New Episode of Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photographed at a Berlin prison with four Italian fellow inmates in 1944. Getty Images.

New Episode of Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer

Reverend Dr. Katharine Henderson is woven into the story of The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute, even from before its founding. Dr. Henderson’s personal outreach to Rev. Rob Schenck led to his cooperation with documentary filmmaker Abigail Disney in the making of The Armor of Light. It was this collaboration that led to Rob’s critical examination of his work in the religious right and to his subsequent “third conversion” towards a more thoughtful, ethical, and inclusive ministry. After leaving behind the conservative organization he spent 35 years building, with the encouragement of people like Drs. Henderson and Disney, Rob founded TDBI. Their friendship and working relationship can be credited, in large part, for the existence of TDBI – for which we are enormously grateful!

In this podcast, Rob talks with Katharine about her fascinating family background, which includes visits with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s twin sister, Sabine, and her Jewish husband, Gerhard Leibholz, whom Dietrich helped escape to safety in England. Rob and Katharine also explore where she sees Christians and the church during these turbulent times, and what she thinks about our moral obligations in view of what is happening in Ukraine and so many other places of conflict around the world.

The Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson is president emerita of Auburn Seminary after 12 years as Auburn’s president. She is co-founder of Face to Face/Faith to Faith, a multifaith leadership program bringing together teenagers—Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus—from the Middle East, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and the US. She is the author of “God’s Troublemakers: How Women of Faith are Changing the World” and is an internationally known speaker that has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, MSNBC, NPR, and more. Her TEDx talk, “Letting God Out of the Box,” was released in February 2017. Henderson is currently writing her second book, “Fighting for the Heart of America: How the Prophets of our Time are Bringing Our Nation’s Future to Birth”

Letting God out of the Box, TEDxWashingtonSquare

From love letters to a mobile ark, Rev. Dr. Katharine Henderson invites us to envision what it can look like when we allow God out of the boxes of our human making and invite interfaith community.

God’s Troublemakers: How Women of Faith are Changing the World

This is a book about women who are changing the world as leaders in the public arena. The book is thematically organized and touches on many of the most relevant topics being discussed today: separation of church and state, the intersection of politics and religion, the silence of the progressive left and the embodiment of authentic religious pluralism. This book claims space for progressive forms of religion in an area dominated by the Religious Right.