Concordia senior starts Bonhoeffer book club

Photo credit: Nora Betts

By Nora Betts

Managing Editor

A Concordia senior’s public relations project is kickstarting a four-week book club on Lutheran, anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer beginning at the end of January.

The book club will meet at 8 p.m. on Jan. 28, Feb. 4, Feb. 11, and Feb. 18 in the reading room in Link Library. Participants will discuss the short biography “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life from Beginning to End,” with copies provided by the Student Life Office.

Students can sign up for the book club at the following link: https://forms.gle/J7TZbdx7YtmVVG1X8.

Senior Ellie Jander took Public Relations during the 2024 fall semester, where she was tasked with planning a campus event to be sponsored by SLO. The idea for a book club began with a suggestion on Jander’s student survey, which she embraced because of its uniqueness.

“There was somebody that suggested a book club, so I just kind of took that idea and ran with it because it was different than a lot of the other (survey responses) I was getting, and I didn’t see anything like that around campus,” said Jander.

She said that a book club is a niche interest group that SLO-sponsored events usually do not reach. She hopes that the book club can help connect a new demographic of students, especially students who may be less involved in campus life.

“In the fall [semester] was a lot of sports-related things, so [I wanted] to work towards a different niche area,” Jander said.

Jander said a survey on the whiteboard in the library helped her choose what book to select. She posed the question, “What genre is best for a book club?” and received nine votes for “something Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

“I thought that was a good enough support to go ahead with that specific idea,” she said.

Jander hopes that the unique campus event can help connect students and foster good discussions.