The latest book by the liberal Anglican priest-cum-historian John Moses portrays the life and work of a ‘distinctively German Lutheran revolutionary’ against the backdrop of the cultural and political developments that culminated in Protestantism's complicity in Nazi evil. Protestantism, including the Confessing Church, became irredeemably compromised. This theologically modernist interpretation of Bonhoeffer will no doubt encourage further debate.

The title of this book may be misleading. Its index does not list references to the Peasants' War nor to the French, American or Russian revolutions. Admittedly, there is hardly a mention of Thomas Müntzer in any of Bonhoeffer's works. In his Ethics, however, he does discuss the French Revolution and also comments on the importance of Calvinism for the American Revolution. Moses overlooks all this – a glaring omission, particularly when one considers the importance of the Reformed theologian Karl Barth on the Lutheran's thought. Like Hitler, though coming from a different class, Bonhoeffer rejected the ideas of 1789 and worked for a revolution from above to counteract the revolution of the plebeian Nazi mob, ‘the demonic forces which emerge from below’. Similar anti-revolutionary ideas can be found in The cost of discipleship. How then does Moses turn a reactionary conservative into a revolutionary? Bonhoeffer, he maintains, laid the groundwork for a new ecclesiology, a new political ethic and a radical solution to the so-called ‘Jewish Question’. He discusses the ‘new church’, the Confessing Church, but it was soon paralysed by quarrelling and internecine conflict. Impressed by what he saw of the free Christian associations in the United States, Bonhoeffer toyed with the idea of turning the Evangelische Kirche into a free church based on voluntary membership, yet ecclesiastical conservatism eventually won the day, in eastern as well as in western Germany. No Jeffersonian wall of separation was ever erected on German soil. By reading a ‘two covenant’ theology back into some of the Prussian's statements, Moses manages to claim that Bonhoeffer trod new ground as regards Protestant attitudes to the Jews. Some readers will take issue with his anachronistic eisegesis. Moses plays down Bonhoeffer's statement in 1933 that the Nazi government was ‘without doubt […] justified in adopting new methods’ in its dealings with Jews. He also overlooks the fact that the dialogue between Jews and Christians in post-war Germany, upon which he lavishes so much praise, was only made possible – ironically, though not surprisingly, given the history of the Church under Hitler – by the deliberate exclusion of Jewish Christians from that process as well as by the anathematising of all mission to the Jews.

Moses's treatment of Bonhoeffer tends, then, to be hagiographical. It mirrors Bonhoeffer's view that he, and a few others, belonged to the one and only true Church, while the German Christians (one might add: confessional Lutherans, Free Churchmen and others) were ultimately servants of the AntiChrist. Had the author considered the work of, for example, religious socialists such as Georg Fritze, Erwin Eckert or Emil Fuchs he may have tempered some of his statements.

If, as Moses says, Bonhoeffer brought about a radical paradigm shift in post-war theology, then presumably the Lutheran must also take some blame for the lamentable spiritual state of German Protestantism today. The Churches only stay in business because the traditional Prusso-German relationship between Church and State ensures that the 97 per cent of Protestants who never attend services still pay church taxes. Can the real Bonhoeffer be of help in this precarious situation? In Tegel prison he was preparing a book that took stock of the history of Christianity. Two of his conclusions appear particularly pertinent. ‘As a fresh start she [the Church] should give away all her endowments to the poor and needy’. We are told by Moses that Bonhoeffer meant the parable of the rich man to be taken literally. Perhaps half of the assets owned by the provincial churches could be sold off and, in recognition of their failure to denazify themselves after the war, the proceeds transferred to the Bank of Israel. Bonhoeffer also demanded that ‘the clergy should live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling’. Were these two ethical challenges to be met, the façade of Protestantism offering cheap grace to ‘millions of spiritual corpses’ (Bonhoeffer) would collapse like a house of cards and one might indeed speak of Bonhoeffer's revolutionary legacy. Perhaps Germans would, however, once again take the Gospel seriously.

The book is unfortunately marred by misspellings of numerous German names (even of Bonhoeffer and Schönherr). The author would have been wise to avoid using the term Reichskristallnacht, which was quickly adopted by the Nazis to mock the victims of the terror and cynically play down its effects. In one place, moreover, we are told that the November pogroms of 1938 took place in September.