Bernd Wannenwetsch on the martyrs and violence

It is always good to read your own supervisor's work! So, I found this nice comment in Bernd Wannenwetsch's book Political Worship:

...it was actually the Church in the form of the martyrs, who refused to submit to the power of those who were stronger, which gave what was perhaps the most forceful political thrust towards the dissolution of the Roman Empire, as people withdrew from the political worship of the Empire. The effect of the Christian martyrs must, of course, not be interpreted to mean that the principle of non-violence proved superior to Roman violence. Their impact was not based on any ontological ascendancy of non-violence over violence. It was due to the fact that the refusal to go along with the worship of the gods of war, who represent the imperial claim to rule, pointed to the question about the authorization or empowerment for such action. If Christians found this empowerment in their worship, that worship did not merely reflect the impossibility of joining in the worship of Roman tyranny; it also showed the possibility of seeing this risky refusal through. Even today, the decisive constructive question of political ethics is the question about the formation of power. p. 113-4.

What he highlights here is that martyrdom was a question primarily of worship and not one of merely displaying a kind of action transferrable to perhaps different ideological settings.