Description
It was the Roman writer Tertullian who said, ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’. From its origins, martyrdom has had a particularly honoured place in Christianity. This will be confirmed again in 2020 when the Catholic Church marks the fiftieth anniversary of the canonization of the 40 Catholic Reformation martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI. The sacrifices of Catholics at the time of the Reformation were matched by those of Anglicans who were also persecuted and executed for their faith, for refusing to renounce it or change to another one.
In this book, I would want to examine the significance of martyrdom for Christians today, particularly for the British, and analyse how churches today deal with past martyrdoms of Christians by other Christians. I would explore how ideas of martyrdom have changed over the centuries and consider what the stories of particular martyrs tell us today. It would study how martyrdom is powerfully connected with the clash between religious beliefs and political creeds, and would refer to Thomas Becket and Thomas More, the confrontation between Nazism and Christianity, and cite more recent examples of Oscar Romero, Dorothy Stang and Martin Luther King. The book would also explore the issue of conscience, ideas about heroism, the role of violence in Christianity and the impact of martyrdom on the arts.