Joshua Whitfield's book on martyrdom, Pilgrim Holiness - Martyrdom as Descriptive Witness, has arrived in my pigeon hole and I am fascinated to begin reading it. I had the privilege of seeing some of the work in its unpublished form. Here's a taste:
Christian martyrdom should be renewed in the church's memory and in the imagination of individual Christians. Martyrs should not be relegated to an embarassing and unenlightened past, nor should they be made to fit sociologically and politically acceptable models. Rather, martyrs should be remembered for their witness to Jesus. Martyrs should be embraced as those who disclose and also compel the unity of all Christians, of all those who inhabit the same narrative horizon. Only when the Church receives this gift, when Christians are willing to inhabit the narrtive of the Church in the face of every other divisive narrative of nation, race, class, denomination, or gender, will they be able to give witness to what is believed to be a more lasting peace, which passes all understanding. (p. 126)
I am interested that he concludes on this note, emphasising the unity of the Church. I am not sure I would have gone the same route. Of course, many of the greatest martyrs of the Church's history have been killed by professing Christians...
1 comment:
well, quite. Especially obvious to those of us who have spent a while in Oxford, where one PPH is named after a proto-protestant executed posthumously by the Catholics and another after a Jesuit executed by the Protestants...
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