Tulips in the Darkness: Dialectical Ecclesiology in Nadia Bolz-Weber and Karl Barth

“I couldn’t see the dogs, but I could definitely hear them as they violently strained against the chain-link fence, their barking tearing at my nerves. I steadied myself and quietly pulled a few bundles of purple tulips from my blue Honda while my intern, Alex, carefully unloaded House for All Sinners and Saints’ large crucifix. We walked up a dark street with no sidewalks or streetlamps toward the house where, a month earlier, twenty-three-year-old Mayra Perez had shot her own children, ages four, two, and one, before turning the gun on herself. Only the two-year-old girl survived. For this young mother, there had not been the hope of dawn, of the light that could come to scatter Good Friday’s darkness.”^[1]

On Good Friday each year, the eclectic congregation at House for All Sinners and Saints (HFASS) gathers for a somber liturgy that begins with congregants receiving tulips. At the end of the service, while singing “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” the congregants lay the tulips in front of the cross. Then, in silence, the congregation proceeds out of the sanctuary to some place in the city where horrible violence has occurred. As the founding pastor of HFASS Nadia Bolz-Weber explains, “We bring the holy things of the church onto the holy streets of the city because on some level, the violence and despair of Good Friday is still a human reality.”^[2]

The theology of Karl Barth and Nadia Bolz-Weber have always been intertwined for me. I first read Bolz-Weber’s Pastrix during the summer mentoring segment of my Master’s of Divinity studies at Truett Seminary. I had recently developed a keen interest in Barthian theology through courses taught by Kimlyn Bender, and I read Bolz-Weber’s theological reflections through the lens of Barthian dialectical theology. A few years later I moved to Denver to begin a PhD in Religious Studies, which provided an opportunity to expand my research of Barth as well as experience HFASS for myself. I have now completed a dissertation — an examination of political subjectivity through comparative analysis of Barth with the Jewish phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas in the shared theoretical structure of what I term “encounter-oriented subjectivity.” With respect to Chrisitan theology, one implication of this research is to rearticulate how Christians relate to democratic society today. It applies most specifically to Protestant evangelicals in America, and finds a special resonance with the edgy Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) pastor, Bolz-Weber.

I had not yet read Bolz-Weber’s description of Good Friday at HFASS when I experienced the service for the first time. By that point, HFASS had moved to a new location — a former Jewish synagogue in a less gentrified area closer to downtown Denver — and we walked from the sanctuary to a place near a bus stop to pray and lay tulips. The experience confirmed the resonances between Bolz-Weber and Barth from my reading of Pastrix. Bolz-Weber and Barth share an unabashed radical particularity (confession of Jesus Christ through the Protestant tradition) in tandem with a concern for universal humanity (the real horrors of violence and despair produced by modern society). In what follows, I briefly introduce Barth’s encounter-oriented subjectivity before detailing the resonances between Bolz-Weber and Barth as a shared dialectical ecclesiology.

I. Encounter-Oriented Subjectivity

The term “encounter-oriented subjectivity” derives from a comparative analysis of Barth with phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas. I compare the deep structure of subjectivity, or how an individual knows the world and relates to society, in Barth and Levinas’ works to describe a new articulation of political subjectivity in the context of modern democracy. The political subjectivity that emerges from Barth and Levinas is one that affirms the subject as free, reasoning, and agentially capable of intervening in history but who is always already social and fundamentally guided by ethics. In this way, encounter-oriented political subjectivity rearticulates the relation between the individual and society.

For Barth and Levinas, the subject as subject (free, reasoning, and agentially capable) is primordially established, brought into reality, by encounter with the Other. Levinas more explicitly applies his reflections to political philosophy proper, and in his phenomenology the term “Other” specifies the human Other who is beyond the subject’s intellectual grasp. Contrary to various understandings of rational autonomy — which understand the individual as autonomous in the pursuit of knowledge, manipulating objects in the world with an unconditioned freedom — encounter-oriented subjectivity understands the individual’s freedom as primordially conditioned by passivity. Encounter with the Other is asymmetrical, meaning that the subject encounters the Other neither as autonomous nor as an intersubjective peer. Instead, the Other is above or beyond the subject, and therein places a demand upon the individual that establishes and orients the individual as a subject.

