For People with Bishop Rob Wright
For People with Bishop Rob Wright
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Kingdom Work with The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride
What if the kingdom of God becomes visible not in our theories but in our steps? Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology reframes discipleship as embodied obedience—showing up in prisons, sharing real mutuality, and trading religious privilege for humble responsibility.
In this episode, Bishop Wright has a conversation with The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride, Associate Rector of All Saints' Atlanta and president of the International Bonhoeffer Society. Jenny shares how reading Bonhoeffer at an urban house of hospitality opened a door from evangelical ideas to lived formation. That path led her into prison classrooms where fashion small talk mingled with raw theological questions, and where “helping” gave way to being helped.
They discuss Luke 10’s sentness, why belief grows when we go where Jesus intends to go, and how visiting the incarcerated unmasks our craving for superiority. Responsibility becomes the antidote to Christian nationalism’s power hunger, and repentance becomes a daily practice that forms courage and tenderness. Listen in for the full conversation.
The Rev. Dr. Jennifer M. McBride (Ph.D. University of Virginia) is Associate Rector at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta. Previously she served as an Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and held the Board of Regents Endowed Chair in Ethics at Wartburg College in Iowa. After a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Religious Practices and Practical Theology at Emory University, McBride directed a theology certificate program for incarcerated women through Emory's Candler School of Theology.
McBride is author of You Shall Not Condemn: A Story of Faith and Advocacy on Death Row (Cascade, 2022), Radical Discipleship: A Liturgical Politics of the Gospel (Fortress, 2017), The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness (Oxford University Press, 2011), and is co-editor of Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought. In addition to book chapters and scholarly articles, her work has appeared in popular publications like The Christian Century and CNN.com and has been featured in the New York Times.
McBride is the recent past president of the International Bonhoeffer Society – English Language Section, an organization made up of scholars, religious leaders, and readers of German pastor-theologian and Nazi-resister, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. She serves as co-editor of the T&T Clark book series, New Studies in Bonhoeffer’s Theology and Ethics.
She is married to Dr. Thomas Fabisiak, who is the co-executive director of the Georgia Coalition for Higher Ed in Prison and Associate Dean at Life University, where he runs a college degree program for women in Georgia prisons.
So when we're actually doing incarnational ministry, putting our bodies in these places, we see that we can't be self-righteous because we have a lot to confess. Um, I mean, your word responsibility is such an important word for Bonhoeffer's theology, too, that we take responsibility for sin in the world because that's what Jesus did on the cross. So it leads to a posture of sort of continual repentance, which, if you're really living that way, you're gonna become a more humble person.
Bishop Wright:Good morning, I am Bishop Rob Wright and this if For People. Today we have a special guest, the Reverend Dr. Jenny McBride. Jenny, good morning.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Good morning.
Bishop Wright:Jenny attended uh the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has an MA and a PhD in religious studies from the University of Virginia. Uh, she is all about theological education and formation and has served on the faculty of Wartburg College in rural Iowa and McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. She's an author uh and uh the president of the International Bonhoeffer Society. Uh she's ordained as an Episcopal priest and serves here in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. She's married to Thomas, and they love hiking, biking, and swimming. Jenny, I'm so glad to have you uh on today. And uh I want to get right to it. Uh, you've done a lot of work in writing and thinking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Uh, and you're paying a lot of attention to where we are uh in uh in America, in the state of Georgia, and in the world. What does Dietrich Bonhoeffer have to say to us now?
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Yes. Um, you know, Bonhoeffer is getting a lot of attention in this moment. I think for good reason. He was a 20th-century German pastor theologian, Nazi resister. He has, for someone who is a philosophical theologian, he has quite an interesting story. What most people know about him is that he was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Um, but actually kind of beginning there or focusing on that, I think can often uh lead to a lot of misuses of Bonhoeffer and really kind of paint um a skewed picture. He was actually had a very strong peace ethic. Uh, he wrote 10,000 pages of theology. He was useful, I think, mostly as a theologian, even though he, you know, found himself uh in the midst of um this conspiracy theory because he was connected to a brother and brother-in-laws who are part of the Abwehr movement, the military intelligence, one of the groups that was trying uh to do something about Hitler. But really, I think he's useful to us as a theologian, first and foremost.
Bishop Wright:Yeah. Say more about that. So if he's a theologian, that means he has some sort of sense of the divine uh that is, you know, has intrigued you at least. I mean, you you're a scholar. There's uh, you know, millions of people to study and how they've tried to hold their faith in the in the times that they that they lived. Uh what's his appeal for you? And then, you know, if you think about uh the ways in which he thought about God, um, what sort of arrests you and grabs you?
