The Bugenhagen Option

Yet Another Option from a Forgotten Reformer

Editor’s note: this paper was presented at the Pacific Northwest regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society earlier this year.

In The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher maintained that the US, and Western countries in general, are headed into a new “dark ages.” According to Dreher, with the triumph of secularism and the dominance of the woke mob, Christians must realize that they now live in a post-Christian country. They must give up the hope of influencing culture through politics. Instead, we must focus on self-sustaining communities that are defined by liturgical worship, classical Christian education, intentional economic support, and hard work. 

In the wake of Dreher’s Benedict Option, other Christian conservatives like Andrew Isker, C.R. Wiley, Douglas Wilson and others proposed the “Boniface Option.” This is a more militant expression of many of Dreher’s core concerns. As Wilson put it on his Blog and Mablog: “If you take the longer postmill[ennial] view, which we are endeavoring to do, it is more like the Boniface Option. We are not so much trying to build a secure tree fort in the tree of Thor, as we are trying to chop down the tree of Thor.” The Boniface Option focuses on attacking and exposing the idols of our times.

However, Boniface did not just focus on cutting down idolatrous oak trees; he was also a builder—establishing schools, establishing monasteries, reforming the clergy, and working with civil rulers for the common good. In fact, Boniface was a Benedictine monk himself and was supported by other Benedictines. Additionally, Benedict did his fair share of destroying idols. The site of the famous Benedictine Abbey, Monte Cassino, was originally a place dedicated to pagan worship. Benedict threw down the pagan shrines and then established the Abbey that has continued to this day. So, to oppose Boniface and Benedict is historically inaccurate and ignores the shared goals of both Benedict and Boniface. But there is another option which compliments the Benedict and Boniface options.

Bugenhagen Option

Johannes Bugenhagen (1485-1558) is a neglected Lutheran reformer who has much to teach the contemporary church about how to impact both church and culture. Bugenhagen was a tireless administrator and implementer who focused on four main goals: worship, education, government, and social welfare. In these ways, Bugenhagen does not give us another, completely distinct, option. However, his life and ministry united many of the concerns and emphases of both the Benedict and Boniface options.

Combining the Benedict option with the Boniface option is another way to implement Nehemiah’s strategy—with a sword in one hand and shovel in the other (Neh. 4:17). The Bugenhagen Option gives us a further four-fold strategy of working to reform four key areas of life and culture: Worship, Education, Social Reform, and then Government. 

Conservatives have focused historically on trying to reform Government, with less than stellar results. The last twenty years have seen an increased focus on education and worship. Additionally, beginning in the 1980s, conservative evangelicals have also increasingly warmed to the pursuit of poverty alleviation, economic development, and social justice. But, in reaction to the rise of the Woke agenda and the leftward/progressive trajectory of many involved in justice work, we are in danger of abandoning this central plank of the Biblical, Reformational agenda. Too many conservative evangelicals are leery of pursuing the work of justice and mercy ministry because it has been overemphasized by progressives. The Bugenhagen Option provides a model for combining Biblical, and Reformational, social reform, along with the reform of worship, education, and civil government. 

A Neglected Reformer

Who was Bugenhagen? Bugenhagen labored alongside Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon in the reformation of Wittenberg. In 1523, he was elected to the position of pastor of the city church and was actually Luther’s pastor. Bugenhagen has been overshadowed by his more famous colleagues like Luther and Melanchthon, but his contribution to the Reformation in Germany was crucial. In the wake of Worms, Luther was proclaimed an outlaw and could not travel freely, so Bugenhagen had the unique opportunity to help both civil magistrates and church officials structure their cities and churches according to the new evangelical emphases and teachings.

As Esther Chung-Kim puts it in her valuable study, Economics of Faith: “Bugenhagen played a leading role in proliferating Lutheran church orders in many German cities and northern European territories. His contribution was to adapt doctrine to practice through the reform of social institutions in many cities and territories.” Although Bugenhagen had a knack for practical administration, his reforms were rooted in his theological convictions. Bugenhagen was not pursuing his own theological vision—rather, he was helping to implement the vision cast by Luther. According to Chung-Kim: “Wherever the Lutheran reform took hold, it sought to contribute to the social institutions responsible for combating poverty. This connection between religious reform and social responsibility was most apparent in Johannes Bugenhagen’s church orders and their lasting imprint of religious values on poverty policies.”  

Bugenhagen’s Vision for Holistic Ministry

Bugenhagen labored for reform according to the principles of the Lutheran evangelical movement in various sectors, though there is overlap between all of them. Bugenhagen, Chung-Kim tells us, “worked in multiple roles as a pastor, preacher, teacher, author of church orders and legislation, mediator of factions, and advisor to political leaders.” Further, “He encouraged the adoption of the evangelical movement and believed religious reform would bring social reform, including the establishment of evangelical worship, schools, and poor relief.” He believed correct doctrine must necessarily have practical effects in the life of the church and the culture. This four-fold emphasis on church, civil government, education, and poverty relief can provide a strategy for Christian engagement today.

