By Pieter Vermeulen, ICC Board Member, as part of a series, “Persecuted but not Forsaken.” By the time we come to the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the question of persecution had taken on a new and deeply unsettling form. In earlier centuries, believers were often opposed by openly pagan rulers, hostile empires, or religious authorities who stood clearly outside the gospel. But in Bonhoeffer’s world, the crisis was more confusing and, in many ways, more dangerous. The threat came in the context of a nation that still called itself Christian.