This year is the 60th anniversary of D-Day when Allied forces invaded Nazi occupied Europe. But what if D-Day had never happened and if instead the Nazis had invaded England in 1940. How would we as Christians have coped in this situation and what would our church life be like after 60 years of Nazi rule. This was the situation that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had to contend with in Germany in the 1930's. When the Nazi came to power in 1933 Bonhoeffer realised the awful situation that the church faced and became on outspoken opponent of Nazism. Two days after Hitler became Chancellor, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he warned of the dangers of Fuhrer worship and attacked the Nazi theory of leadership. The broadcast was interrupted. The Nazis wanted to control what the church said and did in Germany. Bonhoeffer became a leading member of the Confessing Church that resisted the Nazis attempts to silence the churches life and witness.

Bonhoeffer had been an outstanding student and a leading Lutheran theologian at the University of Berlin. For a time he was assistant chaplain at the German Church in Barcelona and had spent a year at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Disheartened by the Nazi influence in the church Bonhoeffer became the pastor of two German churches in London. While in this country he became a friend of Bishop Bell of Chichester. With the formation of the German Confessional Church Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to take charge of an illegal seminary to train pastor for the church and ran an experimental community called the 'Bruderhaus'. The Nazis closed this in 1937. Bonhoeffer was now closely watched by the Gestapo but was able to visit America in 1939. When friends tried to persuade him to stay he insisted on returning to Germany knowing that his life was in danger. As he said at the time:

"I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people".

Involved now in the underground resistance movement with his brother-in-law and in contact with Bishop Bell concerning plans to overthrow the Nazi regime he was arrested in April 1943 on suspicion of assisting Jews to escape Germany. He was placed in prison and then moved to a series of concentration camps. On Sunday the 8th April 1945 the other prisoner asked him to conduct a service for them all, both Protestants and Catholics.

Next day Bonhoeffer was executed by the SS at Flossenburg Concentration Camp less than a week before the Allies liberated the camp. The camp doctor writing ten years after the event said:

"On the morning of that day between five and six o'clock the prisoners ... were taken from their cells, and the verdicts of the court martial read out to them. Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this loveable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God."

What greater price can a Christian pay than to be killed for their faith?

Bonhoeffer helps us to understand how Christians can relate their faith to the politics and culture in the world around them. The integrity of our life and faith must be clear to all around us in whatever we say and do. We may not be called to die for our faith but we do face difficult circumstances that call for us to be true to our God.