Martha Mullen, a Christian Antigone<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Sophocles' great tragedy Antigone, a civil war has taken place in the city of Thebes between the two sons of Oedipus, Polynices and Eteocles, who are\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2013\/05\/11\/martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Martha Mullen, a Christian Antigone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In Sophocles' great tragedy Antigone, a civil war has taken place in the city of Thebes between the two sons of Oedipus, Polynices and Eteocles, who are\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2013\/05\/11\/martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mercy Not Sacrifice\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-05-12T02:14:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-07-17T19:14:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/files\/2013\/05\/tsarnaev_richmond_shelley_018.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Morgan Guyton\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Morgan Guyton\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2013\/05\/11\/martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2013\/05\/11\/martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone\/\",\"name\":\"Martha Mullen, a Christian Antigone\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-05-12T02:14:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-07-17T19:14:23+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/32bff953b247bf1885d0323f969d801d\"},\"description\":\"In Sophocles' great tragedy Antigone, a civil war has taken place in the city of Thebes between the two sons of Oedipus, Polynices and Eteocles, who are\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2013\/05\/11\/martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2013\/05\/11\/martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2013\/05\/11\/martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Martha Mullen, a Christian Antigone\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/\",\"name\":\"Mercy Not Sacrifice\",\"description\":\"The blog of Morgan Guyton\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/32bff953b247bf1885d0323f969d801d\",\"name\":\"Morgan Guyton\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc7edabc6e70bd443d33eab0f05ce8d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccc7edabc6e70bd443d33eab0f05ce8d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Morgan Guyton\"},\"description\":\"I\u2019m the director of the NOLA Wesley Foundation, which is the United Methodist campus ministry at Tulane and Loyola University in New Orleans, LA. 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{"id":7193,"date":"2013-05-11T22:14:50","date_gmt":"2013-05-12T02:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/?p=7193"},"modified":"2014-07-17T14:14:23","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T19:14:23","slug":"martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mercynotsacrifice\/2013\/05\/11\/martha-mullen-a-christian-antigone\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha Mullen, a Christian Antigone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"TSARNAEV_RICHMOND_SHELLEY_018\"$ <\/p>\n

In Sophocles\u2019 great tragedy Antigone<\/em>, a civil war has taken place in the city of Thebes between the two sons of Oedipus, Polynices and Eteocles, who are fighting for power. They are both killed, and when their uncle Creon takes throne, he decrees that Polynices is forbidden to be buried and must have his body eaten by animals outside the city walls. Antigone, the sister of Polynices and Eteocles, disobeys Creon\u2019s order because leaving a human body unburied like that is not only a dishonor but an offense against the gods. Martha Mullen, a United Methodist from the Richmond area, is a Christian Antigone.<\/p>\n

Mullen didn\u2019t set out to do anything heroic, but she was really bothered when she saw on TV that Boston Marathon bomber Tamarlen Tsarnaev\u2019s body was in limbo at the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlor in Worcester, Massachusetts, because every cemetery in the area was refusing to bury him. Moreover, people were actually picketing the funeral parlor as though the poor undertaker was somehow supporting terrorism by taking responsibility for putting a body in the ground and just dumping it in the middle of the road and creating a health and safety hazard.<\/p>\n

So Mullen discreetly got in touch with some people of different faiths in the local community and the Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia agreed to inter the body. She then contacted the Worcester police department which got in touch with the funeral home. Tsarnaev\u2019s uncle paid the cost; the body was shipped and buried in a rural plot just outside of Richmond. Nobody was supposed to find out anything about it, but the media ruthlessly pursued the story and Mullen bravely used the interviews as an opportunity to bear witness to her Christian conviction in loving her enemies. How in the world could any Christian who takes the Bible seriously oppose her actions?<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> with a TV station, she said, \u201cI think we need to remember that we are all, in the end, human, and we need to remember our common humanity. As the police chief said in Worcester, we\u2019re not barbarians, we bury the dead.\u201d The fact that Mullen\u2019s actions are controversial<\/a> to anyone is a pretty scary indicator of where we have come as a nation. Has anyone ever protested the burial of a criminal before?<\/em> Does it matter that Tsarnaev has a family who are doubly traumatized by the shame that his actions caused them and the grief of losing him? Does it matter that rotting bodies are a health hazard and the funeral home director didn\u2019t have a thing to do with Tsarnaev\u2019s crime?<\/p>\n

This is another example of how God has been making the fruit so plain and obvious among His people. Mullen has been called the \u201cmost hated woman in Virginia\u201d in the trollosphere. If you want to talk about being \u201cpersecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake\u201d (Matthew 5:10), Mullen is actually a legitimate example of that, unlike all the whining Christians who say that it \u201coppresses\u201d them for gay people to get married. There are so few people in our world anymore who do the right thing even when it\u2019s incredibly unpopular. I\u2019m so glad that there are Christians like Mullen out there. Otherwise, disgusting precedents would start to get set, and the bodies of people unworthy to be eaten by worms would start to fill up the sidewalks.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"