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I'm not going to spend much time praising the book, because there are hundreds of reviews doing just that. It's engaging, detailed, inspiring, etc etc. I rarely give books 5 stars, but this deserved it.

There are also a slew of bad reviews, many of which make broad statements about "Bonhoeffer scholars" that "all agree" this book is simply Metaxas "twisting Bonhoeffer into a fundamentalist evangelical mold".

The first thing I noticed is that the vast majority of these reviews referenced or quoted the same two articles (often without any attestation). I'll do the googling for you:

- Hijacking Bonhoeffer ()
- Metaxas' Counterfeit Bonhoeffer ()

By all means, read these reviews (rather than some of the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ "reviews" that are just rehashing them). They raise some important points that deserve evaluation. Some of it is also absurdly inane (like acting as if the misspelling of some German words immediately discredits the entire 600 page book). However, don't allow terms like "Bonhoeffer scholar" and references to Metaxas' tweets to make you believe that these reviewers are free of their own biases. They accuse Metaxas of co-opting Bonhoeffer for evangelicals, and he would probably (nay, definitely) accuse them of the same thing.

Reading hundreds of pages of Bonhoeffer's letters and writings makes me more disposed to accept Metaxas' basic narrative than the opposing one based on a couple of lectures and his use of the term "religionless Christianity" (something the reviewers like to rip out of context and display as some sort of bombshell revelation but which is perfectly in line with what Bonhoeffer often talked about before then).

I don't share (or particularly like) Metaxas' political views. I'm not a fundamentalist, right wing evangelical. But I'm very familiar with both, and I do not see Bonhoeffer portrayed in that way in this book. So read and evaluate as you would any other biography or work of "history" (which always contains some kind of bias). To end, here's a quote from the book that I feel flies in the face of the idea that Metaxas was nefariously trying to make Bonhoeffer into an evangelical saint:

"Bonhoeffer’s words reveal that he was never what one might today term a culture warrior, nor could he easily be labeled conservative or liberal. He disagreed with Harnack’s liberal theological conclusions but agreed profoundly with the underlying assumptions that guided Harnack, and he rightly saw that these were more important than the conclusions to which they led. Anyone on the side of truth, wherever it led, was a compatriot to be lauded. This virtue had come to Bonhoeffer, in part, from Harnack and the liberal Grunewald tradition in which he had flourished, and Bonhoeffer was generous enough to see it and state it publicly. Bonhoeffer’s father was his primary mentor in this way of thinking. Karl Bonhoeffer’s conclusions may have been different from his son’s, but his respect for truth and for other human beings of different opinions formed the foundation of a civil society in which one might disagree graciously and might reason together civilly and productively. In the years ahead this would be seriously attacked, and the Nazis would stoke the fires of the culture wars (Kulturkampf) to play their enemies against each other. They would brilliantly co-opt the conservatives and the Christian churches, and when they had the power to do so, they would turn on them too." 96