The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute

The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute fosters the empathetic, compassionate, supportive embrace of immigrants, migrants, refugees, and visitors who, too often, are othered, rejected, disadvantaged, or held in contempt by insular individuals, communities, or even countries. Through our YWM program, we develop and offer resources to help religious leaders defeat racism, bias, prejudice, and apathy and instead promote welcome, inclusion, neighborliness, and camaraderie toward perceived outsiders, especially those arriving in a new land under duress. Treating those of different cultures, colors, religions, ethnicities, languages, lifestyles, sexual identities, and national origins with kindness, generosity, and complete acceptance is in keeping with the transcendent values Bonhoeffer saw espoused by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount and expressed universally in the instruction to love our neighbors as ourselves. YWM has produced a seven-part video series on this topic and fields speakers, publishes resources, and produces social media content relevant to it.

The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute addresses gun violence, principally in the United States, but globally when relevant, as a social, moral, political, and theological crisis. We produce resources for religious leaders to help them expose the physical dangers and ethically deleterious effects caused by the embrace of popular gun culture and lethal firepower to resolve fear, conflict, tension, and despair. Through audio podcasts, Facebook Live events, video productions, and publications, TDBI offers practical tools that foster peaceful and non-violent methods for conflict resolution, security, and defense. Religious communities can use these tools for private spiritual exercises, such as devotional reading, individual and group studies, religious education classes, and as content for preaching and teaching.