Description: As an explicitly christological witness, martyrdom
offers a limited but vital description of the present within the
various and unpredictable arenas of living, suffering, and dying.
That is to say, martyrdom is not the tragic conclusion of some
fatal ideological conflict but a momentary truthful glimpse of
present circumstances. Martyrdom reveals, clarifies, and illumines
what we take for the real. Martyrs are therefore significant for
the church today because they exhibit the sort of truthful living
that refuses the claims of history and power without Christ; they
show the sort of living and dying that returns forgiveness upon
murder, and patience beyond domination. Meditating primarily on the
second-century martyrdoms in Lyons and Vienne, France, Pilgrim
Holiness offers a view of Christian martyrdom that challenges
prevalent misunderstandings about what martyrs are doing in
sacrificing their lives. Joshua J. Whitfield argues that martyrdom
is a moment of truthful disclosure and thus a moment of forgiveness
and peace--gifts for which we are in desperate need. Endorsements:
""In a time when critics of Christianity, and religion in general,
point to the practices of martyrs as examples of the inherently
irrational, violent, and dangerous character of religious devotion,
Whitfield challenges Christians to reconsider Christ's call to
""take up one's cross"" by suspending our suspicions and listening
to the stories of the martyrs in conversation with contemporary
theological voices such as Rowan Williams, Stanley Hauerwas, Sam
Wells, and others."" --J. Warren Smith Duke University ""We are not
superior or inferior to those who came before us, we are simply in
the same situation as them: called to bear witness--in our lives
and perhaps in our deaths--to the nonviolent truth embodied by
Jesus Christ. This book, which is steeped in the patristic martyr
narratives, unpacks this simple statement in skillful dialogue with
contemporary thought. Its goal is to show that the hoped-for unity
of Christians has no other plausible basis than peaceful imitation
of Christ."" --Charles K. Bellinger Brite Divinity School ""Joshua
Whitfield has concocted a perceptive and important antidote to the
secular politics of death-making. Insisting that martyrs die for
love of truth armed only with the power of description, Whitfield
stands against the acrimonious caricatures du jour by uncoupling
Christian martyrdom from power but not from truth. This book is a
clarion call to any church that has brokered an unholy trade-off in
producing members who would more readily kill than die."" --Craig
Hovey author of To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for
Today's Church ""In this erudite tome, Whitfield offers an account
of martyrdom that refuses the shackles of liberal secular politics.
Such refusal, however, is not rooted in a rejection of the world
and its attempts to regulate sacred narratives; rather, Whitfield
reminds us that its refusal is predicated on the eschatological
promise that God will bring all creation to completion. The witness
of the martyr, therefore, is not a discourse about the individual
agent; it is a discourse about the saving activity of the Triune
God."" --Tripp York author of The Purple Crown: The Politics of
Martyrdom About the Contributor(s): Joshua J. Whitfield is an
Anglican priest and rector of the Church of Saint Gregory the Great
in Mansfield, Texas.
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