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Well, my background is that I grew up conservative evangelical uh in the Presbyterian Church of America. Um and I was religious studies major as an undergrad. I was kind of always a theologian, even as a very young girl. I sort of took what I was learning and took it to the logical. And um, and I was already asking a lot of questions about sort of the theological framework that I had been given as an evangelical. I was um working at uh a ministry. They didn't really necessarily like to call it a ministry, but it was sort of an urban house of hospitality in Washington, D.C. And I can say more about that. It's called the Southeast White House. And we were sitting around the kitchen table and read uh Bonhoeffer's life together for, and that's the first time I really encountered Bonhoeffer. I love that I encountered him in the context of ministry, not in the Ivory Tower, but then it led me to want to study Bonhoeffer more. But in those first moments, it was really that he um he was talking about Jesus, his all of his theology um uh is really Christology, meaning the study of who Jesus is. As an evangelical, his focus on Jesus made me feel comfortable and it felt familiar. But he was saying a lot of things in really fresh new ways that I'd never heard before.
Bishop Wright:Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So so uh so what was he saying that was so fresh?
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Well, it's in it's I've thought about this in the context of now being an Episcopalian, maybe maybe, maybe it won't seem so radical, but um but well the f one of the things he was saying is that he had a real sense of the this worldliness of Christian faith. So of course, God is transcendent. Um of course he believes in eternal life, these sorts of things. But really, the whole point of the faith is not um, as it was in my context growing up, all about going to heaven or hell. Um it was about um it was about the kingdom of God coming to earth, which is really what the synoptic gospels are all about. That piece. And then also the faith is really discipleship. It's it's following Jesus in a concrete, literal way, obeying Jesus' commands and teachings. Again, I hope that doesn't sound that radical to uh Episcopalians or the Anglican Communion, but I think for a lot of our um denominations, uh it is a kind of different way of thinking about the faith.
Bishop Wright:No, absolutely. I mean, you know, uh lots of uh uh faithful people sort of um think of um service on earth as uh, you know, uh in a crass, you know, crassly put uh a way to sort of buy your ticket and get your ticket punched uh, you know, to uh eternal life, right? You know, a sort of a cruise ship uh in eternity where you know streets are gold and all your needs are met. Yeah. Um and so there every car every sort of denomination has its version of that. Uh but you know, the the folks that always grab my attention are the people who uh think of the world as a place where the kingdom of God is already present and that adventure, uh discipleship, adventure, following Jesus intimately, uh resolutely, means being and seeing the kingdom here and now, right? Uh is have I got that right?
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Well, I think so. I mean the way that the way I've come to say it, and I'm my work has been sort of constructive theology. So it's not just saying, here's Bonhoeffer, this is what he says, so therefore this is what we should think, but how can the way he's thinking um help us think in our own context? So the way I've been um saying it is that really the when we when we obey Jesus' commands, we make visible the kingdom of God on earth. Um and so so it really is um it's a I I love the word participation. I think it's like a really beautiful theological word that we're participating in what in what God has already done through Christ, and yet we are to participate, we are to partner with God and God's work in this world.
Bishop Wright:You said a dirty word there. I don't know if you know it. Uh you said a big dirty word for the modern mind, and that that was uh obedience. Yes. Obedience. And and funny enough, you know, I think it's right that you and I met or at least got to got a chance to know each other a little bit, actually at in a prison.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Yes.
