Bonhoeffer’s ‘Stupidity’ and Ministerial Power in Christendom

It is almost a century since Dietrich Bonhoeffer was protesting about what he could see going on around him in the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. In particular, on the tenth anniversary of Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany, Bonhoeffer bravely published a circular to serve as a warning about the political and religious scene in Nazi Germany. One of the topics he discussed in that circular was what he called the 'Theory of Stupidity'. In April 1945, a few days before the Americans reached and liberated the concentration camp at Flossenbürg, Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis.