The International Bonhoeffer Society is claiming that the United States cannot survive another term under President Trump as the 2020 election edges closer.
The society released a statement to Sojourners magazine on Thursday urging Christians to contemplate the repercussions of reelecting Trump. Sojourners has written against Trump for several years, including publishing a piece in 2018 comparing Trump’s presidency to the rise of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
“As grateful recipients, and now custodians, of the theological, ethical, and political legacy of the German pastor-theologian and Nazi resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we believe all persons of faith and conscience should prayerfully consider whether our democracy can endure a second term under the presidency of Donald Trump. We believe it cannot,” the IBS statement said.
“One of the greatest lessons learned from the history of the Christian churches during Germany’s Third Reich is that it is crucial to respond to threats to human life, integrity, and community when they first appear, and to continue to challenge them,” the IBS continued.
The organization added, “We believe that one crucial step in this reckoning is ending Donald Trump’s presidency. We do not make this statement lightly.”
Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who worked from inside Nazi Germany to protect Jews and Christians and fight against the Nazi Reich. The Nazis arrested him and executed him on April 9, 1945, at the age of 39.
The theologian may have participated in a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944 with a bomb packed in a briefcase. Bonhoeffer was arrested under suspicion of doing so, among other crimes allegedly committed against the Nazi state.
The bomb plot to kill Hitler failed because the German tyrant happened to be standing behind a solid desk when the briefcase exploded. Others in the room with Hitler were killed by the blast, but he walked out of the room with little more than a numbed right arm.