In and through the primordial encounter with the Other, the subject is oriented by encounter with the Other and is oriented toward care for “the neighbor.”^[3] As oriented by encounter with the Other, the subject’s freedom is passively conditioned. The subject is not free in the same manner as rational autonomy, but is free by and through the condition of passivity to the Other. This encounter is not primarily hostile, as logically follows from rational autonomy, but it is one of nurture and care. The subject is conditioned by care from the Other and is thereby oriented toward care for the neighbor. The subject therefore does not approach the neighbor as a threat to personal autonomy, but as an embodied human who requires concrete care. As an individual in society, the subject is understood as free, reasoning, and agentially capable of intervening in history, comparable to rational autonomy — but this freedom is passively conditioned by encounter with the Other and thereby oriented toward care for (rather than conflict with) the neighbor. The individual retains the capacities defined by modern subjectivity, but the individual is always already social. This critical contribution to the foundation of modern democratic society, the individual as philosophical/political subject, concretizes what Levinas means by ethics as “first philosophy”^[4] (i.e., takes philosophical precedence over ontology). These contributions to political subjectivity are less direct for Barth, but the shared structure of encounter-oriented subjectivity rearticulates how individual Christians think about and relate to democratic society. For Barth, the Other is the divine-human Other, Jesus Christ. It is through encounter with the divine-human Other that the theological subject comes into reality; primordial encounter with the Other is the necessary condition which makes possible theological subjectivity. As with the Levinasian structure, the Barthian subject is oriented by encounter with the Other and toward concrete care for the neighbor. When interpreted in tandem with Levinas, Barth’s encounter-oriented subjectivity defines a certain “universal particularity” that defines a universal structure of subjectivity open to the radical particularity of embodied communities. Encounter in Barth derives from a content (Christian scriptures) but emphasizes the structure of encounter as asymmetrical and the primordial orientation toward care for the neighbor of Levinasian ethics.

Barthian Dialectic as Encounter-Oriented Theological Subjectivity

This view of Barthian theology as encounter-oriented subjectivity requires the understanding that Barth’s method was consistently “dialectical” in a specific sense from a starting point in Søren Kierkegaard’s theological subjectivity. Contrary to popular Anglo-American interpretations of Barth, he did not abandon the approach described in the Preface to the Second Edition of Der Römerbrief, but developed this dialectical approach toward a more traditional, “orthodox” articulation of theology in and the community of the Christian Church. Kierkegaard’s “dialectic” is not the synthesizing dialectic of G.W. F. Hegel, but a confrontation between finitude and infinitude that occasions paradox. While Hegelian dialectic tends toward a both/and synthesis, Kierkegaardian dialectic retains a sense of either/or even in the face of the both/and—and therein lies the paradox. The central paradox, for Kierkegaard as for Barth, is the both/and-either/or of the incarnate God, the paradoxical infinite-finite Jesus Christ.

In his mature Church Dogmatics, Barth seeks to ground Kierkegaard’s sense of dialectical subjectivity in the history, tradition, and community of the church. This pursuit culminates in the dialectical doctrine of the Word of God in its threefold form. Barth begins the Church Dogmatics with the doctrine of the Word of God because it is the starting point of theological reflection for the church. The “Word of God” itself refers to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ; the Bible and Church proclamation (preaching, theology, and other acts of the church) bear witness to this central revelation. Barth’s unique contribution to the doctrine of the Word of God is Barth’s articulation of the dialectical structure through each instantiation (which Barth describes as concentric circles beginning with Jesus Christ, then scripture, and Church proclamation in the outermost ring). The incarnation of the infinite God in finite human flesh is essentially and traditionally dialectical in the Kierkegaardian sense — modern language applied to the early church councils, the Nicene Creed, and determinations of the hypostatic union. Jesus Christ is both/and-either/or: fully God, fully human in a paradoxically distinct but indivisible unity.

