J. Pharoah Doss: Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus

In 1989, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Andre Braugher starred in the American Civil War film Glory.& The movie was about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first all-Black regiments in the Union Army. The actor who played Robert Gould Shaw, the White colonel in command, narrated the film. & Glory depicted the regiment’s encounters with blatant racism, how they earned admiration through battle, and their heroic attempt to capture a Confederate fort, which resulted in the regiment’s annihilation. The film won three Academy Awards, as well as awards at the Golden Globes and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. It also won an NAACP Image Award. No one had anything negative to say about Glory until the 21st century. A decade ago, a movie buff saw Glory for the first time and wrote a glowing review. Most commenters stated that they first saw the film in high school and offered further praise. However, one commenter described Glory as the kind of movie that would face substantial criticism today since it has a White character tell a story about Black people. “I don’t necessarily think that’s an unfair criticism,” the commenter said. However, the critique is...