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Toto · 04-21-2008, 03:53 PM

Cross posted in CSS - please discuss the political issues in that thread.

God and Country

Quote:

Persecution Complexes
17 April 2008

A historian of early Christianity looks at contemporary evangelicalism's persecution complexes in light of the Christian martyrdom tradition and the dangerously bruised egos of a massive movement that sees itself as victimized minority.

By Elizabeth A. Castelli

Excerpted with special permission from a special edition of Differences (Duke University Press), "God and Country," guest-edited by Elizabeth A. Castelli. You can download Castelli's introductory essay to the "God and Country" as well as articles on the Christian Right and the "new abolitionism," capital punishment, neoconservatism, and more for a limited time here. . .

Quote:

The theological discourse of Christian persecution has a long and paradoxical legacy: indeed, Christianity itself is founded upon an archetype of religio-political persecution, the execution of Jesus by the Romans. Certainly, the earliest Christians routinely equated Christian identity with suffering persecution, as the gospels and letters in the New Testament amply attest: "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake," Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account" (Matthew 5.10-11). Meanwhile, in the Gospel of John, Jesus warns his students with these words: "Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you" (John 15.20). Decades before these gospels were written, the itinerant preacher and missionary Paul wrote to the fledgling Christian community in Corinth: "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12.10).

By the end of the second century, the north African church father Tertullian would link the Christian experience of persecution to the expansion of the church in what has over the centuries become a near-slogan of the Christian movement: "The blood of Christians is the seed [of the church]" (semen est sanguis Christianorum) (226-27). By the early fourth century, the tables had turned, and a writer like Lactantius could create a work like his On the Deaths of the Persecutors, in which he offers an almost gleeful portrait of the grotesque fates to which the persecutors had eventually succumbed. And by the post-Constantinian era of the fourth and fifth centuries, after Christianity had mastered the language of empire (Cameron), Christian imperial legislation effectively deployed the familiar image of formerly dominant pagans as the persecutors of Christians as a rationale for outlawing their religious practices (see Codex Theodosianus 16.10 [Pharr trans. 472-76]) while exuberant Christian monks justified anti-pagan acts of violence, such as breaking into the homes of prominent pagans and destroying the religious objects found therein, by recourse to the claim that they (the monks) were by definition without guilt since they acted as martyrs (witnesses) for Christ (Shenoute of Atripe; Gaddis).

brianrein · 04-21-2008, 04:03 PM

A fascinating article (though long - will finish reading later); thank you for posting it. I have a couple of quite deeply Christian friends (the kind to whom Jesus talks), and they certainly seem to suffer from this persecution complex not on a political scale but on a personal one - they are always reporting to me that people say to them things like "Really? You're Christian? But you're so nice!" or informing me that people hear they're Christian and recoil. I have always treated such stories with a bit of skepticism - how can it be that in a 75% Christian nation my friends keep running into an endless string of people who are allegedly prejudiced against Christians? - but they are very insistent (and persistent). And each month or so there's a new story about somebody "disrespecting their faith." (On several occasions the person disrespecting their faith has been me.)

It really makes sense that this sort of complex, this feeling of The Man being out to get you, was built into Christianity from its humble beginning. We should not be surprised, then, that once the Christians finally had ultimate power, they used it to suppress the populace and carry out their own witch-hunts. I wonder if the "fact" that all Christians are sinners who need to be saved also plays into the faith's lurking fear of invisible enemies.

Malachi151 · 04-21-2008, 05:02 PM

Yeah, but when you look at the real fact it appears that most of this "history" of persecution is completely fabricated. Certainly it appears that every single martyrdom story of every one of the supposed "12 disciples" is fabricated, even if they are may be about real people. For example, the story of the martyrdom of Peter, even if there was a real Peter, is certainly false. Most of the supposed martyrs didn't even exist, they were fabricated centuries later. The church annals of martyrdom are one of the largest and most extensive collections of fake history known to man, and even the Catholic Church tacitly acknowledges the level of fabrication.

Toto · 04-21-2008, 05:09 PM

I will leave it to you to find the contemporary use of the story of the Levite's concubine in Judges 19.

