Why should society care about the persecution of Christians?

Believers revere martyrs, but others are also inspired by sacrifice.

Ryan Gilfeather

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

A stone monument within which set, in the shape of a cross are statues of numerous standing praying figures.

Martyrs monument, Nagasaki, Japan.

The story of Christian martyrdom began with the death of St Stephen. On the 26th December 36 AD, Stephen the Deacon proclaimed the Christian faith before the rabbinic court in Jerusalem. His apology enraged the crowd before him. They dragged him outside of the city gates and stoned him until he perished. Looked at from one angle, all we see is chaos, fear and violence. Viewed from another perspective, however, we see remarkable courage and love for God. Stephen’s love for God so consumed his heart and mind, that he preferred to die violently than turn against Him. He became the first Christian martyr, a term which means ‘witness’ in the original Greek, because he would rather testify to his belief in Christ than live. We also use this term because his death says something about the character of God. Those who follow Christ take on his virtues. Stephen’s death showed how he possessed God’s virtues of courage and love more than the average believer.

More stories of martyrdom emerged from the first three centuries after the death of Christ. A number of sources have told of the harrowing death of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. Each presented it differently. Basil of Caesarea recounted how the Roman emperor enacted a law, making it illegal to confess faith in Christ. As an imperial official was posting up the law in a public place and demanding obedience, forty soldiers stood up and declared, ‘I am a Christian.’ The official promised them riches and high office to deny their belief in Christ. But they did not relent. He threatened violence and they remained steadfast. They said that because of their love for God they would readily accept torture on the wheel, by screws, and being burned alive. In response the official exposed them to the cold, where they stood until they froze to death. In this story, these same two perspectives emerge. One reveals violent death at the hands of a state scared of the consequences of people refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods. The other speaks of people full of love for God, and the courage and integrity to refuse to turn their backs on Him.

The martyrs show us that the virtues we need so often grow out of suffering and struggle.

Stories about martyrdom punctuated the worshipping life of the Early Church. Each year as the anniversary of a martyr’s death rolled around, crowds would gather at their tombs. Singing hymns, they held a candlelit vigil all night. In the morning the crowds processed into the tomb, where the bishop celebrated the eucharist and gave a speech commemorating their violent deaths. By the fourth century, each region celebrated dozens of different martyr festivals. These were joyful and ecstatic occasions. Early Christians treasured the opportunity to honour the martyr’s memory through commemoration.

They also invested these stories with great spiritual potential. The martyrs were seen to be guides in the path of holiness. The deaths of St Stephen and the Forty Matyrs of Sebaste revealed how to express one’s love for God: to treasure Him so much in one’s heart, that nothing is worth denying one’s belief and trust in Him. Additionally, early Christian writers began to articulate that these stories also inspire and embolden their audiences to imitate the martyrs. Until the early fourth century, when Christianity became legally tolerated, some Christians faced the choice of denying Christ or death. For these Christians, the stories of the martyrs showed them that the Christian life involved proclaiming their faith and facing death, and crucially it gave them the inner strength to follow it through. After Christianity was made legal, Christians still saw the martyrs as spiritual guides. They revealed how to express courage and love for God in the face of hardship. These stories ignited a fire of zeal to imitate the martyrs in some way.

They are, I propose, also of great inspiration to those who do not think of themselves as Christians. The martyrs reveal to us how a love for God generates virtues we prize so greatly in society, namely courage, integrity, and faithfulness. If it were not for love for God, Stephen and the other martyrs would not have chosen to suffer, and they wouldn’t have expressed these precious qualities. In short, they give insight into how Christians understand love for God to be the wellspring for those precious virtues. The martyrs show us that the virtues we need so often grow out of suffering and struggle. In a sense, they reveal the value of suffering for virtue. However, they do not encourage us to suffer for its own sake. Rather, they reveal that the full expression of love for God can so often involve suffering and struggle. When Christians faithfully say yes to this hardship out of love for God, it transforms them into the embodiments of these precious virtues, which perhaps we need more than ever today, in an age where comfort and ease seems the goal of life.

