Christian Martyrdom after the Death of Renee Good
Some Reflections
In the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis last month, Episcopal Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of New Hampshire called on the clergy of his diocese to prepare themselves for a “new era of martyrdom.” As he explained in a statement given at a prayer vigil on January 9:
I've asked [the clergy of the diocese] to get their affairs in order—to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.
I think it’s unlikely that, in the current crisis spurred by the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, members of the clergy or other faith leaders will be assassinated for their witness by agents of the state in the manner of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the four US Catholic missionary women murdered in El Salvador in 1980, or Jerzy Popiełuszko, the Polish priest and Solidarity supporter murdered by members of that state’s security service in 1984. It is possible, however, and perhaps even increasingly likely as ICE and Border Patrol agents escalate their tactics in response to ongoing protests, that someone could be deliberately killed in a moment of high tension and confusion. In his statement, Bishop Hirschfeld cited the historical example of Jonathan Daniels, a white Episcopal seminarian from New Hampshire who was shot by a volunteer police deputy in Alabama in 1965 when Daniels, a white Catholic priest, and two African-American civil rights activists were attempting to enter a store to buy sodas; Daniels was shot after he pushed aside Ruby Sales, one of the two African-American activists, who was the deputy’s target. The deputy, Tom Coleman, falsely claimed that he acted in self-defense and was eventually acquitted by an all-white jury.
On several occasions in recent months, clergy members have faced violence or put their bodies on the line while advocating for immigrants or protesting ICE activities. Back in June, a Border Patrol officer pointed a gun at Disciples of Christ minister Tanya Lopez, who was responding to the arrest of an immigrant in the parking lot of her California church. In September, an ICE agent standing on the roof of the Broadview detention center in Chicago shot Presbyterian pastor David Black in the head with a pepper spray ball as the latter was outside the center protesting. This past week, over 600 religious leaders from around the country joined local clergy in Minneapolis for a gathering that culminated in a protest at the city’s airport, part of the massive protests in the city on Friday, where about a hundred clergy members were arrested. And as I’ve noted before, Bishop Michael Pham of San Diego and other clergy and pastoral ministers from the diocese gathered at that city’s federal courthouse to accompany immigrants attending court hearings and to discourage ICE agents from detaining them, placing themselves at risk of potential arrest or abuse (New York City Comptroller Brad Lander had been arrested for doing something similar only days earlier).
Of course, it is not only clergy members who have put themselves at personal risk in this way. Many have marveled at the bravery of hundreds of ordinary people who have joined the ranks of those observing and protesting ICE operations in Minneapolis after Renee Good’s death, even while facing threats from federal agents that they could meet the same fate as Good. Abhorrence at ICE’s activities around the country seems to be encouraging unexpected courage. As Rev. Betsy Hess, an Episcopal minister explains in an NPR story on Bishop Hirschfeld’s comments:
It used to be that . . . you might go to jail, and now you might get shot! So it makes us need to be a lot more brave. . . . I hope I would be brave, but I can't promise that I would be able to. But definitely, it's time to move beyond “I won't do anything that has any risk whatsoever.”
Hess’s remarks reminded me that one of the first public acts of witness on behalf of immigrants during the second Trump administration was the calm and courageous plea for mercy by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde, the author of How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith, at President Donald Trump’s inaugural prayer service, an act for which she received death threats.
In his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, Pope St. John Paul II insists that martyrdom is “the high point of the witness to moral truth,” although a form of witness to which few Christians are called (#93). The focus of the encyclical is on moral theology, and John Paul explains that martyrdom testifies to “the inviolability of the moral order” (#92). The martyrs rightly judged that “the love of God entails the obligation to respect his commandments, even in the most dire of circumstances, and the refusal to betray those commandments, even for the sake of saving one's own life” (#91).
