What Bonhoeffer Heard in Harlem

In 1930, a twenty-four-year-old German theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer arrived at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He was already brilliant — two doctoral dissertations behind him, a sharp mind for systematic theology. But something was missing. He later admitted that for all his academic training, he had not yet truly heard the voice of God speaking personally to him.

Then his classmate Albert Franklin Fisher, an African American seminarian, invited Bonhoeffer to Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Sunday after Sunday, Bonhoeffer sat in those pews, listening to the preaching of Adam Clayton Powell Sr., surrounded by spirituals that carried centuries of suffering and faith. The gospel he had studied in lecture halls was suddenly alive — urgent, personal, demanding a response.

Fisher never preached at Bonhoeffer. He simply brought him to the place where God's voice could be recognized. Like old Eli telling young Samuel, "It is the Lord," Fisher helped his friend identify what had been calling to him all along.

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany a changed man. When the Nazi regime rose to power, he had ears to hear what many in the German church could not — or would not.

Sometimes God has been speaking to us for years through Scripture, through worship, through the witness of others. But it takes someone beside us — an Eli, a Fisher — to finally say, "That stirring you keep feeling? Answer it. It is the Lord."