Important Takeaways:

• In recent years, author and radio host Eric Metaxas and other conservative Christian supporters of Donald Trump have compared themselves to the famed German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer — who was put to death, in part, for participating in a plan to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
• In a recent interview on Flashpoint, a Christian television talk show on the Victory network, both Metaxas — author of a bestselling biography of Bonhoeffer — and the show’s host called the current election a “Bonhoeffer moment” and urged Christians to rise up and oppose evil.
• That evil, in Metaxas’ eyes, is the Democrats, who, he has argued, stole the 2020 election and whom he often compares to Nazis. For him, if Democrats win the next election, it could mean the end of America as we know it. Metaxas has argued and has claimed in the past that Trump is God’s chosen candidate and that those who oppose him oppose God.
• His newest book, “Religionless Christianity” — a phrase used by Bonhoeffer — describes America’s current politics as a spiritual war and sign of the end times.
• A group of Bonhoeffer scholars — and the theologian’s descendants — have had enough. In a statement issued Friday (Oct. 18) members of the International Bonhoeffer Society called on Metaxas and others to stop comparing the current election to the rise of the Nazis. The statement, in particular, called out Metaxas for social media posts featuring a gun and a Bible and his support of Jan. 6 rioters.
• “This portrayal glorifies violence and draws inappropriate analogies between our political system and that of Nazi Germany,” the scholars said in a statement, which has been signed by more than 800 Bonhoeffer scholars and other Christian leaders. “It is a dangerous misuse of Bonhoeffer’s life and lessons, particularly in this election season in the United States.”
• The statement from the Bonhoeffer Society makes a similar point.
• “Any attempt to invoke Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his resistance against Hitler as a reason to engage in political violence in our contemporary context must be strongly opposed,” it says. “Moreover, while Bonhoeffer supported the coup, he refused to offer a Christian or theological justification for it. He understood the dangers of such a rationale.”

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