The Rev. Peter Storey, center, outside the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1985. He worked with Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu to end apartheid. Storey said, “apartheid is the most grave sin against Almighty God this land has ever seen.” Now 88 years old and retired he lives in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo Courtesy of John Sumwalt).
Special to United Methodist Insight | March 17, 2026
As we prepare to celebrate Holy Week and Easter, we would do well to remember the witness of the German Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He believed saying “yes” to Jesus means saying “no” to everything contrary to that commitment.
Bonhoeffer wrote in his seminal work, “The Cost of Discipleship,” "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” He responded whole-heartedly to Jesus’ summons: “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 –1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, neo-orthodox theologian and anti-Nazi dissident. His 1937 book "The Cost of Discipleship" is described as a modern classic. (Public Domain Photo)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis on April 9, 1945, at Flossenburg concentration camp, just one day after Easter Sunday.
After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany on January 30, 1933, some of Bonhoeffer’s friends urged him to leave the country to save his life. They knew he was unalterably opposed to serving in the army in an aggressive war. In June 1939 he did leave for a time to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He could easily have stayed in the US until after the war. His friends begged him to stay, but after a time came to accept that his “… heart belonged to his oppressed and persecuted fellow Christians in Germany and that he would not desert them at a time when they needed him most.”
Bonhoeffer wrote to his American friend, Reinhold Niebuhr, “I shall have no right to participate in the reconstitution of Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.”
“Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization … I know which of these alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make this choice in security,” Bonhoeffer said. He boarded one of the last ships to leave the US for Germany before the war.”
Until this time Bonhoeffer had been committed to a near-absolute biblically based pacifism, a view that was rare in Germany. After his return he began to view pacifism as a “illegitimate escape.” He would not allow it to keep him from supporting the responsible political and military leaders of the resistance to Hitler.
Finally, he was convinced to participate in the plot to assassinate Hitler. Because of his position as a pastor, he was able to get passes and papers from the Gestapo which were not available to others. He became a courier in the resistance movement. Great confidence was placed in him, and he took enormous risks, which eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment.
Bonhoeffer was arrested on April 5, 1943, and held in prison without trial for a little over two years. In the final days of the war, as the allies drew nearer, he was removed from Berlin to Buchenwald, then to Schonberg, and finally to Flossenburg. His last weeks were spent with prisoners from all over Europe. He was hanged by the Nazis just five days before the United States army liberated the prison camp where he was being held.
One of the prisoners who was with him at the end was a British officer by the name of Payne Best. In his book “Venlo Incident,” he wrote:
“Bonhoeffer was all humility and sweetness; he always seemed to diffuse an atmosphere of happiness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact he was alive… He was one of the few men I ever met to whom God was real and close.”
Best wrote: “Sunday, April 8th, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer held a little service and spoke to us in a manner which reached the hearts of all, finding just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment… He had hardly finished his last prayer when the door opened and two evil-looking men in civilian clothes came in and said: ‘Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us.’ Those words ‘come with us’ for all prisoners they had come to mean one thing only --- the scaffold. ‘We bade him good-bye -- he drew me aside -- ‘This is the end’ he said, ‘For me the beginning of life.’”
We never know when we might be called to “pick up our cross.” But when that moment comes for you, you can be sure you will know it because you will want to resist it with every fiber of your being.
You will want to run away to a safe place, but you will not run away, because running away from God is more difficult than running with God. Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred saint of El Salvador said, “…exhaustion is felt more by those who stayed on the side lines, watching what happened.”
Bonhoeffer put it this way: "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."
Pastor Frank Wolf wrote about how the South African Methodist bishop, Peter Storey, picked up his cross during apartheid: “His church provided safe sanctuary to those the apartheid government sought to arrest. On multiple occasions, Peter’s church was shot up with tear gas during Sunday morning worship. Bombs were mailed to his house. And on one occasion, the South African security forces stormed Peter’s church while he was preaching a sermon against apartheid—they had wiretapped his church. The sergeant ordered Peter to stop preaching and end the service, but Peter kept preaching.
“The sergeant pulled out his gun, pointed it directly in Peter’s face, and once again ordered him to end the service. Peter paused, stared down the officer and his gun, and said, ‘I am called to preach by God. You have no say in the matter. So, hear the Word of the Lord: apartheid is the most grave sin against Almighty God this land has ever seen. Now shoot if you want, but you will hear the truth.’ The officer backed down and left.”
Wolf said Storey believed that “Most of the time, the Church should speak on issues of justice but refrain from endorsing candidates. But in South Africa, we had an entire party that was founded on the premise of white supremacy. In apartheid, there was only one way followers of Jesus could vote in good faith and that was to vote against the apartheid government. When a political leader or political party bases their entire foundation of governing on the belief that some people are less than other people, we must tell our people that you cannot vote for them.”
Wolf added, “There are times when we, as followers of Jesus, are required to take a stand... times when we cannot capitulate to the spirit of the age. The German church in the years leading up to World War II made a deal with the devil to gain short-term benefit. In that process they lost their soul.
“Only the Confessing Church, which chose to oppose the rise of National Socialism at great risk to itself managed to retain any integrity. The leaders of this movement understood that the gospel of Jesus Christ was incompatible with the so-called political movement that had begun to take over their nation. Many in the Confessing Church were thrown into concentration camps. Some, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were martyred.”
John Sumwalt
The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives.” Email him.