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“For slandering someone in a song, for instance, the penalty was to be clubbed to death.”
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
“The rhetoric of persecution legitimates and condones retributive violence. Violence committed by the persecuted is an act of divinely approved self-defense. In attacking others they are not only defending themselves; they are defending all Christians.”
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
“When, in 2012, Newt Gingrich was asked about how his religious beliefs would affect his conduct should he become president, the Republican nominee hopeful answered, "One of the reasons I am running is there has been an increasingly aggressive war against religion and in particular against Christianity" in the United States. For a potential president to state that he sees himself as a wartime candidate who will defend his party against other citizens is astonishing. There is not even a pretense here of "united states".”
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
“It is simply anachronistic to divide ancient motivations into the religious and the political. They were tangled up together. For us, the state is—in theory—exclusively political and should not interfere in questions of personal belief, religion, faith, or God. In reality religion and politics are thoroughly entangled with one another, but we idealize the separation of church and state and the freedom of individuals to practice their religious traditions. For ancient Romans the state”
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
“The myth of Christian martyrdom and persecution needs to be corrected, because it has left us with a dangerous legacy that poisons the well of public discourse. This affects not just Christians, but everyone. We cannot use the mere fact that we feel persecuted as evidence that our cause is just or as the grounds for rhetorical or actual war. We cannot use the supposed moral superiority of our ancient martyrs to demonstrate the intrinsic superiority of our modern religious beliefs or ideological positions. Once we recognize that feeling persecuted is not proof of anything, then we have to engage in serious intellectual and moral debate about the actual issues at hand.”
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
― The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom
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