Quote:

The story of the Levite's concubine is not the average Bible story. For reasons that should be rather obvious, it does not appear in most lectionaries or liturgical cycles for public Bible reading, and it is not customarily the scriptural basis for preaching. Rather, it is the kind of Bible story one might save for that place in the argument where one wants to prove that the Bible is a violent, grotesque, misogynistic horror show -- should one want to substantiate such a claim. Feminist biblical scholar Phyllis Trible gives pride of place to this story in her early work of feminist literary interpretation, Texts of Terror (or via: amazon.co.uk). Mieke Bal, who takes issue with some elements of Trible's reading in her own book, Death and Dissymmetry (or via: amazon.co.uk), offers a close reading of the layers of violence done to the unnamed woman in this story -- in the action of the story itself, in the subsequent scripturalizing of the story, and in the generations of philological analysis to which the text has been subjected by dispassionate, scholarly readers. Bal concludes by observing that the woman in the story is reduced to a token of sacrificial exchange between powerful men.

Question: I recall something about some symbolic meaning of this gruesome passage, but I can't locate it. What is the standard interpretation?

brianrein · 04-21-2008, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

Yeah, but when you look at the real fact it appears that most of this "history" of persecution is completely fabricated. Certainly it appears that every single martyrdom story of every one of the supposed "12 disciples" is fabricated, even if they are may be about real people. For example, the story of the martyrdom of Peter, even if there was a real Peter, is certainly false. Most of the supposed martyrs didn't even exist, they were fabricated centuries later. The church annals of martyrdom are one of the largest and most extensive collections of fake history known to man, and even the Catholic Church tacitly acknowledges the level of fabrication.

Maybe I just haven't been around here long enough, but I'd like to see some evidence on this one. Not that I'm hostile to you - it's just that if I said something like that in everyday conversation or even in debates, I wouldn't be able to get away with it without justifying the position.

Malachi151 · 04-21-2008, 06:52 PM

I am rationalrev in the following thread:

http://www.christiandiscussionforums...53&postcount=2

Without rehashing a lot of this argument, that should be a decent starting point.

brianrein · 04-21-2008, 09:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

I am rationalrev in the following thread:

http://www.christiandiscussionforums...53&postcount=2

Without rehashing a lot of this argument, that should be a decent starting point.

Don't have time at present to respond affirmatively, negatively, or inbetweenly, but thank you for the link. I appreciate it.

andrewcriddle · 04-22-2008, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I will leave it to you to find the contemporary use of the story of the Levite's concubine in Judges 19.
.................................................. ........................

Question: I recall something about some symbolic meaning of this gruesome passage, but I can't locate it. What is the standard interpretation?

In its present form, this ghastly story seems to be about what happens when everyone decides for themselves what is right and wrong. the story ends in Judges 21:25 with the reminder; "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes."

Andrew Criddle

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04-21-2008, 04:03 PM	#2
brianrein Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: The American South Posts: 70	A fascinating article (though long - will finish reading later); thank you for posting it. I have a couple of quite deeply Christian friends (the kind to whom Jesus talks), and they certainly seem to suffer from this persecution complex not on a political scale but on a personal one - they are always reporting to me that people say to them things like "Really? You're Christian? But you're so nice!" or informing me that people hear they're Christian and recoil. I have always treated such stories with a bit of skepticism - how can it be that in a 75% Christian nation my friends keep running into an endless string of people who are allegedly prejudiced against Christians? - but they are very insistent (and persistent). And each month or so there's a new story about somebody "disrespecting their faith." (On several occasions the person disrespecting their faith has been me.) It really makes sense that this sort of complex, this feeling of The Man being out to get you, was built into Christianity from its humble beginning. We should not be surprised, then, that once the Christians finally had ultimate power, they used it to suppress the populace and carry out their own witch-hunts. I wonder if the "fact" that all Christians are sinners who need to be saved also plays into the faith's lurking fear of invisible enemies.

04-21-2008, 05:02 PM	#3
Malachi151 Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Colorado Posts: 8,674	Yeah, but when you look at the real fact it appears that most of this "history" of persecution is completely fabricated. Certainly it appears that every single martyrdom story of every one of the supposed "12 disciples" is fabricated, even if they are may be about real people. For example, the story of the martyrdom of Peter, even if there was a real Peter, is certainly false. Most of the supposed martyrs didn't even exist, they were fabricated centuries later. The church annals of martyrdom are one of the largest and most extensive collections of fake history known to man, and even the Catholic Church tacitly acknowledges the level of fabrication.

04-21-2008, 06:52 PM	#6
Malachi151 Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Colorado Posts: 8,674	I am rationalrev in the following thread: http://www.christiandiscussionforums...53&postcount=2 Without rehashing a lot of this argument, that should be a decent starting point.

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