Bonhoeffer reminds us from his grave that humans have come of age, and that our Christian faith must be disentangled from much irrelevant apparatus of religion…

He stood firmly for the absolute claim of Christ against the absolute claim of Hitler in a world where the majority espoused a relativism that was totally ineffectual, but is now being seriously misrepresented by those who think his plea for a secular understanding of the Gospel meant that he had no faith in a personal God.

He wrote, from his prison cell: ‘Please do not ever get worried or anxious about me, but don’t forget to pray for me. I am so sure of God’s guiding hand that I hope I shall never lose that certainty… My past life is replete with God’s goodness, and my sins are covered by the forgiving love of Christ crucified. I am thankful for those who have crossed my path, and all I wish is never to cause them sorrow…. Please, don’t for a moment get upset about all this, but let it rejoice your heart also.’ The British officer, a confessed agnostic, who saw him as he went to the scaffold said aftgerward that he had never known a man for whom his God was so real and so near.

– David H C Read, Expository Times, December 1967, pp. 85, 86.