Strange Glory A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Winner, Christianity Today 2015 Book Award in History/Biography

Shortlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

In the decades since his execution by the Nazis in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor, theologian, and anti-Hitler conspirator, has become one of the most widely read and inspiring Christian thinkers of our time. With unprecedented archival access and definitive scope, Charles Marsh captures the life of this remarkable man who searched for the goodness in his religion against the backdrop of a steadily darkening Europe. From his brilliant student days in Berlin to his transformative sojourn in America, across Harlem to the Jim Crow South, and finally once again to Germany where he was called to a ministry for the downtrodden, we follow Bonhoeffer on his search for true fellowship and observe the development of his teachings on the shared life in Christ. We witness his growing convictions and theological beliefs, culminating in his vocal denunciation of Germany’s treatment of the Jews that would put him on a crash course with Hitler. Bringing to life for the first time this complex human being—his substantial flaws, inner torment, the friendships and the faith that sustained and finally redeemed him—Strange Glory is a momentous achievement.

Charles Marsh is a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and director of the Project on Lived Theology. He is the author of seven previous books, including God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights, which won the 1998 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Of Marsh’s earlier volumes Reclaiming Bonhoeffer, the late Eberhand Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s closest friend and first biographer, wrote: “This book is a theological sensation—an exciting event. Nobody who attempts to define Bonhoeffer’s legacy today will able to ignore Marsh’s book.”Marsh was a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 2009 and the 2010 Ellen Maria Gorrissen Berlin Prize fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.