
In 1930, Bonhoeffer arrived in New York to study at Union Theological Seminary. He arrived in Harlem during a time where there were two contrasting events taking place. The first was the Great Depression, which was a time of great economic hardship across America. In Harlem, which was a majority Black area of New York, the hardship was acute and visible on the streets. Alongside this, the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing throughout the city, which saw Black people creating art, music, and literature for other Black people. The Harlem Renaissance arts movement centred the lives and experiences of Black people in post-slavery America. This included church life, as artists depicted Jesus as Black, disrupting the normative idea of Jesus being White. Arriving at such a pivotal period in American history, Bonhoeffer became engaged with the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, after being taken there by African American classmate Frank Fisher, and quickly learned there was more to faith than his German theological education.
Studying at Union Theological Seminary and spending time at Abyssinian Baptist Church greatly influenced Bonhoeffer to become the theologian we know him as today. At first, he was not convinced his time in New York would be of much use to him and quickly became exasperated in his classes. He found his classmates to be far behind his understanding of theology and considered them to be unengaged with its importance. Union Theological Seminary was vastly different than the education he was used to back in his home country of Germany, with the seminary being committed to faith organising and social justice, including supporting the implementation of the 40-hour work week and child labour laws. Combining this with the outreach work, which was being done at Abyssinian Baptist Church, including a free food kitchen and clothing giveaways, Bonhoeffer began to understand faith in a vastly different way than he had before. He began to see the importance of taking action inspired by faith.
Bonhoeffer’s presence at Abyssinian Baptist Church grew. He began to deliver sermons, run Bible study groups, deliver Sunday school classes, and visit congregation members in their homes. Through his direct engagement with the community, Bonhoeffer came to learn of how the faith lives and public lives of these people were not divided, as he had been used to seeing. Instead, he saw how both intertwined and saw a version of faith where the whole being was invested. The ‘Church of the Outcasts’, which he found in Harlem, also began to transform how he understood scripture and he started to re-interpret the Sermon on the Mount. He began to read the Sermon through the lens of suffering, as he had seen those around him suffer, and came to a realisation that the importance of living out faith is what the Sermon is really talking about. He decided that living out faith and the commandment of peace were to be taken seriously. For Bonhoeffer, re-understanding his faith in this way changed the direction of the rest of his work, and the rest of his life upon his return to Germany.
Before returning to his home country after finishing his education at Union Theological Seminary, Bonhoeffer and some friends decide to travel around the US by car. They drove across the country to take some of them back home, as they had finished their education too. Eventually, Bonhoeffer found himself in the south, where Jim Crow laws were firmly in place. The Jim Crow laws were enforced in some US states between 1865 to 1968 and allowed for legal racial discrimination against Black people. Seeing this also influenced Bonhoeffer and his theology, particularly when he returned to Germany, where he finds the Nazi party had become increasingly popular. Bonhoeffer recognised the ethnocentrism at the heart of Nazi party policies and ideologies, which was exemplified through the concept of the Aryan race.
It is important to note that, despite spending extended amounts of time in Harlem with Black people, and being heavily influenced by the Black church, Bonhoeffer did not become an anti-racist icon or influence. In his letters written back to Germany, often to his tutors there, he often used racial slurs to describe the nature of the church and those who attended. Though his theology has clear influences from his time in Harlem, his personal writings do not reflect this influence in the same way. It is important to remember this as Bonhoeffer’s time in Harlem with Abyssinian Baptist Church is highly important to his theology, but the way in which he talks about the church and the congregation do not reflect such an accepting and progressive attitude.
While there is dissatisfaction with Bonhoeffer’s approach to race due to the language in his personal letters, it would be unfair to say that his time in Harlem did not have a positive influence on his attitude towards issues of ethnocentrism. When he returned to Germany, Bonhoeffer was troubled by the ethnocentrism and White supremacy of the Nazi party, as they declared the Aryan race to be the superior one, and he sought to take direct action against the government on this matter. His sermons changed dramatically; before he left for New York, he would speak about nationalism and militarism. Now he spoke about peace and taking political action. His time in Harlem, with Union Theological Seminary, and with Abyssinian Baptist Church, transformed how Bonhoeffer approached his faith and put his faith into action. He became inspired by faith to stand against the Nazi regime and against injustice within Germany.