What this all means practically, for the modern individual churchgoer and philosophical/political subject, is that the dialectical Word of God in its threefold form invites one to encounter God as the transcendent, infinite Other. The purpose of the church is not to reflect upon human culture, to seek one’s unique understanding of the world, nor to memorize a catechism or world view. The purpose of the church is to create space for asymmetrical encounter with the infinite God; to be confronted, called, and transformed toward something above and beyond finite human possibilities. This results in a profound rearticulation of the church and the Christian individual’s relationship to theology, ethics, and the political.

Encounter with God through the dialectical Word of God in its threefold form establishes a unique encounter-oriented theological subjectivity that calls the subject’s freedom into question and, at the same time, calls the subject to concrete response. The theological subject as subject is established by an encounter that is beyond her grasp, out of her control. The theological subject does not rationally decide upon this encounter or determine the means of revelation.^[5] How Christians and their communities talk about God (what Barth refers to as Church proclamation) is not at its beginning point a human capacity or action. It is action in response to the initial act of God’s self-revelation. In this manner, theological subjectivity is passively conditioned, as the initiating encounter with God is the condition necessary for talk about God (i.e., theology). This passive condition precipitates and orients all later action — the theological subject is called to return to the moment of encounter, bearing witness to and fulfilling its originary call.

At the same moment where God calls the theological subject into being, God calls the subject to concrete response, orienting the subject toward concrete care for the neighbor. The passively conditioned freedom of the encounter-oriented subject is a real freedom, but is a freedom conditioned by the initial encounter and thereby oriented toward response. This response is a bearing witness to the will of God revealed through the Word of God. Barth explains, “God’s will meets us as omnipotent will, as a free and irresistibly and finally compelling power confronting our own will.”^[6] The content of this revelation is God’s ultimate care for humanity through the self-sacrificial redemptive act of God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The theological subject and her community, those who have been called into being as subjects by encounter with God through Jesus Christ, are called to participate in God’s will by caring for the neighbor — inclusive of all human beings.

This orientation toward universal care for the neighbor, shared with Levinasian ethics, creates new possibilities for how the church relates to democratic society and how we might rethink the foundations of democratic society to create space for differences across communities. The full implications of this “universal particularity” are beyond the scope of this article, so only brief comments will suffice. With its emphasis on ethics preceding ontology, Levinasian political subjectivity relativizes the confessional differences between communities. By sharing in the deep structure of encounter-oriented subjectivity — the passive conditioning of a freedom called into question, and the call to active concrete response, an orientation toward care for the neighbor as free, reasoning, and agentially capable of intervening in history — Barthian theological subjectivity concretizes the particularity of the universal phenomenological structure of encounter-oriented subjectivity. From a basis in encounter-oriented subjectivity, it is unnecessary for individuals and communities to agree ontologically, on what is most real or “True.” The most fundamental and orienting facet of philosophical reflection is ethical — concrete care for the neighbor — rather than ontological. As I describe more thoroughly elsewhere,^[7] Barth embodied this principle through his actions in the Kirchenkampf, concretely confronting ethnonationalism in the German Protestant churches in resistance to ethnonationalist, antisemitic violence.

Barth develops encounter-oriented theology subjectivity in the church, which, at the level of community rather than the individual, this article terms “dialectical ecclesiology.” The “dialectical” nature of the church reflects the asymmetrical encounter with the Word of God. In what follows, this understanding of Barthian encounter-oriented subjectivity is applied to Barth scholar Kimlyn Bender’s articulation of Barthian ecclesiology in order to present Bolz-Weber’s ecclesiology as an exemplification of dialectical ecclesiology. The following section provides this comparative analysis before describing implications of dialectical ecclesiology in both Barth and Bolz-Weber.

