Deliver Us From Evil: A Constructive Account of Prayer and Justice in Conversation with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ernst Käsemann, and the Black Pentecostal Tradition

In this paper, I analyze the underlying logics of Bonhoeffer's view, found in Letters and Papers from Prison and Ethics, that the church can enjoy a clean break from injustice through prayer and confessional practices. I do so first by engaging the work of Ernst Käsemann, who offers a post-war critique of clean break thinking in light of the German Church’s ongoing entanglement with white supremacy. I then turn to the the Black Pentecostal Tradition, and its own confrontation of white supremacy through tongues speech, to develop an account, in conversation with Bonhoeffer and Käsemann, of the type of prayer that might confront white supremacy in our day and accomplish Bonhoeffer’s desire for the church to one day regain the authority to speak liberative and redemptive words evoking those spoken by Jesus.