Preaching this week in chapel are some of the Augsburg Religion Faculty. The weekly schedule on the Campus Ministry website and we encourage you to follow the Augsburg Campus Ministry YouTube channel for chapel services every week.

On Tuesday, Professor Lori Brandt Hale preached using the text from Micah 6:8 and Romans 12:4-8, focusing on the idea that right now in the world, “It Is All Too Hard.” Lori says, “we are living at a time that requires us to pay attention, all the time. And it is full of messes. This is such an understatement, where do we even start?” There is a global pandemic, climate devastation, racial injustice, systemic racism, and police brutality to name just a few of the things going on in the world.

She also asked, in the midst of all of these things, “is there hope?” While many students come to mind, the current Religion and TPL seniors in the Religion Keystone class are creating projects and reading books in search of their next faithful step. How is God is calling them to respond to the world and their neighbor? Given the vocational discernment and theological reflection our students are engaging in, we can confidently say, yes there is hope!

Do you know a young person interested in studying religion, going into professional ministry, or becoming a pastor? Email Adrienne Kuchler Eldridge at eldridge@augsburg.edu to talk more about ministry programs and how God might be calling you to study at Augsburg! #WeAreCalled #AugsburgUniversity #AuggiePride

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To make the video, members of the department (1) gathered together on ZOOM, (2) reviewed the script that our esteemed department chair had prepared, and (3) clicked record.

Did you know that putting together a slick-looking “Congratulations” video is not as easy as 1-2-3?

Anyway, here’s the result, complete with bloopers, for all to see:

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Life/Photographs was developed for the Christensen Symposium in September 1994. That year marked the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was courageous and one of the true heroes of the 20th century.

The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Display is no longer available for travel.

Click to view the full-sized image.

Panel B1

Dietrich and his twin sister, Sabine, in 1914: they were then 8 years old. The twins were the sixth and seventh among the eight Bonhoeffer children.

Panel B2

Bottom left photo

Dietrich’s class at the Grunewald Gymnasium when he was 14 or 15 years old. He is the blond boy in the center of the group on the right. According to his sister, Sabine, Dietrich at age 15 had already decided on the study of theology. It is difficult to say why—other than “in the providence of God”—Dietrich made that choice. His father and older brothers had interests in science and were skeptics in matters of religion. At any rate, when this picture was taken Dietrich Bonhoeffer had already decided on the study of theology.

Top left photo

The Bonhoeffer family provided an unusually positive environment for Dietrich’s childhood and youth. The father, Dr. Karl Bonhoeffer, was one of the leading academicians at the University of Berlin. This meant that the family enjoyed upper class economic status and social ties with others of Berlin’s intellectual and cultural elite. The mother, Paula, was similarly able, and in the conventions of the time focused her energy and intellect on the life of the home. With the aid of five household servants, she used her ability and the family resources to create an enviable home life for the Bonhoeffer children. The Bonhoeffer home even became an influence in the public life of the time.

The picture shows Paula with the children when they were probably 4 to 14 years old. Dietrich is second from the right. Paula and Karl did not want to entrust their children to the public schools when they were at an early and impressionable age. There was a saying in the family that German children had their backs broken twice, first at school and later in the army. So Paula had a spacious school room in the home where she and a governess provided “home schooling” for the first year(s) of the children’s education.

Bottom right photo

Picture from 1922-23, about the time Dietrich finished secondary school and entered the university. He was then a year ahead of his age group.

Dietrich was the best musician in a family that enjoyed a good deal of music in their family gatherings. He played the piano well. He composed a cantata while in secondary school on a favorite verse from Psalm 42—“My soul is cast down within me, therefore I remember thee.” Says his biographer, “in his boyhood and youth it was music that gave him a special position at home and among his fellow students.”

Panel B3

Top photo

Bonhoeffer received the Ph.D. at age 21 from the University of Berlin, and he was admitted to that faculty at age 24. Before beginning lecture responsibilities he spent a year, September 1930 to June 1931, as a Sloan Fellow at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He made some new friends, added to his already considerable international perspective, gained a new respect for the social dimension of the Christian gospel, and—most strikingly—in company with an African American friend and fellow student at Union Seminary spent considerable time in Harlem. This picture shows one of Harlem’s store-front churches. Dietrich participated in worship and youth work in the large Abyssinian Baptist church.

He wrote:

For more than six months, I’ve been almost every Sunday lunchtime, about twenty to three, to one of the great Negro Baptist churches in Harlem, … have heard the gospel preached in the Negro churches.

Bottom photo

During the two years 1932-33 Bonhoeffer lectured and conducted seminars at the University of Berlin. It was a large university—including 1,000 theology students—and Bonhoeffer attracted a considerable following for a number of reasons. He was very young; he maintained an independent stance towards the Nazi movement that was especially strong among university students; he combined intellectual rigor with an emphasis on some concrete issues of Christian discipleship, like peace; and he had informal times with his students at evenings in the Bonhoeffer home and with excursions into the country. It was during these informal times that he experimented with ideas and practices of Christian community that he later expressed in his book Life Together (1938). The picture above is of Bonhoeffer with some of his Berlin students during one of their trips into the countryside.

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Scholars of the Reformation gain deep knowledge by studying the writings of Martin Luther, but for Hans Wiersma it also became experiential when he spent four days walking in the footsteps of Luther’s pilgrimage to Rome 500 years ago.

Just before fall semester classes began, Wiersma joined the project “Here I Walk,” led by Andrew and Sarah Wilson, two Lutheran ecumenical scholars, who retraced the entire 1,085-mile route walked by Luther from the monastery in Erfurt, Germany, to Rome. Wiersma walked with the Wilsons for 66 miles, from Erfurt to Coburg.

Wiersma had met Andrew Wilson at a conference, and what resulted for Wiersma was a fortunate convergence of his disciplinary interest in Reformation studies, his research focus on the early Luther and the Augustinian monks who followed him, and Wiersma’s undergraduate background and continued interest in documentary filmmaking.

The modern pilgrims followed the old pilgrim routes, sometimes spotting stone route markers from the 16th century. They followed the traditional rules of pilgrimage—prayers, scripture reading, chores, and conversation. “It gave me a sense of how 16th-century monks traveled,” Wiersma says, “and what it felt like.” He enjoyed the absence of modern distractions. As it was for the early monks, lodging could be found each night, with bigger towns conveniently spaced a day’s walk apart.

What Wiersma brought back was an “appreciation of how much Europe is built on its past. It’s still easy to connect with Europe of 500 years ago in the old church buildings, pilgrim paths, and road markers.” He says that while he went there as a Lutheran pastor, part of a Lutheran Church with all its modern trappings, he came back with a much better understanding of the formation of the early Lutheran movement. “Those monks started reading the Bible in a new way that differed from the institutional church’s way,” he says.

Wiersma’s “Here I Walk” experience caused him to reflect upon Luther’s own experience. Luther’s 1510 pilgrimage brought him to Rome, where he was scandalized by the conduct of clergy and the religious commercialism. Wiersma understood that Luther’s long journey back to Germany would have given the monk a long time to think over and talk about what he witnessed in Rome. Seven years later, he posted the 95 Theses, igniting the Reformation.

From the

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