Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

Last week, we were celebrating our 12th anniversary together.

And this week, we are returning to our Goodreads for the summer,

and we're going into the middle of the 20th century in a classic text, Life

Together by Dietrich Bonifer. On the very first page, Bonifer writes, it is not simply

to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians.

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end,

all of his disciples deserted him. On the cross, he was utterly alone. He was surrounded by

evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian

too belongs not to the seclusion of a cloistered life, but in the thick of foes. Bonifer says we are

in a battle and we need each other. We need this life together in the community of the church.

Now, first, a word about where this book came from. It was written in 1938.

It reflects the experiences of the year before as Bonifer was the director of an underground seminary

at Finkenvalda. And this was set up, of course, because of the Nazis in Germany. Bonifer

had been a professor at the University of Berlin, but when the Nazis came to power, he lost his

license to teach.

And then, of course, the German National Lutheran Church endorsed the Nazi party, became known as the Reich Kierka.

And so Bonifur and others were part of the underground church and the dissenting church.

But they still needed to train ministers.

And so they set up the seminary there.

The Gestapo found it.

They shut it down.

...