DEANN\u2019S QUESTION:<\/p>\n
Are the congregants massacred in Sutherland Springs martyrs<\/em>?<\/p>\n THE RELIGION GUY\u2019S ANSWER:<\/p>\n A shooting rampage during Sunday worship at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, took 26 lives (if we count an unborn baby). It was the worst slaughter at a house of worship in American history, though such atrocities occur all too often at churches in strife-ridden Islamic lands and\u00a0more often at mosques \u2014 witness more than 300 Muslim worshipers massacred November 24 at Bir al-Abed, Egypt.<\/p>\n The murderer \u2014 \u201cReligion Q & A\u201d will not dignify him by using his name \u2014 sprayed hundreds of bullets at helpless worshipers trapped in the pews, and may have especially targeted youngsters.<\/p>\n We usually think of a martyr as a brave Christian executed by authorities or slain otherwise for professing the faith or refusing to spurn it, as with the biblical St. Stephen (Acts 7:54-60).<\/p>\n Unlike Southern Baptists, Catholicism specializes in martyrology and has recognized as saints hundreds across the centuries who faced death for professing their faith. The church\u2019s official definition:<\/p>\n \u201cMartyrdom is the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith: It means bearing witness even unto death. The martyr bears witness to Christ who died and rose, to whom he is united by chrity. He bears witness to the truth of the faith and of Christian doctrine. He endures death through an act of fortitude\u201d (Catechism #2473). Understand that here \u201che\u201d covers both genders.<\/p>\n A more succinct Russian Orthodox definition says \u201cmartyrdom is bearing witness to the truth of Christ and God\u2019s church to the death.\u201d Whether that\u2019s the appropriate label for the Texas victims depends on the motives of both the killer and those killed.<\/p>\n Begin with what\u2019s known about the gunman. There\u2019s ample evidence he was severely troubled, violent, and should never have been able to purchase weapons. State officials said \u201cthere was a domestic situation going on within the family\u201d and \u201cit wasn\u2019t over religious beliefs.\u201d Perhaps.<\/p>\n If he wanted to gun down the despised mother of his estranged second wife, she wasn\u2019t even present. He did murder his wife\u2019s grandmother, but did he aim at her? And why murder 25 others he didn\u2019t even know? Since he killed himself after the attack and left no note,\u00a0 nobody can know.<\/p>\n Even if the chief cause was family fury, the assailant pointedly chose church worship for his venue, rather than homes or work places. Deann\u2019s full posting says \u201cthey clearly died for their faith. The shooter singled out that particular church to receive his wrath.\u201d The mother-in-law was active at First Baptist and his wife was previously, so it\u2019s possible his fevered mind fused personal hatred with their Christian identity. Again, we\u2019ll never really know.<\/p>\n A former U.S. Air Force colleague told The New York Times that his Facebook postings mentioned an \u201cobsession\u201d with the man who murdered nine innocent Bible study attendees at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.<\/p>\n Was\u00a0his own hatred of religion a factor?\u00a0Apparently the murderer had a conventional Protestant childhood but somehow turned sharply hostile. One high school classmate recalls \u201che was the first atheist I met\u201d while another says \u201che was always talking about how people who believe in God are stupid and trying to preach his atheism.\u201d Did that viewpoint somehow curdle into insane intent? There\u2019s no clear evidence.<\/p>\n Moving from all those uncertainties, the pivotal aspect becomes the Baptists. The victims did not stroll into church that pleasant morning expecting to make the ultimate sacrifice as they witnessed by participating in worship. Therefore, the deceased were not martyrs by conventional understanding. Rather, they were innocent victims of a senseless atrocity that possibly involved hatred toward belief or believers to some unknown extent.<\/p>\n Now, since this autumn marks the 100th anniversary of the Communist Revolution, let\u2019s add a related emphasis, that some instances of undisputed martyrdom are so massive the identities of the victims can never be fully known but to God. Russians celebrate a special Orthodox Eucharist annually to honor the collective witness of the Communist era\u2019s \u201cmartyrs and confessors of the Russian Church,\u201d among whom more than 1,700\u00a0have been identified by name.<\/p>\n A Library of Congress report observes that the former Soviet Union was the first regime in history \u201cto have as an ideological objective the elimination of religion,\u201d carrying forth Karl Marx\u2019s hatred toward faith. In that cause \u201cnearly all of [Russian Orthodoxy\u2019s] clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps.\u201d By 1939, only some 500 of the nation\u2019s 50,000 churches were allowed to remain open.<\/p>\n Another source is Alexander Yakovlev, author of \u201cA Century of Violence in Soviet Russia\u201d (Yale, 2002). This onetime state propagandist and member of the elite Soviet Politburo became a reformer and chaired the Russian government\u2019s post-Communist investigation of the death toll.<\/p>\n Much slaughter involved political dogma, social class, and personal rivalries, but Yakovlev said the Reds systematically murdered some 200,000 Orthodox priests, monks, and nuns. These Christians were variously shot, sent to die in concentration camps, frozen to death, crucified, scalped, strangled, drowned, and \u201csubmitted to other bestial tortures.\u201d He says \u201cLenin gave the order\u201d that originated the Party\u2019s \u201ccampaign of merciless terror,\u201d which was then carried forth by Stalin.<\/p>\n After Soviet Communism collapsed, Patriarch Aleksy of Moscow prayed, \u201cMay the blood of the new martyrs become for the faithful of the church a seed of faith that will spring forth to life eternal.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the 70 million martyrs across\u00a0church history, half died in the 20th Century under Communists and other totalitarian rulers, according to the estimate of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell seminary. The center says 1 million Christians were martyred just from 2000 to 2010, or 100,000 per year. Think of it.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DEANN\u2019S QUESTION: Are the congregants massacred in Sutherland Springs martyrs? THE RELIGION GUY\u2019S ANSWER: A shooting rampage during Sunday worship at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, took 26 lives (if we count an unborn baby). It was the worst slaughter at a house of worship in American history, though such atrocities occur all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n