The Blood of the Martyrs...

Jim West, always colorful, always prodigious, posted a link yesterday to this website, the online presence of a group which seeks to alleviate discrimination against Christians in Europe. That their 'About Us' statement feels obligated to make the claim that their cause "by no means disregards or devalues the dramatic persecution of Christians in several countries of the world, but rather supplements this worldwide concern," is I think enough to demonstrate that there exists even on the part of its architects an anxiety about this project; that those same architects appear either oblivious to the good reasons for such an anxiety or unwilling to heed them should excite disapproval in the conscious Christian. It is one thing to appropriate the discourse of this world to advance the Gospel; it is quite another to allow that frame of mind to shape the Christian.

It is precisely that worse alternative which seems to have informed the program of this site. This fact is in view from every angle: the clinical calmness of the description of "Christianophobia," the validating citation of a non-Christian scholar who coined the term, the ugly term itself, a faux Hellenism crafted carefully to invoke the authority of Science. Christianophobia, we are told, is "a negative categorical bias," a "prejudice," "a form of religious intolerance," that "may lead to stereotyping or discrimination." One need not have any sharp perception of style to understand that all these terms have been chosen and accumulated for their shock value only, and that the only statement in them, bereft as they are made in their close proximity of any real meaning, is that this sort of thing is something society really rather disapproves of. There is not a theological appeal, that I can find, in the whole page; to the bogeymen of liberal democracy, there are many.

Such cheap rhetoric should be disappointing to any thinking person, but to the Christian it should be a source of deep dismay. For such labels and terminologies are not only not Christian in any positive sense, but, far from being even neutral, promote a decidedly anti-Christian view of the world. Let us take an example from the front page of the site, where the call is sent out for "victims" to share their stories; we must first move beyond the reverberations of that language in the popular sphere, which has been discussed above. What suffering Christian has ever or could ever be properly called a "victim?" Did not our Lord "suffer under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried?" Did he not thereby, far from suffering as a victim, arise in triumph over the last enemy to be destroyed, which is death? (1 Corinthians 15:26). Had not this same victorious Lord exhorted his followers to "rejoice and be glad" in the experience of all ranges of persecution (Matthew 5:11-12), knowing that through his love they would be "more than conquerors" and under all catastrophes and duress inseparable from the single source and object of their being (Romans 8:36ff). Are any of those properly called victims to whom the apostle says "if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name?" (1 Peter 4:16) All Christians must suffer at the hands of this world for their Master's sake (John 16:33), but in this suffering no Christian is belittled or made less. On the contrary, in that he shares however meanly in the life and the suffering of Christ, who was "despised and rejected" (Isaiah 53:3), the Christian has a share in that which is highest, truest, and best. Such a one is no victim of the world, but rather a victor in Christ.

The authors of the site are correct in insisting that their statements in no way lessen the real and far worse persecution of Christians occurring now in many parts of the world. Indeed how could they or anyone else do so: it is Christ the Lord who stands by those who suffer for his name and elevates them to the prize of an imperishable crown (1Corinthians 9:25). The authors are no less correct in pointing out that there is a casual but explicit antipathy to the Christian faith in some influential segments of the West, among intellectuals (as they are called) especially. Yet in their tone and mindset they are so terribly gone wrong and appeal so feebly to the powers of this world, that they can serve as no aid to the Christian but that of a cautionary example.

Ignatius of Antioch, one of the so-called "Apostolic Fathers," who lived at the beginning of the 2nd Century AD, when he had been brought to Rome to face trial for his life, pleaded with the more influential members of the Christian community there not to interfere with his case, and to allow him the victory of a martyr's death. Roughly a century later, with Christianity still very much illegal in the Roman world, writers such as Tertullian and Origen could lament the fact that the Church had not kept the mentality of martyrdom. I do not know what they would say to these things. Tertullian certainly wrote with great eloquence and passion against the anti-Christian bigotries of his time in his Apologia, and it is perhaps in this same apologetic vein that these exposers of "Christianophobia" wish to operate. But I cannot help but feel from the language they employ that they truly do seek and desire merely those worldly comforts of privilege and law which are the idols of our age. And this no Christian should do. No Christian should ever take his cares and his complaints to the state, to have them heard, and to have them satisfied. For our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20): Christ was on the cross for our cares, and it is to him that we should take them. We have in him a better advocate before a truer judgment than any worldly court can provide.