Growing up in North Carolina, WRAL in Raleigh, had Jesse Helms on weekly, if not more, spewing his hateful rhetoric. It matters who is coming into the living rooms. He used his powerful perch and contaminated the US Senate for several terms. I will admit, however, that was much more intelligent than his current crop of acolytes: Markwayne Mullins, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Ms. Lindsey Graham.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), the German Lutheran pastor and theologian executed for his part in resisting Nazism, never penned a systematic treatise entitled “character in politics.”
Yet his sermons, letters, and major works—especially The Cost of Discipleship, Ethics (unfinished), and Letters and Papers from Prison—converge into a moral vision that illuminates what character in political life must be.
For Bonhoeffer, political character is not an inward quality divorced from action but the visible fruit of costly discipleship: a life shaped by responsibility to neighbor, humility before God, and the courage to resist injustice—even when resistance demands personal sacrifice.
Central to this portrait is his withering critique of the “arrogance of power,” which clarifies both the pathology political character must oppose and the humility it must embody.
True political character begins with discipleship. Bonhoeffer’s stark claim that “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” insists that moral integrity is forged by costly obedience. A leader of character is measured not by rhetorical skill, electoral success, or managerial efficiency, but by fidelity to moral truth and a readiness to bear personal cost rather than betray justice. This discipleship converts private piety into public responsibility: the commitment to live under God’s claim and to refuse compromises that injure others.
That commitment issues in concrete responsibility rather than abstract moralism. For Bonhoeffer, ethical principles become real only when enacted in the particularities of human life; moral judgment must be made in relation to concrete persons and situations.
Thus a politician of character assumes responsibility for the effects of decisions on actual human beings, resisting the temptation to hide behind technocratic rationales or impersonal legalisms. Character shows itself in situated judgment aimed at protecting neighbors—especially the weak—rather than in invoking neutral rules to evade accountability.
Opposing the arrogance of power is essential to this account. Bonhoeffer observed how power easily corrupts by assuring itself of rightful domination, sanctifying violence, or claiming moral exemption.
The arrogance of power manifests when rulers mistake authority for moral superiority, treat subjects as instruments, and cloak self-interest in the language of necessity or destiny.
Against that temptation, Bonhoeffer insists on humility: leaders must recognize their finitude, answerability, and the moral danger of seeing power as an end in itself.
Political character therefore requires resisting the seductions of authority—eschewing triumphalism, revealing the limits of one’s judgments, and refusing to reduce neighbors to mere means.
Closely related is moral courage: the disciplined willingness to resist evil rather than accommodate it.
Bonhoeffer condemned Christians who adapted to Nazism through compromise, seeking peace at the price of justice.
Courage in politics is not reckless heroism but conscience-shaped resolve, exercised within accountable communities and informed by prayerful discernment. It may require civil disobedience or clandestine action when legal structures themselves perpetrate injustice. Such resistance is generated by humility before God and solidarity with the oppressed, not by the arrogance of asserting one’s own righteousness above others.
Bonhoeffer’s critique of “cheap grace” sharpens the moral diagnosis. Cheap grace separates forgiveness from repentance and ethical transformation; politically, it shows up when leaders use pious words to excuse moral laxity, manipulation, or exploitation.
True character repudiates this hypocrisy through continual repentance, transparency about failures, and a commitment to moral formation. Leaders must not hide behind sanctimonious rhetoric to mask compromises with injustice; they must confess error, make amends, and be re-formed by service to neighbors.
His realism about ethical life adds another dimension: character must include prudence in the face of tragic choices.
Bonhoeffer rejects both moralism and pietism—neither rule-bound legalism nor private religiosity suffices.
Political actors will sometimes face situations where every option involves some evil; character is demonstrated by the capacity to weigh conflicting goods, choose the lesser evil when required, and bear the burden of that choice without self-justification.
Prudence here is disciplined judgment, attentive to consequences but not paralyzed by them.
Community and accountability form the soil in which character grows.
Bonhoeffer understood the church as a community that shapes conscience; likewise, political virtue requires institutions and public practices that correct, restrain, and ennoble leaders.
Character is relational: openness to critique, willingness to be corrected, and readiness to answer publicly for one’s decisions. Such accountability counters the arrogance of power by insisting that authority is service under the law of neighbor-love.
Finally, Bonhoeffer’s ethic centers service and solidarity with the weak.
Power rightly exercised is servanthood: policies and political conduct should aim to protect human dignity and secure justice for those at society’s margins. Leadership is judged by its effect on the vulnerable, not by displays of dominance. Coupled with humility, courage, and prudence, this posture is sustained by hope—an abiding fidelity that resists despair while acknowledging human fallibility.
