Candida Moss - The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom

This book is dedicated to my grandmother, the glamorous and utterly singular Rosamund Fisher. I aspire to be to others the kind of unforgettable heroine that she has been to me.

C ONTENTS

S HORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON December 31, 2010, a young woman named Mariam Fekry paused at her computer to share her thoughts on the expiring year with her friends and Facebook acquaintances. She happily wrote, 2010 is over. This year has the best memories of my life. Really enjoyed this year. I hope that 2011 is much better. Please God stay beside me and help make it all true. Mariams dreams for the coming year lasted a little more than a quarter of an hour. At twenty minutes past midnight, January 1, 2011, a car bomb exploded across the street from al-Qiddissin (the Saints) Church in Alexandria, Egypt. Mariam, her mother, aunt, and sister Martina were among the more than twenty Coptic Christians killed in the blast. After a long day of preparing food, the four women were attending midnight Mass in celebration of the New year. Young and beautiful, Mariam was, by all accounts, full of life. She attended university, taught Sunday school, and had high hopes of that year finding the elusive man of her dreams and settling down. She was only twenty-two when she died.

The explosion sparked clashes between police and locals in Alexandria. People filled the streets protesting the lack of government action and the mistreatment of Christians in Egypt. Copts, a minority in Egypt, angrily hurled stones at the authorities, stormed a nearby mosque, and threw religious books into the streets. That the source of the carnage was unknown only made the situation worse. Conflicting newspaper reports attributed the bombing to the terrorist group al-Qaeda and to local Egyptian Muslims. While both the head of the Coptic Church and the Egyptian president called for peace, protestors defiantly chanted, We will not be afraid and With soul and blood we will redeem the cross.

In the media and on the Internet, Mariam and the other Christians who died in the New years Day attack were hailed as something more than innocent victims of terrorismthey were acclaimed as martyrs. Mariam became the face of martyrdom in the cyber age: her Facebook wall, the site of her final message to God and the world, was flooded with messages from people she had never met. People were drawn to this beautiful young woman, attracted to her innocence, and inspired by the tragedy of her story. Christian bloggers asked Mariam to pray for them. Virtual support carried none of the risks of in-person protest, of course, but thousands joined online groups dedicated to her memory and posted homemade video tributes to the modern-day martyr. Even the president of Egypt talked about the blood of the martyrs killed in the attack. Many of the virtual memorials dedicated to Mariam connect her to the heroes of the early churchto St. Polycarp, to Sts. Perpetua and Felicity, and to the host of Christian saints that preceded her. The form of her celebration is modern, but the ideas behind it are ancient. Contrary to what people might have imagined, the admiration for and love of the martyrs is as alive as ever.

In the blink of an eye the terrorist attack on the church in Alexandria changed from an unjust act of violence to a cause for religious martyrdom. There is no doubt that the church in Alexandria was targeted precisely because it was a place where Christians met, but the moment that Mariam and her relatives started to be called martyrs, the popular perception of the event changed. No longer was the attack simply an act of horrifying violence perpetrated by a terrorist group. Nor was it the unfortunate result of local religious, political, and social tensions. It became a direct and outright attack on Christianity as a whole. Rather than turning the other cheek, the Christian community was militarized. Once Mariam became a martyr, she and the other Christian victims were seen as soldiers in a two-thousand-year-old religious conflict: a conflict between Christianity and the world, a battle between good and evil.

The perception that the events in Alexandria were part of a larger struggle between Christianity and the world fueled the retaliation that followed. The violent Christian responses to the bombing were grounded in a sense of religious self-preservation and self-righteousness. Even though it was unclear who was responsible for the bombing, the protestors targeted specifically Muslim institutions. Their slogans show just how intimately their acts of violence were related to their Christian identity: the protestors saw the attack on the church as one more entry in a history of unjust violence against Christians. By resisting this persecution, even with violence, they were actively assisting Jesus: they shouted that their blood would redeem the cross. Under ordinary circumstances no Christian would presume to play such an important role in the world. By using this language, the protestors aligned their actions with the death of Jesus. The introduction of religious language and the theologizing of violence made the deaths of the victims of the New years Day bombing meaningful and intelligible to a traumatized Christian community. But it also had the effect of encouraging people to fight in defense of their faith.

Ironically, it is the belief that Christians are persecuted that empowered the protestors to attack others. Against the objections of church leaders that the violence should end with Mariam and the other victims, the Christian protestors replied that they were unjustly persecuted and that their actions were sanctioned by God. The rhetoric of persecution legitimates and condones retributive violence. Violence committed by the persecuted is an act of divinely approved self-defense. In attacking others they are not only defending themselves; they are defending all Christians. This idea isnt simply the by-product of strained twenty-first-century Christian-Muslim relations. The view that Christians are by their very nature at odds with the world is an ancient one. Its roots lie in the history of Christianity and, more specifically, in the way Christians think of themselves as the successors of the early church.

The Age of the Martyrs

S INCE THE DEATH OF Jesus, hundreds of thousands of Christians have been hailed as martyrs. A recent study estimates that over the course of the past two thousand years as many as seventy million Christians have died for their beliefsmore than the total number of fatalities in World War II. Some of these individuals are household namesJoan of Arc, Martin Luther King Jr., Sir Thomas More, and Oscar Romerowhile others are just anonymous Christians executed en masse, not even leaving their names behind. These martyrs are held up as models for all kinds of Christian conduct. Churches, schools, and infants are named after them. Their stories are taught to children in Sunday school, and their deaths are remembered as glorious examples of lives lived in obedience to God. But why?

Considered from a modern secular perspective, martyrdom is a very strange concept. Today, people work hard to stay alive: we vaccinate our children, get annual checkups with doctors, take antibiotics, avoid antibiotics, look both ways when we cross the street, drink green tea, and wear seat belts, all as part of an effort to avoid dying a moment before we have to. Given that we expend so much effort staying alive, it might seem strange to think that anyone would choose to die. And yet, even today, people are still willing to give up their lives for a cause they believe in. Even if they are reluctant to take the plunge themselves, many more respect those who have sacrificed their lives for others. Where did this idea of martyrdom come from? Why would someone die for his or her religious beliefs? how is it that people can see violence and death as something good and holy?