Amaleq13

I think you have to strengthen the word "doubt" but I also think you are on the right track. Persecution is essentially a fear response. It is more than just doubt of their beliefs that causes enough fear. The persecuted are seen as rejecting and denying the beliefs of the persecutor in their refusal to accept them.

steve_bnk

I agree. Christians from the rise of their faith to today had litte to fear from non-Christians, barring the short lived commuism. Christians abused and persecuted each other. Our Pilgrims were not fleeing aetheisst or Mulsims, they were fleeing fellow Christians.

The RCC had strong political power, the reformation threatend that poitical and economic power, the pope might have to go get a day job if Chrtians belived they formed theri own direct relationship with god instead of needing priests and a pope.

avi

Thanks Ben, for this interesting topic. I enjoyed reading all of the responses. Toto's suggestion, i.e. USA brand of "communism" represented more of a religious character, than a political force, was especially thoughtful. I agree with Pete's contentions. I found DCHindley's response really meritorious. I have little to add to such brilliant rejoinders, but, I do think, in addition to the racial and religious and political motives, one ought to include linguistic considerations.

The recent upheaval in China, in XinJiang province, in the city of Urumqi, may be a case in point, though, I am sure there are numerous other examples in history.

The indigenous people of the region are Uyghurs, ethnically, and linquistically related to the Turkish group that inhabits, for example, Uzbekistan. They are Muslim.

The Hui people, competitors of the Uyghurs, are ALSO Muslim. However, they are ethnic Han, and speak one of the Sino-Tibetan languages.

The recent "persecution" of the Uyghurs by the Han, led to violence involving all three groups, Han, Hui, and Uyghur. The point here, is that the Hui, who logically ought to be sympathetic to the cause of their Muslim brethren, were, at least in this most recent upheaval, on the side of the Han majority.

I conclude that persecution is probably less about whether or not a community believes in one or another religious icon, and more about meat and potatoes. The method of religous thinking, i.e. faith, not reason, is quite the opposite of the method of secular thinking, i.e. reason, not faith guided logic.

Does not awareness of the existence of persecution in one's own society depend upon confrontation? Would anyone know about the slaughter of millions of indigenous North American aboriginal inhabitants by European colonialists, were it not for the documented (feeble) attempts to repel the barbarian savages with their absurd black robes?

Ben C Smith

I agree it is hard to pin down.

But what I am trying to do is to separate those systems of (non)belief that directly challenge the powers that be (what I am calling the status quo) from those that are persecuted just for holding the wrong doctrinal tenet (and thus whose challenge is indirect at best).

Let me give D. Bonhoeffer as an example. His statue stands at Westminster as one of the modern martyrs. But I personally think that one has to really stretch the definition of martyr to cover Bonhoeffer. The Nazis executed him, not for some difference of belief, but rather because he was discovered in the plot to kill Hitler. He could have believed point for point whatever strange religious and occultic things Hitler and his top aides believed, and I think he would still have been executed for his role in the plot. IOW, he directly challenged the powers that be (Hitler himself, in this case); it was not the indirect challenge of believing in a different sort of God.

I would apply the status quo or powers that be labels to those governments, parties, or other groups that have the ability to enforce their will on others, and that ability is seen as official in some way. This ability can be relative. For example, a rebellious teenager in an Amish community is challenging the status quo of the Amish powers that be, but of course their power extends only to a certain very localized sphere. (Eventually all the teenager would need to do is to move to Philadelphia or NYC, and he would blend right in.)

In the first couple of centuries of the Christian era, the Roman empire was the status quo (as I am using the term), while the Christians were not. Constantine made the two one, and pretty soon a particular brand of Christianity became the status quo, while other brands (and other religions) remained not.

Gay marriage and abortion are such volatile issues, with roughly equal numbers on both sides of the question, and therefore with no single proposition or referendum being in the bag, that I would not necessarily think of either one of them as status quo; nor are their politically opposite positions.

More to the point, nobody is officially persecuted in the USA right now for believing or disbelieving something about gay marriage or abortion; both sides are currently free to believe anything they want about the issue.

To a Christian there may have been no difference. But to the Romans there was. From their way of thinking, if the Christians had merely added their Christ to the pantheon and also blown incense to Caesar, everything would have been okay.

If the question is why were they persecuted (and that is the question I am asking on this thread), then we have to take things from the point of view of the persecutor.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

This may be overstatement on the little to fear from unbelievers side of things. Even today Christianity (along with other religions) is officially illegal in China, for example. And the persecutions before Constantine, while not as great as is sometimes made out, were real.

However, you are very much correct to say that Christians have persecuted each other throughout most of Christian history. Jan Hus was burned at the stake, not by pagans or by Muslims, but by Roman Catholics.

Ben.

bacht

In the case of Christians in the Roman empire, was hostility based on 1) the perceived relation of Christians with Jews or 2) the formation of illegal private associations? That is, did Romans brand Christians as Jewish sympathizers or enemies of the state?

Doug Shaver

My data won't pass any scientific muster, but I think they're interesting. In the 10 years that I've been active on Internet forums, I have from time to time asked apologists to provide primary documentation of any Christian, in any place and at any time in the religion's history, being persecuted for affirming either the resurrection or the divinity of Jesus and for no other reason. Responses to date: None.

I don't mean I got responses that failed to convince me. I mean I have gotten no responses -- with one exception.

That exception, if memory serves (this was several years ago), was from a non-Christian, just by the way. He claimed to have read an account by a reliable witness of a Christian in Russia during the Soviet era who was jailed solely for affirming his faith. One little problem: The witness also said or strongly implied that the alleged victim had some mental-health issues.

Ben C Smith

I think closer to option 2. Judaism was not illegal. (A lot of religions were grandfathered in, so to speak, in the Roman empire due to their extreme antiquity; Christianity was novel, so could not be accepted on that basis.)

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Thanks, Doug.

(And thanks also for retaining the word data as a true plural by making it the antecedent of they. :thumbs

Ben.

steve_bnk

The diaspora Jews in the empire had mixed experiences, but were generaly accepted. The Christians got into trouble when they separated themselves from the Jews, Rome had considered them to be Jewish heretics.