Column

Belief

Creed

6 January 2025

4 min read

Let 2025 be a year of cultural Christianity - celebs and all

New epiphanies challenge traditional authority.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A man in a suit stands in front of a orchestra, by a lectern, gesturing while talking.

Tom Holland.

x.com/TheRestHistory.

Monday is the Feast of the Epiphany, marking the end of the 12 days of Christmas. It’s rather good when Christmas falls on a Wednesday, so that Epiphany is on a Monday – the start of a new working week. No need to have returned from holiday during this previous week, for me at least, the only “work” I’m doing before Epiphany being the writing of this column.

Epiphany celebrated the nativity and/or baptism of the Christ historically, but in the western Church we’ve moved those festivals, not least to mark the birth of the Christ child at Christmas. The Greek root of Epiphany means “manifestation” and in popular, polytheistic religions nature is of full of local manifestations of the gods.

A deity might manifest in a divine human, a monarchical figure or a miracle worker. In ancient Greek philosophy, epiphany-religion is the foundation of a natural theology discerning these manifestations of the divine in all things, which we might call pantheism.

We’re more reticent about direct epiphanies of God in our biblical religion, but they do occur, notably for Moses in his witness of the burning bush (and thereafter in his regular audiences with the Godhead as he leads his people from Egypt).

Such manifestations invariably come by way of a promise, supremely in Christianity in the incarnation at Christmas. Our theology might hold that not until the epiphany of the Christ at the end of history can we speak of the Feast of the Epiphany in any fulfilled sense.

But there is another, more immediate side to the Epiphany. The coming of the magi – or sages – from the East to pay homage to the Christ child has long been interpreted as the manifestation of God to the Gentiles in the poverty of a Judean stable.

There is nothing actually in the scriptural story to indicate that these grandees are not Jews of the Diaspora, journeying back to their homeland to witness the Christ. But, importantly, this has come to represent the gift of a new covenant to the world, rather than the Mosaic covenant exclusive to the Jews.

And it’s with that idea that I suggest our Epiphany has very current cultural implications. The point of Epiphany is that it’s not ours, it’s everyone’s. It’s not owned here, it’s out there. It’s not multicultural, it’s transcultural, even supercultural.

So the Christian faith defies ownership, as the magi demonstrate. That’s a vital notion at a time when the phrase “cultural Christianity” has gained fresh traction. It’s customary at this point to list who most famously identifies as culturally Christian. So, briefly, here goes.

The professional atheist (he has earned a living from it) Richard Dawkins claims such status; former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali has moved from Islam to atheism to Christian faith, claiming it as a bulwark against cultures that threaten us and the historian Tom Holland has expended a substantial proportion of his scholarship demonstrating that western civilisation is built on Christian foundations. Elon Musk has chimed in as a cultural Christian. So has rocker Nick Cave. There are many more.

The response from what might be called pro-am Christians isn’t always edifying. At best, it’s condescending – these starlets really don’t get it and need to study and qualify properly as card-carrying Christians. At worst, it’s belligerent – these charlatans want the fruit from our tree, but attack its roots.

It’s fair to observe that Christianity has always been cultural, not just through its initial and expedient spread through the trade routes of the Mediterranean until its adoption under Roman emperor Constantine, but in its very genesis in Jerusalem. The insurgent Nazarene movement showed far more interest in the lived experience of the new faith than in establishing an alternative Temple authority with it.

It’s a saying misattributed to St Francis of Assisi that evangelists are to go out into the world and spread the gospel and, if we have to, to use words. It’s about actions in the Christian life, not words of intent. In that, the former US president Jimmy Carter, who has just died aged 100, is a worthy exemplar.

By contrast, we have the modern versions of the corrupt and self-serving Temple of Jerusalem in our Christian Churches. Elites who believe in a primacy of status, marching around with sticks, bear as much fruit as the withered fig tree of the gospel. More than arguably, it must be worth turning away from them and towards the cultural Christians mentioned above.

For I’m finding that I may have more in common with them than with archbishops and priests, endlessly debating how to improve their woeful their Church. This is my epiphany.

So, for me, let 2025 be a year of cultural Christianity. Let them say we pick the fruit and ignore the roots. Because perhaps that’s preferable to sticking with a thick trunk that despises those fruits.

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