II. Dialectical Ecclesiology in Nadia Bolz-Weber and Karl Barth

Encounter-Oriented Subjectivity and Dialectical Ecclesiology

Nadia Bolz-Weber is known by her persona as an edgy, tattoo-covered pastor with a penchant for cursing as well as her openness toward sharing the church with LGBTQ+ people. This persona, however, is not merely aesthetic, and her theological-political stances are not a simple reflection of twenty-first century political trends in the United States. As Bolz-Weber makes clear in her writings, she is formed by and confesses Lutheran theology. The primary thesis in the following comparative is this: Bolz-Weber’s unique emphasis on Lutheran theology shares the structure of Barthian encounter-oriented theological subjectivity and, thereby, dialectical ecclesiology. Reading Bolz-Weber with Barth creates possibilities for reimagining ecumenism among Protestants (in the broadest sense of non-Roman Catholic, and therefore inclusive of American evangelicals) in the contemporary sociopolitical context of the United States.

Bolz-Weber describes being called to ministry through an encounter with God in the midst of intense darkness and struggle. In the memoir Pastrix, Bolz-Weber narrates her pre-ministry life and the experiences that led her to found HFASS. She was working as a standup comic, living with a group of friends she refers to as a “rowboat of idiots.”^[8] Bolz-Weber and the rest of the group struggled with depression, which they attempted to cope with through drug and alcohol abuse. Eventually, Bolz-Weber accompanied a friend to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where chain-smoking addicts in remission bore witness to a different God from Bolz-Weber’s religiously traumatic upbringing. Through these experiences, Bolz-Weber writes,

It was here in the midst of my own community of underside dwellers that I couldn’t help but begin to see the Gospel, the life-changing reality that God is not far off, but here among the brokenness of our lives. And having seen it, I couldn’t help but point it out.^[9]

Bolz-Weber’s experience exemplifies the Kierkegaardian sense of dialectic as a confrontation between the infinite and the finite in two important ways. First, there is an ethical or moral confrontation with human decisions; it is not good for humans to lose themselves to addiction, particularly when and as it leads them to harm their neighbor. Second, the individual does not have the capacity to help themselves. One must recognize a higher power and, especially, give authority to other people in the community to provide guidance and accountability. The individual is and recognizes herself as passively conditioned, dependent upon an Other — both a higher power and the neighbor in community — which provides the condition necessary for a life of sobriety, as an individual who is free, reasoning, and agentially capable of intervening in (their own personal) history.

Bolz-Weber expands this encounter-oriented subjectivity as she enters the church as a minister informed by Lutheran theology. As Bolz-Weber explains, she considered the Unitarian faith, but she writes, “I couldn’t, because what I needed was a specific divine source of reconciliation and wholeness, a source that is connected to me in love, but does not come from inside me.”^[10] This description of what Bolz-Weber finds helpful in theologically traditional Protestant faith — that the individual encounters God asymmetrically, in a manner that calls them into question and orients them toward a new way of living — shares the structure and content of Barthian encounter-oriented theological subjectivity. Kimlyn Bender describes this as the most important theme in Barth’s mature theology: “The most important of all of the themes is a deep commitment to the scandal of the gospel and to its radical particularity, expressed in its earliest and most succinct form in the confession that ‘Jesus is Lord.’”^[11] As I argue elsewhere,^[12] Barth’s emphatic commitment to traditional orthodoxy against the Protestant Liberalism and pietism of his day exemplified both elements of encounter-oriented theological subjectivity: that the subject is called by an encounter with God that is beyond her control, and that she is, at the same time, called to concrete ethico-political response. Both Bolz-Weber and Barth uniquely emphasize this structure of theological subjectivity for its practical impact: to confront the darkness of human suffering and violence (both self-destructive lifestyles and violent ethnonationalist politics).

