Preface to Bonhoeffer: The man and two of his shorter writings

The work of the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer was regarded in Britain and America as well as in his native Germany as that of an interesting and courageous, but nonetheless minor, theologian. As late as 1962, the Dean of King’s College, Cambridge, deplored this widespread view, complaining that Bonhoeffer’s striking Letters and Papers from Prison “seem now in danger of being forgotten.” Today, Bonhoeffer’s reputation in Germany remains about the same; but in America and England he is being widely acclaimed as one of the “most decisive” theological influences of the century, of whom it has for example been “he is unquestionably the favorite theologian among young Protestant seminarians in the U.S. Some church leaders, in fact, consider his work the starting point of modern theology.”