Bugenhagen focused primarily on reforming the church. The Reformation was first a theological program. But correct theology had to be expressed in the structures and life of the community in all its aspects. Faith must necessarily produce good fruit and Bugenhagen stressed the necessity for evangelical faith to manifest itself in the care of the less fortunate and the vulnerable.

In European Reformations, Carter Lindberg summarizes Bugenhagen’s strategy:

[His] basic principle for formulating church orders was to link theological argumentation and its practical and legal consequences. His theological basis was expressed in a sermonic style intended to make the order plausible to the community. To Bugenhagen, the reform of the church was not just to be a legal decree from above, but the engagement of the whole urban community in the reform of worship, the development of schools, and the creation of a new social welfare program. All of this was perceived to be central to Christian responsibility, and the duty of the entire city.

Chung-Kim put it this way: “Informed by Luther’s teachings, biblical ideals, and a knack for organization, Bugenhagen helped create practical structures of poor relief, including defined roles for deacons, a separation of the common chest from the church’s chest, and a reallocation of various funding sources.” Although these ideals were not implemented perfectly in every instance, changes in poor relief were one of Bugenhagen’s prime measures of whether true reform had occurred or not in a city.

In his introduction to the church order he authored for the city of Braunschweig, as quoted by Lindberg, Bugenhagen clearly connects correct worship and serving our neighbors: “We must carry out the true worship of God, that is, true good works of faith which were first commanded us by Christ. This is primarily that we bear the burden of our neighbors’ needs as Jesus said [John 13:51]: ‘So will all people know that you are my followers if you always love one another.’”  

Bugenhagen separated poor relief from the other funds that went to schools and the maintenance of churches and pastors. Because of this, pastors could appeal to their congregants to donate to the common fund for the poor without any conflict of interest. He put this into practice in his own sermons as he encouraged support for Christian schools, poor relief, and the ministers of the church. This required a modified approach to shame. As Chung-Kim puts it: “He realized that reforming social behavior required the consistent effort to cultivate a culture of giving. Instead of linking poverty with shame, he linked stinginess with shame.”

Bugenhagen clearly connected care for the poor to faith, worship, and the Lord’s Supper. In his The Christian Order of the honorable city of Braunschweig, he explained:

The Corinthians were accustomed to prepare a good Christian meal when they gathered to receive the sacrament and to eat and drink before they received the sacrament, as Christ had done with his disciples during the Last Supper … The rich invited the poor to sit with them and let them eat and drink with them. However, when Paul chided them the meal had become unchristian, as happened among us with the unchristian brotherhoods, for the rich ate there and drank themselves full, [while] they let the poor remain hungry during the meal as they waited for the sacrament which was customarily distributed during and after the meal.

The Eucharist, as a sacrament of unity, should not be a place of socio-economic division. Bugenhagen advocated for an economics informed by the Eucharist. In all of this, Bugenhagen was simply continuing the rich historical legacy of Christians engaging the surrounding culture through good works, mercy and justice.

Bugenhagen Option in History

The Bugenhagen Option is just another name to describe a common theme in how Christians have engaged the surrounding culture from the beginning of church history. It is not just for Protestants. Rather, it draws on the shared heritage of the church in history. The early Christian church also combined an uncompromising belief and proclamation of the truth with a life of compassion and care. In Seek the Welfare of the City, Bruce Winter’s study on benefaction in the first century, he highlights how the “good works” of the early Christians were to be public and had apologetic value:

The Christians’ good works were intended to be ‘observed’ (ἑποπτεύω, 2:11-12). As sojourners and temporary residents they were commanded to abstain from fleshly conduct in order to present an attractive lifestyle (ἀναστροφὴ καλή 2:11). The observation of their high-profile good works would not only be an eloquent defence [sic] of ill-founded allegations against Christians accused of evil-doers, it would also be the means by which critics became converts who glorified God ‘in the day of visitation’ i.e. the day referring to personal salvation.

