Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Underground Seminary of Peace

In 1935, Dietrich Bonhoeffer gathered twenty-five young seminarians in a crumbling estate at Finkenwalde, Germany, to form an illegal seminary. The Nazi regime had fractured the German church. Pastors denounced one another from their pulpits. Congregations splintered along political lines. The very idea of Christian unity seemed like a relic of a gentler age.

Bonhoeffer believed otherwise. At Finkenwalde, he insisted on a rhythm that mirrored Paul's farewell to the Corinthians — mutual encouragement, shared confession, and genuine peace among believers. Each morning, the seminarians sang together, prayed together, and spoke words of blessing over one another before the day's work began. Bonhoeffer called this "life together," and he meant it literally. They ate from the same table, studied the same scriptures, and held one another accountable with the kind of honest love Paul urged when he wrote, "Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace."

The Gestapo eventually closed Finkenwalde in 1937. But those twenty-five men carried its spirit into parishes, prison cells, and even concentration camps. They had tasted what Paul's trinitarian benediction describes — the grace of Christ binding them, the love of God the Father sustaining them, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit knitting their scattered lives into one unbreakable communion. That blessing was not a polite sign-off. It was a lifeline, and they clung to it in the darkness.