What Do We Do With the Past?

The conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq today has similar (though not identical) parallels with what western Christianity wrestled with during the time of the Reformation. Sadly, as one reads the accounts in Foxe's Book of Martyrs and Martyr's Mirror, one cannot avoid the fact that there was a time when Christians persecuted Christians. There are still places where this takes place (e.g. Chiapas, Ethiopia), but such persecution is incredibly rare today and makes up only a tiny percentage of the persecution suffered by Christians. Even rarer are situations where Christians persecute those of other religions. As in the early church, Christians today are primarily the recipients of persecution, not the instigators. This is an undeniable fact that only those with a deep grudge against Christians would try to deny.

However, the dilemma that I face is what to do with the past. As a mission, do we continue to promote books like John Foxe's Book of Martyrs with its testimonies of how Protestants were martyred by Roman Catholics? What of the magnificent Martyrs Mirror with its wonderful stories of how Anabaptists refused to deny their convictions and were slaughtered by almost everyone else, including the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed Churches? Do we sell Blood Of The Martyrs, Seed Of The Church which recounts testimonies of Catholic martyrs who were killed by Protestants?

As a mission committed to being nondenominational, these are difficult choices. For several years, we have sold Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Our US mission is coming out with a special edition of it in the spring and we had to decide whether to promote it ourselves. But in recent years especially, we have come under fire whenever we offer this book for sale, from both Catholic and Protestant readers of our newsletter. They suggest that we are selling a book that is anti-Catholic and that it is inappropriate for us to do so. In a similar vein, I would love to make Martyrs Mirror available to our readership. In many ways, it is a much superior book to Foxe's (and much bigger!). Baptists and Mennonites might like it but what will some of our Reformed, Catholic, and Lutheran friends say?

It is almost as if some Christians today would rather than we ignore and/or forget the mistakes of our past and pretend that they never happened; that Christians have, at times, acted rather contrary to the teachings of Christ. It is far more comfortable to only refer to the incidents of persecution today where Christians are the victims than to look back when terrible atrocities were wrongly done in the name of Christ.

Do we dishonour the sacrifices of those who died during those days with such historical neglect or selective reconstructionism? Or is this an unnecessary digging up of the dirt from the past? I am inclined to think the former, to make these books available and challenge my fellow brothers and sisters whose predecessors may have been persecutors to learn from the past, to be grateful that we have moved beyond it, to thank God for the faithfulness of those who suffered and died (even at the hands of our co-religionists) and to commit ourselves to the principles of religious freedom today.