The individual theological subject and her community — the ἐκκλησία, the assembly of people seeking and responding to encounter with God through Jesus Christ — are both oriented by encounter with God. How the individual and her community act in the world, in history, is shaped by this encounter. In the act of response, the act of bearing witness to encounter, the individual acts freely in her capacities as a being who is free, reasoning, and agentially capable of intervening in history. Nevertheless, this free activity is always already passively conditioned by encounter. This is the key point at the center of Barth’s dialectical ecclesiology: Bender writes, “the church exists on a different plane from its Lord, and its work is better described as a witness to a completed work rather than a participation in salvation itself.”^[13] Existing on a “different plane from its Lord” means that the Kierkegaardian dialectic — the confrontation between finite creation and the infinite God — remains in and through every action taken by the individual theological subject and her community. Bender continues,

This human life and activity corresponds, or lives in analogy to, the divine life, but does so only in light of the previous logic whereby the radical asymmetry between the partners and their work is affirmed, and the complete and utter dependence of the human on the divine is safeguarded.^[14]

The asymmetrical encounter with God passively conditions the activity of the subject and the church. In part, this means that actions taken by the individual and her community remain forever open to critique and reform. The ecclesiological implications of this point are elaborated upon below, but it is worth underscoring once again the practical importance of dialectical ecclesiology for Bolz-Weber:

I hadn’t learned about grace from the church. But I did learn about it from sober drunks who managed to stop drinking by giving their will over to the care of God and then tried like hell to live a life according to spiritual principles. What the drunks taught me was that there was a power greater than myself who could be a source of restoration, and that higher power, it ends up, is not me.^[15]

Dialectical Ecclesiology and Permanent Reformation

Encounter-oriented subjectivity reimagines how one relates to one’s own history, tradition, and community through the orientation toward care for the neighbor — with the further distinction of the neighbor near (in one’s community) and far (the stranger beyond immediate community). For both Barth and Bolz-Weber, it is through the radical particularity of immediate community that orients and obligates them to the universal — to care for the neighbor/stranger.^[16] In concrete terms, the theological subject is oriented by encounter with the Other in and through the individual’s embodied community. The language of “encounter with the Other” refers to the phenomenological structure of subjectivity, but it occurs concretely in the embodied experience of the individual. For Barth and Bolz-Weber, the orientation to care for the neighbor extends from the radical particularity of the Protestant community, and to abandon this particularity (through the liberal and pietistic theologies of the time for Barth or through Unitarianism for Bolz-Weber), is to abandon the orientation toward care for the neighbor. Through the orientation by encounter with the Other and toward care for the neighbor, dialectical ecclesiology foregrounds a sense of “permanent reformation” that reflects the passively conditioned freedom established by encounter with God.

Commitment to the radical particularity of the Protestant (Reformation/Reformed) tradition orients the subject and her community toward care for the neighbor. As Bender explains, “Barth’s project was in fact a constructive reappropriation of the Reformed tradition,” which “itself was an ecclesially embodied one” that is “best captured by the term ‘dialectical catholicity.’”^[17] This “constructive reappropriation of the Reformed tradition” reflects Barth’s commitment to encounter-oriented theological subjectivity: the subject comes into being through encounter with God, which supersedes but does not negate tradition. Bender further describes how Barth’s approach to tradition seeks “not to make the mothers and fathers of the church (including the apostles) themselves the primary objects of our study,” but instead seeks “to think and reflect and consider along with them what they themselves tried to point to and give witness to — God’s revelation in Christ through the Spirit, God’s own active presence within our world.”^[18] Tradition remains important, but is secondary to the central purpose of the church, which is to bear witness to encounter with God.

Barth’s encounter-oriented approach to tradition concerns not only how the subject and her community relates to the past, but also to the present. Just as encounter with God calls into question the authority of tradition in the past, it equally calls into question the decisions and actions of the church in the present. Bender explains that, for Barth, “both church doctrine and ecclesiastical law are relative rather than absolute authorities,”^[19] and that “human activity is relativized and limited not so that it is to be set aside as irrelevant or purely sinful, but so that it might be given its own proper place as a truly human work, rather than the work of God.”^[20] The work of the church, the theological subject and her community, remain human but nevertheless dialectically take part in the work of God. As Bender emphasizes, this relativizing of human activity in the church does not diminish or make irrelevant human activity, but it does open human activity to perpetual criticism and refinement — or, otherwise put, it is open to permanent reformation.

