Our Work – Seeking Prophetic Witness

Ephesians 4:11 reminds us that God raises up prophets and teachers among us. These extraordinary individuals reflect Bonhoeffer’s deep spirituality, perceptive nature, and intellectual prowess. Through our work over the past several years, The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute has been graced to find ourselves in the company of even a few of these brave and bold prophets. Some of them we know personally, others only from a distance, but we believe all of them are doing the prophetic work necessary to awaken the soul of the church and the conscience of nations.

Here are a few modern-day prophets from whom TDBI continues to learn from and strive to heed their calls for justice and restoration.

The Rev. Traci Blackmon

The Rev. Traci Blackmon is the Executive Minister of Justice & Witness Ministries of The United Church of Christ and the first woman pastor of Christ the King UCC in Florissant, MO. A registered nurse with more than 25 years of healthcare experience, she provided mobile healthcare in underserved communities with significant health disparities. A featured voice with many regional, national, and international media outlets and a frequent contributor to print publications, Rev. Blackmon’s communal leadership and work in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown, Jr., in Ferguson, MO have gained her both national and international recognition and audiences from the White House to the Carter Center to the Vatican.

Church, Race, and Politics Today

Rev. Traci Blackmon joined TDBI President, Rev. Rob Schenck, and Dr. Reggie Williams to discuss Church, Race, and Politics Today.

Lisa Sharon Harper

Lisa Sharon Harper leads trainings that increase clergy and community leaders’ capacity to organize people of faith toward a just world. A prolific speaker, writer, and activist, Ms. Harper is the founder and president of FreedomRoad.us, dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in our nation by designing forums and experiences that bring common understanding, commitment, and action. She has authored several books, including the critically acclaimed, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong can be Made Right (Waterbrook) and Fortune (Brazos Press). In addition, she writes extensively on shalom and governance, immigration reform, health care reform, poverty, racial and gender justice, climate change, and transformational civic engagement.

Black Fortune Month

Earlier this year, TDBI was honored to participate in Black Fortune Month, lead by Lisa Sharon Harper.

Rev. Adam Russell Taylor

Rev. Adam Russell Taylor is president of Sojourners in Washington, DC. He previously led the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group and served as the vice president in charge of Advocacy at World Vision U.S. Rev. Taylor was the executive director of Global Justice, mobilizing students around global human rights and economic justice. A graduate of Emory University, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, he was a White House Fellow and served in the Office of Cabinet Affairs and Public Engagement. Taylor is ordained in the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention and serves in ministry at the historic Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va.

Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer-Interview with Adam Taylor

In this podcast, TDBI President and Founder, Rev. Rob Schenck talks with Adam about his outstanding book, A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community, intriguing background, and work at Sojourners, a committed group of Christians who work together to live a gospel life that integrates spiritual renewal and social justice.

A More Perfect Union

In A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community, Adam builds the clear case for America’s need to come to terms with and repent for the ways it has woefully fallen short of extending the full meaning of its creed to all. Without that change, Adam insists, we will never realize our full potential, and we will remain hopelessly divided. Looking back is not enough, he argues; we must also lean forward in embracing and communicating a radically more unifying and compelling moral vision of the America that we sustain and that sustains us.

David P. Gushee

David P. Gushee is an ethicist, pastor, author, and advocate. He is a distinguished academic and a Past-President of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics, indicating his role as one of America’s leading Christian ethicists. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than 25 books and over 175 academic book chapters, journal articles, and reviews. In Changing Our Mind and After Evangelicalism, he charts a theological and ethical course for post-evangelical Christians, a course he more personally relates in his memoir, Still Christian. In addition, Dr. Gushee is planning a book tentatively titled Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies, coming from Eerdmans Publishing in Fall of 2023. He has also led on climate, torture, and LGBTQ inclusion activism. He holds his Ph.D. from Bonhoeffer’s American alma mater, Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer-Interview with Dr. David P. Gushee

In this episode of Schenck Talks Bonhoeffer, Rev. Dr. Rob Schenck talks with ethicist, pastor, author, and advocate, Dr. David P. Gushee about his history in evangelicalism, his abandonment of the moniker, and his book “Introducing Christian Ethics.” Dr. Gushee discusses the profound impact Dietrich Bonhoeffer has on his ethics, as well as his hopes for the impact of this important book.

Are you or someone you know involved in prophetic justice work? We’d love to hear about it. Write to us at community @tdbi.org. 

Ethics

Ethics is the culmination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological and personal odyssey and one of the most important works of Christian ethics of the last century. Written in the midst of the conspiracy to overthrow the Hitler regime, it is nonetheless chiefly concerned with ethics for the postwar time of reconstruction and peace. Focused on Christ, the God who became human, and the vision of a world reconciled with God, Ethics shuns abstraction, seeks the will of God in concrete historical reality, and calls the church to be a transforming community in the world with a new responsibility to public life.