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As we start to name an aspect of his existence which long remained unspoken, namely his engagement and wrestling with his own identity as inhabiting a white body, interpreting and understanding Dietrich Bonhoeffer today is perhaps more complex than ever. The White Bonhoeffer offers the first serious attempt to understand the theologian's doctrine and writing through the lens of critical whiteness. Through ongoing attentiveness to Black theologies of liberation, and the life and thought of Bonhoeffer, and drawing on both theological concepts and the author's own personal narrative, the book highlights and offers some constructive ways towards living less violently, and more penitently, for those who inhabit White bodies in a White world.
Tim Judson's The White Bonhoeffer invites us into a postcolonial pilgrimage to consider whiteness and racism through a careful critique of Bonhoeffer's theology. It is a thoroughly compelling book, well researched and grounded in a solid familiarity with Bonhoeffer. But it is more than that. This book is a necessary challenge to those who would, at best, fail to examine the complicity in Bonhoeffer's work, and at worst, co-opt Bonhoeffer for unjust purposes. Judson's nuanced treatment of Bonhoeffer is both welcome and timely and is highly recommended. It encourages each of us in our own journeys out of whiteness (in its vast array of forms and effects) and toward social justice and community. Judson skillfully does this whilst honouring the legacy of the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, who, even eighty years after his death, prompts us to ask who Christ is for us, here and now.
Di Rayson, Associate Professor, Theology and Ethics Pacific Theological College, Fiji,