Timothy Paul Jones develops this idea further in his contribution to Rich in Good Deeds: A Biblical Response to Poverty by the Church and by Society. As a partial response to those who argue that rational apologetics is no longer relevant or useful in our postmodern cultural climate, Jones argues that the early church can offer a model for an apologetic that is grounded in the ethics of the church and the behavior of Christians. He calls this “ecclesial apologetics,” which highlights the centrality of lived theology in our witness to the world. His survey of early Christian writings (the Apology of Aristides, the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, and the Epistle to Diognetus) shows that the early church treated care of the poor and marginalized as “evidence” that there was something unique about the Christian community. Because these practices were so counter-cultural, the obvious explanation was that they were motivated, and empowered, by God’s power. As Jones summarizes:

Acts of care for the socially disadvantaged are themselves evidences that “something divine” [Aristides’ Apology, 16] is at work in the life of the church. This is more than a mere “lifestyle evangelism” that tries to earn a hearing through acts of charity. In ecclesial apologetics, the life of sacrificial kindness that characterizes the church is itself a confirmation of the truthfulness of the faith that the people profess. Such a life, consistently pursued by an entire community, is not merely incomprehensible but impossible apart from the suffering of Jesus and the power of the Spirit.

There are other examples of what we can—with a high degree of anachronism—term the “Bugenhagen Option” in the early church. In his study of how the early church grew, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, Alan Kreider remarks on the centrality of patience in early Christian thought and practice, along with an emphasis on doing good works in a publicly visible way. He highlights Cyprian (200-258), the bishop of Carthage, who wrote On the Good of Patience (Do bono patientiae, ca. 256). Cyprian exhorted his readers: “Beloved brethren, [we] are philosophers not in words but in deeds; we exhibit our wisdom not by our dress, but by truth; we know virtues by their practice rather than through boasting of them; we do not speak great things but we live them.”

Kreider notes that the phrase “we do not speak great things but we live them” also appears in an early North African Christian apologist, Minucius Felix, in his Octavius. He speculates that this phrase may have been part of broader early Christian teaching, but we cannot know for sure. Kreider comments: “But by the way Cyprian uses this phrase, he tells his readers that the challenge the Christians face in the mid-century is to live their faith, making it visible, demonstrating the gospel to the watching world.” Furthermore, this is a patient faith. Kreider quotes Cyprian: “Therefore, as servants and worshipers of God, let us show by spiritual homage the patience that we learn from the heavenly teachings. For that virtue we have in common with God.” Since God is patient, so the Christian community should patiently devote themselves to lives of holiness, doing good works, and showing the truth of their beliefs through their deeds.

This is a central concern of what I am proposing as the “Bugenhagen Option.” Evangelicals and our fellow conservative Catholic and Orthodox brethren cannot forget the power of patiently doing good deeds, even as we contend for the truth. The Bugenhagen Option is essential if the church is to retain its sense of unique calling in the world and resist the ever-increasing pressures of political correctness of the Woke-Industrial complex. We are in a similar situation to the early church. They also faced pressures to conform, assimilate, and compromise. As we face the constant societal pressures to compromise, and the overt or implicit commands to bow the knee to our equivalents of emperor worship, the faithful practices of the Bugenhagen option can help to create resilient communities that embody the “patient ferment” of the early church, the confident assertion of Christ’s lordship over all things preached by the Reformation, the pursuit of Christian education at all levels, and the compassionate sharing of resources and care for the poor that has characterized the church throughout history.

But this is not just another version of the pop-evangelical emphasis on social justice. It is too easy to simply parrot progressive talking points without a solid Biblical and theological foundation. The Bugenhagen option is not mere activism. It is a focused and comprehensive effort to pursue theologically informed reform of government and society, while not neglecting the priorities of faithful and patient service and acts of mercy.

We see something like the same dynamic of the Benedict/Boniface options in the early church. Early apologists like Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Lactantius mercilessly ridiculed and attacked pagan beliefs. They were, we might put it anachronistically, pursuing the Boniface option of destroying idols. But, the average Christian, and the weight of the catechetical training, emphasized living in community, and doing works of mercy and service (the Benedict option). They sought to live radically different lives, which were strangely compelling and attractive to their pagan neighbors. We need both. We need hard-hitting apologists and we need to love our neighbors. We need both Benedict and Boniface. The Bugenhagen Option can help us maintain this dual emphasis.

Chrysostom: Combining the Three B-Options

John Chrysostom (347-407) exemplifies these multiple emphases. He combined both the Benedict and Boniface options in his ministry. He stridently attacked the idols of his day (which eventually led to his exile and death), while also preaching and pursuing works of service and social reform.

In his Homilies on 1 Corinthians, Chrysostom exhorts his congregation to live their lives in a way that was markedly different from the surrounding culture. This is another example of what Kreider termed the “patient ferment” of the early church:

Let this, I say, be our way of overpowering them, and of conducting our warfare against them; and let us astound them by our way of life rather than by words. For this is the main battle, this is the unanswerable argument, the argument from conduct. For though we give ten thousand precepts of philosophy in words, if we do not exhibit a life better than theirs, the gain is nothing. For it is not what is said that draws their attention, but their enquiry is, what we do; and they say, First obey your own words, and then admonish others. But if while you say, infinite are the blessings in the world to come, thou seem yourself nailed down to this world, just as if no such things existed, your works to me are more credible than your words. For when I see you seizing other men’s goods, weeping immoderately over the departed, doing ill in many other things, how shall I believe you that there is a resurrection?

