At the height of Adolf Hitler’s reign, German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, created an underground seminary for Jesus followers who opposed the church’s complicity with Nazi control. It was within this distressing context that Bonhoeffer penned these words in his book, Life Together: “The greatest threat to Christian community is our expectation of some wishful idealized version of it… Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community.”
In the United States today, we do not live under fascist control or in the thick of genocide, but our country appears to be more polarized and divided than ever.
Do the words of Bonhoeffer deliver any hope for the American church today? And what does the book of Acts have to say about unity among believers? Is Christian unity even possible in our divided country? (Spoiler: we believe it absolutely is. Listen to this week of Acts Verse by Verse to discover how.)