Bishop Wright:Um we we weren't uh we we weren't inmates. Uh we were we were there. We were there, uh I think as an extension of trying to be obedient. Um we we were there to to be with the incarcerated um because you know in Matthew 25, we're told that we ought to, that's what followers do. They they they visit the incarcerated. There's a list of people we ought to visit. And the the Bible goes on to say, when we visit those folks, it is as if uh we are visiting the Lord Himself. Uh and so you you and I met at Arendale prison uh and uh and you know, there in terms of uh being alongside uh sisters, it's a it's a uh a female prison. Uh and uh hopefully uh sharing the good news, uh, but also uh you know, pointing to the good news that we saw, you know, already there. So so did you get to that prison ministry uh out of obedience? And tell me just a little bit about your life with prisons.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Yeah, that's the way I talk about it, certainly, is that it's obedience to Jesus' command of visit the prisoner. But the the way it came about, interesting how things all connect. I was um after my PhD at UVA, I came to Atlanta for the first time to do a postdoc fellowship at Emory. And um, that was 2008, fall of 2008. Liz Bounds, who's an ethicist at Emory, um, was just starting a pilot program uh in partnership with our friend uh Chaplins, who's a bishop. And I got invited to just in the pilot to just teach a class session on Bonhoeff. Um and it was my first time in a prison. And um, that experience of being in the classroom with people who were so hospitable to me. I you know, I remember thinking, well, what am I supposed to wear? Like I knew the dress code, but are they gonna think I'm just this like white girl, southern, you know, southern bell who doesn't know what she's doing? Um, and so I thought, and finally I just realized I can only be myself. I can only wear the clothes I have in my closet. So I went uh had this classroom experience, you know, in the middle of it, it was a break for bathroom, and I'm, you know, everyone's lining up in the in the quote inmate bathroom line. And then there's another bathroom, I can't remember what it was called, but it's for guests, I guess. And I stood in the line with the women uh and talked to them, and and there was a couple of things that happened. One was that that they all were like, oh, I love your boots and I love your shirt. And you know, we connected over our love for fashion, which was fun. Um, and they also kind of noticed that I I stayed in line with them and was sort of wasn't going to the other bathroom but was hanging out with them. And I think I was told I had to use the other restroom, not their restroom. So I finally did. Um, but that one class period, um, you know, the the rawness of the conversation, the the desire to really grapple with these uh questions of faith, you know, all we did was bring in some theological texts and then the conversations that arose. So for me, I think of it really in terms of like um mutual friendship and the transformation that can only happen through an action through truly true mutuality. Um, and that happened because I had no idea what I was doing inside that space. So they had to be my guides, they had to be my teachers. And in the classroom space, I had no idea how they would receive the theology. I didn't know anything about their lives. They're the experts on their lives and they're the experts on prisons because they live there. So um, so it was a genuine, you know, it wasn't like, okay, I'm I'm gonna act like this is mutual. It genuinely was mutual.
Bishop Wright:Yeah. So so kingdom came near that day, right? And uh, and and what I love about kingdom is kingdom is always so tricky. You know, we who uh walk through the gates to go and to be with out of obedience, I believe as we should, uh, might go harboring ideas that that we're going to be the givers. And then surprise, surprise, kingdom is always tricky. And so even as you give, I can tell you, I've walked out of many a jail uh and federal prison, knowing uh that uh that I have received the lion's share of the blessing that day, hoping that I was of some benefit to somebody, but knowing as I got in my car and went back to my life, that I had received such a benefit uh from people's experience of God, from their warmth to me, their welcome to me, um, from allowing me uh to actually experience what Jesus wanted us to experience, which is come and know me uh, you know, through my words and through the places that I want you to go. That's how you really get to know me.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:I mean, another, you know, it reminds me of another part of Bonhoeffer that I love so much in discipleships, often uh entitled Cost of Discipleship. He talks about um that we have to get into a new situation where we can learn to believe. And so belief is not just this, it doesn't come from like abstract, disembodied intellectual thinking. It comes from the actual practice of trusting Jesus and literally following him into the places where he leads.
Bishop Wright:I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about so I have annual council coming up, which is our big annual event where we have uh, you know, representatives from all of our congregations, et cetera. And and the text I'm thinking about is uh and and writing on already is Luke 10, where where Jesus sends uh he appoints 70 and and sends them to all the towns, uh two by two, and all the towns it says um, you know, where Jesus himself intended to go. And so, you know, but but there's that word sent, right? Uh, and and you know, I I think we we have to use that word more, um, is that we go not out of our own authority, we go not even out of our own goodness if we have any goodness at all, but we we go because we've been commissioned to go, right, to reveal, right, that that thing that Jesus wants revealed in the places that Jesus wants it uh you know revealed. And so when I hear you talk about uh your experience uh you know in the prisons and with the with the folks there, um you know, there there is a uh a revelation of of the Lord that can only be experienced uh if you walk in sentness. Yes. If that makes any sense.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Yeah, and it it actually reminds me of another um important passage for me from Bonhoeffer. Um it's in his letters and papers from prison. He taught he says, What does it mean for the church to be called out, but not seen, not seeing itself as religiously privileged, but belonging wholly to the world?
