Avoid the new MAGAfied Bonhoeffer film

As I feared, Angel Studios is serving up a Bonhoeffer who embodies the MAGA belief in subjecting the gospel to a cult of right wing political violence. Eric Metaxas, a koolaid-chugging temple prostitute in the MAGA Cult of Projection (where every accusation is a confession) is a big one for urging the Cult to do evil that good may come of it and continually comparing all those he hates to the Nazis so that he can rationalize violence against them and compare himself and every other MAGA vigilante to Bonhoeffer. That is the agenda of this film:

Early reactions to the film, particularly by the Bonhoeffer family, have identified a distorted legacy. The source of some of these distortions seems easy to identify. Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. plays off the title of conservative pundit Eric Metaxas’ 2011 Bonhoeffer biography. (Metaxas’ website references the movie in the context of plans for a forthcoming Bonhoeffer streaming series, and he’s promoted it on X.)

The similarity between this rendering of Bonhoeffer’s life and Metaxas’ own trajectory is telling. Though Angel Studios has downplayed any connection between Metaxas and this project, consider the similarities (beyond the film’s subtitle). Both movie Bonhoeffer and Metaxas begin as religious thinkers, become primarily concerned with political life, and ultimately dally with the use of force in service to their ideals.

Early on in the film, Bonhoeffer’s Harlem friend says that sometimes a punch is necessary; in 2020, Eric Metaxas made news when he punched a DC protester. The parallel is too spot-on to be mere coincidence. In his most recent book, Metaxas continues to marshal Bonhoeffer’s work toward his project of politics as the ultimate end of theology. His inflammatory rhetoric consistently equates the American left with the Nazis.