“To ask essential questions?” Bonhoeffer, America, South Africa

Abstract

The first part of the essay is a biographical sketch of Bonhoeffer’s visits to America. His essays reflecting on these visits will be probed in the second part, where the focus will particularly be on the essay that Bonhoeffer wrote at the end of his second visit: Essay about Protestantism in the United States of America (1939). In the third part the question as to what mirrors Bonhoeffer preferred to reflect on the church in America will be asked, investigating critically how the mirrors he preferred influenced his reflections. In this light the question as to the mirrors Bonhoeffer preferred in reference to America will be made use of to reflect on the church in South Africa. This final part of the essay is therefore not a reflection on the church in South Africa with Bonhoeffer’s mirrors, as if his mirrors are the mirrors for churches to look into. It is rather a reflection on the hermeneutic presuppositions and the implications thereof as questioning mirrors churches are to look into. The essay in this manner presumes to give hermeneutical impulses for churches looking into mirrors.

Keywords

• Bonhoeffer
• ecclesiology
• hermeneutics
• Protestantism
• South Africa