He continues:

Let us win them therefore by our life. Many, even among the untaught, have in that way astounded the minds of philosophers, as having exhibited in themselves also that philosophy which lies in deeds, and uttered a voice clearer than a trumpet by their mode of life and self-denial. For this is stronger than the tongue … Let us catch them then by our mode of life; and by these souls let us build up the Church, and of these let us amass our wealth … A great good it is, I grant, to have pity on the poor; but it is nothing equal to the withdrawing them from error … Do not thou then, because you can not save the world, despise the few; nor through longing after great things, withdraw yourself from the lesser. If you can not an hundred, take thou charge of ten; if you can not ten, despise not even five; if you can not five, do not overlook one; and if you can not one, neither so despair, nor keep back what may be done by you … For if we do not slight the little things, we shall keep hold also of the great. But if we despise the small, neither shall we easily lay hand upon the other.

For Chrysostom, truth must be lived in our daily lives. A changed life has apologetic value. We must “catch” unbelievers by our mode of life. This is where the Bugenhagen Option can help churches refocus their efforts. While Bugenhagen had the advantage of being asked by city councils to help reform their churches and social welfare practices, we in a post-Christian context have more in common with the early church living in the twilight of the pagan Roman empire. The Bugenhagen Option can give us a vision, and a set of goals to strive for, but we must work for those goals with patient humility, taking care to win others by our life.

Retrieving the Bugenhagen Option

While we can learn from, and even be inspired by the past, we cannot live in it. We must retrieve the wisdom and examples of the church and apply those insights creatively to our own cultural challenges and opportunities. What might the Bugenhagen Option look like today? As stated before, the Benedict, Boniface, and Bugenhagen options are not exclusive. They do not cancel each other out. Rather, they need each other. Each strategy is important and necessary. The danger is being too one-sided in our approach. What might this look like in our own context?

Church, Worship, and Government

Notice that “government” is intentionally last in this heading list. The foundation for any lasting, meaningful reform and cultural change must be worship. The Reformers, whether Protestant or Catholic, knew this, but this goes against the grain for most people. For the last few decades, and perhaps longer, American conservatives have focused on trying to elect the right people to places of power in Washington, D.C. But the swamp keeps devouring all of the well-intentioned Mr. Smiths that go there, full of idealism. The political machine is broken because our national spirit is broken. Our national spirit is broken because our ecclesiastical spirits are starving–or mummified. Our government truly does represent us in many ways. Money-loving, pleasure-seeking voters will keep voting for representatives and senators who can give them more of what they want. If we want true change in the halls of Congress, we need change in the human heart. And true change only comes through the preaching of the Word of God, and the disruptive moving of the Holy Spirit. So, worship is first. Then comes education and social reform. When those three spheres are impacted, then government will follow. In some sense, these are artificial distinctions. Faithful Christians can, and should, be pursuing change in all four of these areas. But the logical priority must be crystal-clear in our minds.

Education

Education is training the next generation of culture builders and laborers in the Kingdom of God. According to Dreher, “It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Christian educational mission. Aside from building up the assembly of believers in the church, there is no more important institutional work to be done in the Benedict Option.” Christian education is central to the Bugenhagen Option as well, and I believe classical Christian education is the model with the most promise. Indeed, the classical Christian movement is already producing a new generation of Christians who are eager to work for the good of their communities, equipped and inspired by the example of faithful Christians in the past. This continues Bugenhagen’s legacy in establishing and reforming schools throughout German in the wake of the Lutheran Reformation.

Social Welfare

In the realm of social welfare, it is common for evangelical conservatives to bemoan the bloated, “administrative” state. While we must have discussions about the proper role and limits of government, that should not stop us from taking the lead in addressing social problems. Churches must lead the way in creatively engaging the needs of their communities. This will require an “ecumenism of the trenches,” where like-minded people can and should work together wherever possible. We cannot simply blame the “liberals”. Evangelicals and conservative Catholics are doing much good work in social welfare already and should do so more and more. The challenge is to not compromise the hard edges of the Gospel as we pursue “justice” work. Bugenhagen, and the early church, preached faith, repentance, and the need for radical conversion, even as they radically served the least, the last, and the lost.

Conclusion

The Bugenhagen Option can help us hold fast to the long Christian heritage of pursuing the shalom of our communities. Loving the poor, the widow, and rescuing abandoned children was a central apologetic of the early church. Christians have always been on the front lines of starting hospitals, caring for and educating the poor, and crossing socio-economic barriers. The Bugenhagen Option models how to continue this legacy in a Biblical and Reformational way.