Bishop Wright:Whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on. That's good. That's good. You gotta you gotta do that one more time. Do it slow. That's good.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:This is a paraphrase with a few quotes in it. Yeah. I'm getting it right. Um, what does it mean to be the church, the ecclesia, as people who are called out, but not seeing ourselves as religiously privileged, but rather as belonging wholly to the world. So I, you know, a lot of really because I grew up evangelical, a lot of and all my academic work came out of these existential real questions I had, you know, the idea of witness and of being sent and um was was so important and it still is to me. But I think a lot of what we see um, you know, in where we are now with sort of the rise of Christian nationalism and um just and even even before that is a sense that so many of our churches and denominations have a sense that we are religiously privileged, yeah, we have the truth, that we have morality. And I'm not saying we we, you know, certainly, well, I'll just say this that this idea that we we have these things, um, and instead of seeing that the truth is Jesus, a person, and that we are witnesses and that the Bible is a witness, um, we think that we kind of possess these things. And that whole way of being is um leads to a lot of uh anti-gospel, really.
Bishop Wright:Yeah, you know, what it what it you're you're nicer than I am, what it leads, I think, to is a counterfeit gospel. And it it it um, you know, in the worst case uh uh uh you know sort of situation, it it leads to a religious deceitfulness, right? Which is which is to to sort of mobilize people, you know, based on falsehood. I mean, and we see we see that uh in what I call today the pyrotechnic power hungry gospel, right? So so to say that I'm not religiously privileged because uh because I have been swept up in the life of Christ, but to say that that means that I belong to the whole as Christ himself belonged to the whole flips the paradigm on its head. You know, Walter Brugerman talked about chosenness, not not as um you know, not as entitlement, but as responsibility, right? And as to be a steward of, you know, if there's any uniqueness in it, it is to be the steward of something, you know, holy and glorious that gets poured out for the world, and particularly in what I like to call the fingernail dirty places of the world.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Yeah, and I mean I think it leads to a deep self-righteousness and a posture of judging others. And um, and I mean that gets back to the going into the prison, the the the if it's about the not the belief in Jesus, but the following of Jesus, the practices, then when you actually put yourself in complex spaces like the prison, I mean, all of our life is is complex, every ethical issue is incredibly complex. But when you put yourself there, you suddenly realize, oh, I can't really be like morally pure. I'm not, I don't, you know, I'm I'm getting myself dirty in some way. Because, for example, you know, um you well, actually Thomas talks about this quite a lot because in my husband, because in his work, he was running a higher ed imprison program for a long time where he was inside the prison to the a volunteer, but to the point that he had keys. He talks about the experience of walking alongside some people, and then you get to a gate and you have to close the gate and you have to lock it, even if they ask, Well, can I come through? Really? I just need to cut through. And he says no. And in that sense, he's then kind of on the side of the officers, not really where he wants to be. And so, so what it so when we're actually uh doing incarnational ministry, putting our bodies in these places, we see um we see that we can't be self-righteous because we have a lot to confess. And we're can we're um, I mean, your line, your word responsibility is such an important word for Bonhoeffer's theology, too, that we take responsibility for sin in the world because that's what Jesus did on the cross. And so um, so it it leads to a posture of sort of continual repentance, which if you're really living that way, you're gonna become a more humble person.
Bishop Wright:Yeah. No, that's right. You know, um, you know, one of the things that I sort of keep in my back pocket um sayings is, you know, the closer you walk to Jesus, the more you will distance yourself from smallness, separation, and superiority. Right. And so what I what I think one of the things I think we resist uh when it comes to relationship with Jesus and life for Jesus is the the the intimacy that he is inviting us into with all kinds of people, right? So we we need to, in our smallness and in our desires for separation and superior, we need to keep a certain distance, right? Uh we need to keep a certain over and againstness, right? Because that that's familiar and we've been taught that and seem the the world seems to cherish that. But what Jesus does is he calls us into a deeper intimate intimacy than I think a lot of us are comfortable with, right? You know this uh you know from the jails, you know, you're you're you're called into spaces where you know your academic credentials necessarily don't matter that much. Um, you know, the wealth behind those behind those gates don't matter that much. You know, all the all the things that we've accumulated and worked hard, they don't matter that much. And what you're left with is is that I'm your sibling and you're my sibling, and we've got that gospel that we both take up a share in. And that's really kind of all you got. We're we're we're um uh for for many of us, we're uncomfortably close in those moments.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Yes. Yes. Yeah, and I think that what a lot of um, especially sort of white American Christianity, um, maybe a lot in its evangelical form, but I think in other forms, we easily turn Jesus into an idea instead of a person. And if this is another Bonhoeffer um sort of insight. If and then, and as others have said this too, James Cohn, the father of Black Liberation Theology, said this. If if Jesus is just an idea in our bel in our belief system, then we can make Jesus whatever we want. But if the call is to literally follow Jesus as closely as the first disciples, then you can't ignore all these things in the gospels.