This sense of permanent reformation extends from the encounter-oriented structure of Barthian theological subjectivity, and it is exemplified in Bolz-Weber’s ecclesiology. According to Bolz-Weber, “how we feel about Jesus or how close we feel about God is meaningless next to how God acts upon us.”^[21] There is furthermore something particular to the Protestant (specifically Lutheran) tradition that appropriately emphasizes encounter with God. Thus, drawing from Luther’s doctrine of simul justus et peccator, Bolz-Weber writes, “we are simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of the time, all the time.”^[22] The purpose of the church is to bear witness to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and this defining absolute relativizes the human work of the church. Bolz-Weber states this in practical terms with reference to her community by making it clear to newcomers that “This community will disappoint them. It’s a matter of when, not if,” and jocularly suggesting the tagline “Welcome to House for All Sinners and Saints. We will disappoint you.”^[23]

Bolz-Weber expands this practical statement of theology into a more significant ecclesiological point of self-critique through the recognition of difference. She critiques the “fundamentalist wiring” of her upbringing that leads her to place people in “labeled containers.”^[24] These various containers follow the “us” against “them” — “we” are good while those with whom we disagree are bad. Her thinking changes, in part, when she is told, “the thing that sucks is that every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it.”^[25] Oriented by encounter with God, the theological subject and her community relinquish the claim to absolute authority, opening themselves to perpetual critique and reformation. Bolz-Weber draws together these points by contrasting human perceptions of goodness and truth:

There’s a popular misconception that religion, Christianity specifically, is about knowing the difference between good and evil so that we can choose the good. But being good has never set me free the way truth has. Knowing all of this makes me love and hate Jesus at the same time. Because, when instead of contrasting good and evil, he contrasted truth and evil, I have to think about all the times I’ve substituted being good (or appearing to be good) for truth.^[26]

Whereas “good” is something that can be claimed and wielded against the neighbor, the truth transcends the subject’s grasp and calls their freedom into question.

The comparative analysis of Barth with Levinas culminates in a shared orientation toward care for the neighbor/stranger, a position that Bolz-Weber directly articulates and concretizes. Once again grounding the claim in encounter with God, Bolz-Weber writes, “The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us. Always. We can’t, through our piety or goodness, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us. Most especially in the Eucharist and in the stranger.”^[27] The theological subject and her community are oriented by encounter with God; the purpose of the church is to bear witness to this encounter and create opportunities for people to encounter God. At the same time, the individual theological subject seeks to perpetually encounter God, and this takes place not only through the Eucharist, but through interaction with the stranger. Encounter with God orients the subject and her community toward care for the stranger.

How the theological subject and her community cares for the neighbor/stranger is how one bears witness to the orienting encounter with God. Once more, Barth understands human agency “in terms of correspondent witness rather than direct cooperation or mediation” with God’s activity, which “relativizes the work of the church in order to establish it” and gives “his ecclesiology, as his theology as a whole, an essential ethical character.”^[28] Bolz-Weber’s practical language does not follow this detailed specificity, but she reflects the spirit of Barth’s theology when she writes, “without higher-quality material to work with, God resorts to working through us for others and upon us through others … so that they may be part of God’s big project on earth.”^[29] Encounter with God orients the theological subject and her community toward care for the neighbor/stranger, and it is through this orientation that they take part in God’s activity by bearing witness to an encounter that is beyond their capacity or authority. As Bender explains, this gives ecclesiology, the life of faith for the individual and her community, an essentially ethical character. The shared sense of encounter-oriented, dialectical ecclesiology between Barth and Bolz-Weber creates new possibilities for addressing contemporary political-theological issues.