In Bonhoeffer’s terms, then, political character is the moral backbone forged by costly discipleship: a tempered unity of humility, responsibility, courage, prudence, service, and accountability that directly opposes the arrogance of power.
It refuses the seduction of domination, resists easy compromises, and accepts the burdens of concrete, often tragic decision-making while remaining open to repentance and communal judgment.
Evaluating leaders by their willingness to accept personal cost for justice, their record of service to the vulnerable, and their habit of transparent, accountable decision-making captures the practical implications of Bonhoeffer’s vision. In the end, Bonhoeffer asks not for leaders who simply wield power well, but for those whose character transforms power into service—leaders who, because they live for others under God, can stand against injustice without becoming the very thing they oppose.
Here is the problem : the youths and Millennials prefer youtube and streaming while the older generations are slowly dying off so basically what they are doing is buying dinosaurs. 🦖 They arent seeing the trees that the tv stations they are buying is as relevant as myspace. The future is on tiktok or youtube. I still use tv but I have a roku and decide when I m gonna watch Bridgerton not when everyone tell me to .
An informed one can tell when a news station turns right. I frequently blaspheme national CBS (my digital antenna does not pick up ABC). My local CBS is out of Philly. They are not owned by the despots, thank goodness. Plus, strong black mayor and jewish governor helps…That’s the key, we have to be strong, even if it hurts or, frighteningly, ends us. I’d rather be off this planet than a MAGA. Oh and BTW, NBC is so milquetoasted, they are on the verge. I will be interested in seeing how my favorite sitcoms (all CBS) faire this fall. If there is the slightest tilt right then my digital antenna goes to the trash and my inflammatory rants are headed to the three letter, four letter word, networks.
I know the family/ person that owns one of our TV stations because he used to be married to a woman in our church who is the sister of two brothers who were in my hula halau. This guy lives in Texas and is named Grey. He’s an asshole. I don’t know who runs the other TV stations but I don’t watch TV and only look at their online content de temps en temps.
Here in Syracuse the choice is Nexstar owned ABC, Sinclair owned CBS NBC and CW, and PBS or streaming. We watch only PBS and get all of the rest of our entertainment from streaming platforms. News comes from podcasts and the Philadelphia Inquirer (not billionaire owned). We got tired of the obvious Trump apologia on the local news either with Sinclair mandated stories or obviously biased reporting on every national story.
Growing up in North Carolina, WRAL in Raleigh, had Jesse Helms on weekly, if not more, spewing his hateful rhetoric. It matters who is coming into the living rooms. He used his powerful perch and contaminated the US Senate for several terms. I will admit, however, that was much more intelligent than his current crop of acolytes: Markwayne Mullins, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Ms. Lindsey Graham.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), the German Lutheran pastor and theologian executed for his part in resisting Nazism, never penned a systematic treatise entitled “character in politics.”
Yet his sermons, letters, and major works—especially The Cost of Discipleship, Ethics (unfinished), and Letters and Papers from Prison—converge into a moral vision that illuminates what character in political life must be.
For Bonhoeffer, political character is not an inward quality divorced from action but the visible fruit of costly discipleship: a life shaped by responsibility to neighbor, humility before God, and the courage to resist injustice—even when resistance demands personal sacrifice.
Central to this portrait is his withering critique of the “arrogance of power,” which clarifies both the pathology political character must oppose and the humility it must embody.
True political character begins with discipleship. Bonhoeffer’s stark claim that “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” insists that moral integrity is forged by costly obedience. A leader of character is measured not by rhetorical skill, electoral success, or managerial efficiency, but by fidelity to moral truth and a readiness to bear personal cost rather than betray justice. This discipleship converts private piety into public responsibility: the commitment to live under God’s claim and to refuse compromises that injure others.
That commitment issues in concrete responsibility rather than abstract moralism. For Bonhoeffer, ethical principles become real only when enacted in the particularities of human life; moral judgment must be made in relation to concrete persons and situations.
Thus a politician of character assumes responsibility for the effects of decisions on actual human beings, resisting the temptation to hide behind technocratic rationales or impersonal legalisms. Character shows itself in situated judgment aimed at protecting neighbors—especially the weak—rather than in invoking neutral rules to evade accountability.
Opposing the arrogance of power is essential to this account. Bonhoeffer observed how power easily corrupts by assuring itself of rightful domination, sanctifying violence, or claiming moral exemption.
The arrogance of power manifests when rulers mistake authority for moral superiority, treat subjects as instruments, and cloak self-interest in the language of necessity or destiny.
Against that temptation, Bonhoeffer insists on humility: leaders must recognize their finitude, answerability, and the moral danger of seeing power as an end in itself.