Bishop Wright:Uh not an idea, but a person. I think the last thing I want to say really is that I think that's what we have to do now. Um, because we were talking about Bonhoffer and what does he mean to us now as we find ourselves, you know, and so with you know, Jesus was political. He was not a partisan of any shape or form. Uh I like to say his politics were not left to right, they were uh horizontal uh and vertical, right? Um so uh uh horizontal into neighborliness and certainly vertical into you know radical devotion uh to God. Um, you know, but what we realize out in the world now is that people want to make Jesus something very different than the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Because the very different Jesus from, you know, uh, you know, the a Jesus that is not sort of tethered to, embedded in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ends up being a great mascot for lots of really kind of grotesque behaviors.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Yes. And you know, I think the way we've gotten there is um, you know, it's not it's not necessarily bad. It's that a lot of Protestant denominations begin reading Paul and sort of focus on Paul and only read Paul. And if you do that, um, I'm not saying that Paul is going against the gospels by any means, but he uses the language of the cross so much. And I think really he means the cross and the resurrection tied up together. Um, but but really, and so then we start talking thinking about salvation and and focusing on the cross, but really what Bonhoeffer does is um really learn from the early church fathers that the whole Christ event is the importance, it's the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. And so then you have to, if you're focused on the incarnation, you have to be focused on the story and the gospels and the teachings.
Bishop Wright:Well, before we wrap up, I'm I'm wondering, you know, you you are a uh uh a priest, an episcopal priest in the church, uh married to a fellow who's doing uh important ministry. Your your life together is about formation, uh uh, you know, and uh we can get swept up in these roles uh and this good work. And I'm wondering, but for Jenny, just Jenny, you might say, is is there a a gospel story or a Bible verse right now that's that's uh that's making you strong or that's blessing you or challenging you?
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Uh yeah, I mean the first thing I think about is um is actually is uh John 20. Um it's the resurrection narrative in John, but it's focused on Mary Magdalene. And I'm thinking about that for two reasons. One, because we just bought this gorgeous uh stations of the resurrection by um a black artist named Laura James, Caribbean Heritage, who's gonna come um be with us for MLK Sunday. So she has 10 prints that show that that are focused on Mary Magdalene in that text. And it's it's you know, it's the call of um, it's the call of um of of Mary, you know, to be the one that that proclaims the resurrection. And when you said, you know, stripping, uh stripping me of um sort of roles and positions, who's Jenny? But the interesting thing for me is it's really probably made, you know, one of the probably the most important um fact of my life is sort of is growing up in a denomination that didn't ordain women and having um and and really having this very long road to get to where I am as a priest and and going the academic route because that was what was open for me, even though I never felt a sense of calling. But now living into that sense of calling as a priest um is uh you know, it's it's I don't even know, it's it's uh like saying it's transformative or it's too too small. It's it's um it is who Jenny is, you know, not not the role of the the priest, but just to be able to live, to hear Jesus say to me, as you said to Mary Magdalene, Jenny, you know, I'm I'm commissioning you to go and tell your brothers, you know, what what's happened. And and to be able to do that is what has helped me um come alive, you know, in the ways that I actually was alive as a little girl before I realized that, you know, certain things weren't available to me in the context that I was in. So, and of course thinking about uh the new Archbishop of Canterbury and still the importance of female leadership and and what it means uh to live into um my pastor, my sense of pastoral authority as someone who, as a woman who in the society was kind of taught um self-doubt, even I think I covered up, covered it up pretty well, but still deeply had it. And so just to live in into this um is extraordinary, you know, and I'm just so grateful to to be a part of this diocese, to be at Alt Saints, to have leadership like yours and um like our presiding bishop. So I'm just so grateful.
Bishop Wright:Thank you for that. I I really do appreciate that. And thank you for uh putting your heart out there, saying a little bit about your actual, you know, the contours of your journey. Um, you know, what's remarkable to me always is that when you get past um, you know, our roles and the accomplishments, et cetera, as wonderful as they all are, um, you you find in some form or fashion Jesus is still setting the captives free.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Yes.
Bishop Wright:Friends, we've had the good fortune of being with the Reverend Dr. Jenny McBride today. Jenny, thanks again.
The Rev. Dr. Jenny M. McBride:Thank you. It's a great conversation.
Bishop Wright:Absolutely. God bless you.