The Evangelical Christian Martyrdom Complex

Last week I noticed a headline on the Friendly Atheist titled Evangelist Wants to Know If You’d Say “Yes, I’m a Christian” with a Gun to Your Head. This brought to mind what I was taught as an evangelical child—that if anyone ever asked me to deny the faith, I was to refuse, even to death. We read stories of Christians martyred in other countries because they refused to spit on the Bible or renounce their faith.

But today I’m a mother. And you know what? If someone put a gun to one of my children’s heads and told them to say that they hate their mother, I would want them to say it. If God is our father, shouldn’t he prefer that his children live than that they die, even if that means they are compelled to verbally renounce him in order to live, while continuing to embrace him in their hearts?

We read a lot of Christian martyr stories as a child, and some of them included even more disturbing aspects. We read stories of Christian parents who refused to denounce Christ even as their young children were brutally tortured in front of them. We read stories of Christian parents who allowed the authorities to run over their young children with bulldozers rather than renounce their faith. There were graphic descriptions of skulls popping.

Why would a loving God prefer the murder of children to his followers verbally denouncing their faith while internally clinging to Christ? Wouldn’t a loving God understand that his followers might sometimes have to make difficult choices? As a girl, I was told the story of Corrie Ten Boom, and one thing that was always emphasized is that Corrie never actually had to lie to officials to protect the Jews she was hiding, because, apparently, not lying is more wrong than protecting people’s lives. (See the story at the end of this article, for instance.)

What is going on here, exactly?

First of all, evangelical Christianity places a great deal of importance on words. No one can force someone to stop believing something. All they can do is force them to say words. Of course, for many Christians today there is little difference between words and faith. After all, all salvation requires is for a person to say the sinner’s prayer. Yes, they must also believe it, but my point is that within modern evangelicalism especially, words are incredibly powerful. In some sense, then, words become more important than life.

Second, there is a glorification of martyrdom within much of Christianity, and within modern evangelical Christianity in particular. When Cassie Bernall died at Columbine, a mixup resulted in the press reporting that one of the shooters had asked her if she believed in God, and then shot her when she said “yes.” Her parents, her church, and the Christian media were quick to claim Cassie as a Christian martyr. Indeed, there are actually people, within evangelical Christianity, who long for a chance to be martyred for Christ. I used to be one of them.

Interestingly enough, this was an issue within early Christianity as well. Growing up in an evangelical home, I heard stories of the persecution of the early Christian church—tales Christians who were thrown to the lions in the arena, etc., rather than deny their faith. What I didn’t learn until adulthood was that there were also Christians who said the words the governing officials wanted them to say in order to avoid death. In fact, the Donatist controversy was born out of this issue—those who had refused to renounce Christ wanted to deny communion to those who had.

The Donatists believed that apostates could never be received back into the church. They argued that any Christians who had denounced the faith in the Diocletian persecution had lost salvation permanently, and that sacraments performed by bishops who had complied with orders to turn over church books or objects for destruction during the persecution were not valid. However, the Donatists held the minority position. Most Christians argued for forgiveness, and for accepting apostates back into the Church. The Donatists held on for several generations, being strongest in North Africa, but ultimately lost the argument.

During the early church, martyrdom was admired to an extent that scholars use the term “the cult of the martyrs” to describe early Christians’ glorification of martyrdom. Within this atmosphere, it is not surprising that the Donatists were able to hold on as long as they did. In fact, martyrdom was so admired that many early Christians engaged in voluntary martyrdom, either committing suicide or handing themselves over to the authorities and demanding to be martyred. The Donatists both encouraged and engaged in this practice, but St. Augustine of Hippo spent much of his career condemning it, and it was he, and not they, who set the Church’s approach to martyrdom.

There’s an interesting Christianity Today article on this subject from last April. I was actually really impressed with how far the article goes both in describing the complexities of Christian persecution in Africa and the Middle East today and in discussing historical conversations about martyrdom. It concludes as follows:

Today, Christians in the Middle East and in Africa face the same life-and-death dilemmas Christians faced more than 1,500 years ago. The judgement of the Church then was that it was right for them to try to save their lives, though not at any price. But it also said that God was merciful and that no one was barred from returning to the Church even if they had denied Christ.

The incidence of Christian persecution today is tragically high. It’s not for anyone to pass judgement who has never known it. But the hard-won wisdom of the early Christians encourages us to pray for those who suffer and to be loving and gracious to those who fail.

I would still argue that lying to save your life is not failure, and that a loving God would care more about his children’s physical wellbeing than about his own ego. I am, however, glad to see that some evangelicals today are able to take a slightly more nuanced approach to martyrdom than I was taught growing up.

Here in the U.S., questions of martyrdom are almost entirely intellectual. When Christian evangelists like the one mentioned in the Friendly Atheist article urge Christians to be willing to accept martyrdom—to say “Yes, I’m a Christian” when a gun is to their head—the issue is completely hypothetical. Cassie Bernall was never asked if she believed in God, and the Oregon shooter did not target Christians. But there are places where the question isn’t a hypothetical, and in those places, lives may hang in the balance. This makes evangelical glorification of martyrdom both dangerous and unwise.