauthor of the young reader’s edition of I Am Malala. It was April 5, 1943, and the Gestapo would arrive any minute. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been expecting this day for a long time. He had put his papers in order—and left a few notes specifically for Hitler’s men to see. Two SS agents climbed the stairs and told the boyish-looking Bonhoeffer to come with them. He calmly said good-bye to his parents, put his Bible under his arm, and left. Upstairs there was proof, in his own handwriting, that this quiet young minister was part of a conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler. This compelling, brilliantly researched account includes the remarkable discovery that Bonhoeffer was one of the first people to provide evidence to the Allies that Jews were being deported to death camps. It takes readers from his privileged early childhood to the studies and travel that would introduce him to peace activists around the world—eventually putting this gentle, scholarly pacifist on a deadly course to assassinate one of the most ruthless dictators in history. The Plot to Kill Hitler provides fascinating insights into what makes someone stand up for what’s right when no one else is standing with you. It is a question that every generation must answer again and again. With black-and-white photographs, fascinating sidebars, and thoroughly researched details, this book should be essential reading.

This innovative study brings together two areas of discourse that have not been connected before: interpretations of Barth and Bonhoeffer on one hand and narratives of modernity on the other.

Tens of millions of Christians live in China today, many of them leading double lives or in hiding from a government that relentlessly persecutes them. Bob Fu, whom the Wall Street Journal called "The pastor of China's underground railroad," is fighting to protect his fellow believers from persecution, imprisonment, and even death. God's Double Agent is his fascinating and riveting story. Bob Fu is indeed God's double agent. By day Fu worked as a full-time lecturer in a communist school; by night he pastored a house church and led an underground Bible school. This can't-put-it-down book chronicles Fu's conversion to Christianity, his arrest and imprisonment for starting an illegal house church, his harrowing escape, and his subsequent rise to prominence in the United States as an advocate for his brethren. God's Double Agent will inspire readers even as it challenges them to boldly proclaim and live out their faith in a world that is at times indifferent, and at other times murderously hostile, to those who spread the gospel.

In Christ Existing as Community, Michael Mawson recovers and clarifies the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's early and important work on ecclesiology, focusing especially on his doctoral dissertation Sanctorum Communio. Despite occasional pronouncements of the importance of this dissertation, it has still received only limited scholarly attention. Mawson demonstrates how Bonhoeffer draws upon and reworks social theory in order to develop an account of the church as a reality of God's revelation and a concrete human community. On this basis Mawson concludes that Bonhoeffer's ecclesiology has ongoing significance for contemporary debates in theology and Christian ethics.

John Howard Yoder, author of The Politics of Jesus, was best known for his writing on Christian pacifism. This volume—based on lectures recorded in 1973—shows he was a profound missiologist as well. Yoder weaves together biblical, theological, practical and interreligious reflections to think about mission beyond Christendom.

A groundbreaking argument for recovering Jesus for Christian ethics.

A provocative meditation on the role of silence in Christian tradition by the New York Times bestselling author of Christianity We live in a world dominated by noise. Religion is, for many, a haven from the clamor of everyday life, allowing us to pause for silent contemplation. But as Diarmaid MacCulloch shows, there are many forms of religious silence, from contemplation and prayer to repression and evasion. In his latest work, MacCulloch considers Jesus’s strategic use of silence in his confrontation with Pontius Pilate and traces the impact of the first mystics in Syria on monastic tradition. He discusses the complicated fate of silence in Protestant and evangelical tradition and confronts the more sinister institutional forms of silence. A groundbreaking book by one of our greatest historians, Silence challenges our fundamental views of spirituality and illuminates the deepest mysteries of faith.