Political character therefore requires resisting the seductions of authority—eschewing triumphalism, revealing the limits of one’s judgments, and refusing to reduce neighbors to mere means.
Closely related is moral courage: the disciplined willingness to resist evil rather than accommodate it.
Bonhoeffer condemned Christians who adapted to Nazism through compromise, seeking peace at the price of justice.
Courage in politics is not reckless heroism but conscience-shaped resolve, exercised within accountable communities and informed by prayerful discernment. It may require civil disobedience or clandestine action when legal structures themselves perpetrate injustice. Such resistance is generated by humility before God and solidarity with the oppressed, not by the arrogance of asserting one’s own righteousness above others.
Bonhoeffer’s critique of “cheap grace” sharpens the moral diagnosis. Cheap grace separates forgiveness from repentance and ethical transformation; politically, it shows up when leaders use pious words to excuse moral laxity, manipulation, or exploitation.
True character repudiates this hypocrisy through continual repentance, transparency about failures, and a commitment to moral formation. Leaders must not hide behind sanctimonious rhetoric to mask compromises with injustice; they must confess error, make amends, and be re-formed by service to neighbors.
His realism about ethical life adds another dimension: character must include prudence in the face of tragic choices.
Bonhoeffer rejects both moralism and pietism—neither rule-bound legalism nor private religiosity suffices.
Political actors will sometimes face situations where every option involves some evil; character is demonstrated by the capacity to weigh conflicting goods, choose the lesser evil when required, and bear the burden of that choice without self-justification.
Prudence here is disciplined judgment, attentive to consequences but not paralyzed by them.
Community and accountability form the soil in which character grows.
Bonhoeffer understood the church as a community that shapes conscience; likewise, political virtue requires institutions and public practices that correct, restrain, and ennoble leaders.
Character is relational: openness to critique, willingness to be corrected, and readiness to answer publicly for one’s decisions. Such accountability counters the arrogance of power by insisting that authority is service under the law of neighbor-love.
Finally, Bonhoeffer’s ethic centers service and solidarity with the weak.
Power rightly exercised is servanthood: policies and political conduct should aim to protect human dignity and secure justice for those at society’s margins. Leadership is judged by its effect on the vulnerable, not by displays of dominance. Coupled with humility, courage, and prudence, this posture is sustained by hope—an abiding fidelity that resists despair while acknowledging human fallibility.
In Bonhoeffer’s terms, then, political character is the moral backbone forged by costly discipleship: a tempered unity of humility, responsibility, courage, prudence, service, and accountability that directly opposes the arrogance of power.
It refuses the seduction of domination, resists easy compromises, and accepts the burdens of concrete, often tragic decision-making while remaining open to repentance and communal judgment.
Evaluating leaders by their willingness to accept personal cost for justice, their record of service to the vulnerable, and their habit of transparent, accountable decision-making captures the practical implications of Bonhoeffer’s vision. In the end, Bonhoeffer asks not for leaders who simply wield power well, but for those whose character transforms power into service—leaders who, because they live for others under God, can stand against injustice without becoming the very thing they oppose.
Here is the problem : the youths and Millennials prefer youtube and streaming while the older generations are slowly dying off so basically what they are doing is buying dinosaurs. 🦖 They arent seeing the trees that the tv stations they are buying is as relevant as myspace. The future is on tiktok or youtube. I still use tv but I have a roku and decide when I m gonna watch Bridgerton not when everyone tell me to .
An informed one can tell when a news station turns right. I frequently blaspheme national CBS (my digital antenna does not pick up ABC). My local CBS is out of Philly. They are not owned by the despots, thank goodness. Plus, strong black mayor and jewish governor helps…That’s the key, we have to be strong, even if it hurts or, frighteningly, ends us. I’d rather be off this planet than a MAGA. Oh and BTW, NBC is so milquetoasted, they are on the verge. I will be interested in seeing how my favorite sitcoms (all CBS) faire this fall. If there is the slightest tilt right then my digital antenna goes to the trash and my inflammatory rants are headed to the three letter, four letter word, networks.
I know the family/ person that owns one of our TV stations because he used to be married to a woman in our church who is the sister of two brothers who were in my hula halau. This guy lives in Texas and is named Grey. He’s an asshole. I don’t know who runs the other TV stations but I don’t watch TV and only look at their online content de temps en temps.
Here in Syracuse the choice is Nexstar owned ABC, Sinclair owned CBS NBC and CW, and PBS or streaming. We watch only PBS and get all of the rest of our entertainment from streaming platforms. News comes from podcasts and the Philadelphia Inquirer (not billionaire owned). We got tired of the obvious Trump apologia on the local news either with Sinclair mandated stories or obviously biased reporting on every national story.