III. Dialectical Ecclesiology for Church and Society

The most important contribution to the contemporary moment offered by the dialectical ecclesiology of Barth and Bolz-Weber is its simultaneous yet theologically consistent affirmation of both radical particularity and oppositional difference. The theological subject and her community are called to respond to the contemporary ethico-political moment, but one’s response remains relativized by encounter with God. Bolz-Weber exemplifies this point by taking a clear ethico-political position on welcoming LGBTQ+ people in the church without excluding others in the church who oppose her position. The context of her faulty “containers” thinking illustrates this function:

My own fundamentalist wiring will always lead me to want two sets of labeled containers — in this case, Bad: the conservative people who hate the gays and Good: the liberal people who love the gays. I might always put people and things in those containers, but the problem comes when I start believing that God uses the same sorting system.^[30]

The traditional Lutheran confession simul justus et peccator, proves the sorting system false — the theological subject is not “justified” or “righteous” and therefore able to wield judgment over others, but is “simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of the time, all the time.”^[31] The affirmation of and commitment to the radical particularity of her Protestant community simultaneously grounds her affirmation of oppositional difference.

Bolz-Weber builds upon the “containers” argument to describe and confront how the inability to affirm oppositional difference threatens the church in our contemporary moment. Bolz-Weber describes conservatives as “protectors of the tent” who think “that if we extend the roof of the tent to include gays, then the whole thing could come crashing down around us”^[32] and liberals as “extenders of the tent” who “must stretch the tent to include the marginalized, the less fortunate, the minorities.”^[33] But with this commitment to inclusivity, “things get tricky because I will always, always encounter people — intersex people, Republicans, criminals, Ann Coulter, etc. — whom I don’t want in the tent with me. Always. I only really want to be inclusive of some kinds of people and not others.”^[34] This is the crucial point: for the theological subject and her community to fulfill their calling, which is to bear witness to encounter with God, they must relinquish the supposed authority to exclude their opponents from care (divine and human). Bolz-Weber again exemplifies encounter-oriented subjectivity by arguing that “inclusion” is itself a faulty pursuit "because it sounds like in our niceness and virtue we are allowing “them’ to join ‘us’ — like we are judging a group of people to be worthy of inclusion in a tent that we don’t own … Either way, it’s misguided because it’s not my tent.”^[35]

Through this sense in which dialectical ecclesiology affirms both radical particularity and oppositional difference, encounter-oriented subjectivity opens a path for the relationship between the individual (in full affirmation of her radical particularity as a committed Christian) and democratic society. Returning to the comparative analysis of Barth and Levinas, the shared structure of encounter-oriented subjectivity emphasizes concrete care for the neighbor irrespective of differences with regard to ontology or ultimate truth. Barth’s actions in the Kirchenkampf exemplify this point — he did not act against the Nazi regime because he shared beliefs with the Jewish people or any of the many others determined an enemy “they” set for domination and destruction. Neither did Barth require or expect theological agreement from these other people. His actions to confront his fellow Protestants for the sake of the stranger were not a call to theological universalism, but the exact opposite; Barth was oriented to care for the stranger in full affirmation of his own radical particularity as a Protestant Christian.

In the contemporary context of the United States, Barthian encounter-oriented theological subjectivity bears witness to the possibility for concrete care in full affirmation of radical particularity and its inherent oppositional difference across communities. For individuals oriented by encounter with God and oriented toward concrete care for the neighbor, the question is not “Do the actions or lifestyles of the stranger align with the values of our community?” but rather"Are you caring for the concrete wellbeing of the stranger?" Do ethnonationalist rhetoric and policies that seek to dominate, destroy, and deny rights to the LGBTQ+ stranger bear witness to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ? Dialectical ecclesiology creates a path by which the church today might follow Barth in confronting ethnonationalism for the sake of the stranger, not in betrayal to, but in confirmation of, their radical particularity as confessing Christians.