Here Pope John Paul seems to be thinking of those situations in which martyrs have been commanded by authorities to renounce their faith or perform some other heinous act, and yet, out of faith, have refused to do so at the pain of death. But what about those situations that do not involve the sorts of absolute moral obligations John Paul has in mind? After all, Maura Clark, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donavan were not obligated to come to El Salvador to work among the poor, nor was Jonathan Daniels obligated to volunteer and work to register African-American voters in Alabama. These and many other martyrs were killed not for their refusal to renounce their faith, but because they chose to live out their faith in service to others and challenged the injustice they saw in the world around them.
Over the past few decades, the Catholic Church has become more willing to recognize as martyrs those who were killed not out of odium fidei, or “hatred of the faith,” but because of their witness to the faith through their actions on behalf of others. In 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest who was killed in the Nazi death camp Auschwitz in 1941 after offering his life in place of that of another prisoner. When Pope Francis beatified Archbishop Oscar Romero in 2015, the Vatican formally acknowledged this “new” type of martyrdom. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the postulator of Romero’s cause for sainthood, said:
His death – as the detailed documentary examination clearly showed, was not only politically motivated, but due also to hatred for a faith that, combined with charity, would not stay silent when faced with the injustices that implacably and cruelly afflicted the poor and their defenders.
Romero was later canonized in 2018. As Zac Davis and Eric Sundrup, SJ point out, however, Pope Benedict XVI had already noted in a 2006 letter to the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Causes of Saints, the Vatican body that oversees the process of canonization, that many martyrs are not killed out of explicit “aversion to the Christian faith,” but rather for reasons “of a social or political nature” that nevertheless are rooted in the martyr’s living out their Christian faith.
The same NPR story that mentions Rev. Hess’s hope for bravery in the present situation also makes clear that Bishop Hirschfeld’s call to accept martyrdom was not welcomed by everyone in the diocese. Rev. Timothy Gartin, another Episcopal priest in the diocese, refers to the bishop’s comments as “inflammatory” and says: “I didn't sign up to be a martyr . . . I have a family and a congregation who rely on me. If I was gone tomorrow what would happen to them?” Gartin’s remarks have been mocked on social media. After all, doesn’t Jesus Himself say that each of His disciples must “take up His cross and follow me,” teaching that “[W]hoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt. 16:24-25)? Some have also cited the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous line from The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
Of course, it’s easy to extol the virtues of martyrdom while safely behind a keyboard. Perhaps the most charitable reading of Rev. Gartin’s remark is that he sees it as fruitless to deliberately seek out martyrdom when more effective forms of activism are available. After all, Church Fathers like St. Cyprian of Carthage (who himself was martyred during the persecution carried out by the Roman Emperor Valerian in the third century) and St. Augustine argued that a Christian does not deliberately seek out martyrdom, even if they accept it as God’s will if it befalls them. As the NPR article explains:
Gartin said the focus of church leadership should be “to do the work of peacemaking and to deescalate the tension we’ve seen all around us.”
“We’re called to do the work of peacemaking and to deescalate the tension we see all around us because it doesn’t serve anyone to become the next victim,” he said, “but it does serve everyone to build the next bridge.”
On the other hand, Augustine and other Church Fathers like St. Clement of Alexandria looked to the root of the word “martyr,” which means “witness,” and taught that martyrdom means witnessing to one’s faith in Christ through self-sacrificing love for God and one’s neighbor, even when this does not lead to one’s death. For example, detachment from one’s worldly possessions and a willingness to offer them to those in need is a form of death to the self. In this sense, all Christians are called to martyrdom. This broader sense of martyrdom is linked to other Christian ideas, for example the Ignatian notion of “indifference,” which, as I’ve explained before, doesn’t mean a lack of caring, but rather a willingness to give up one’s possessions, status, or self-identity in pursuit of the will of God, to be completely disposed to God’s will out of love for God. Indeed, the quote from Bonhoeffer cited earlier continues that, when God calls us to die to ourselves:
It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man [Eph. 4:22] at his call.
At this weekend’s protests in Minneapolis, which took place despite the subzero temperatures in the Upper Midwest, one protestor held up a sign reading, “For those who believe in ‘Paid Agitators’: You couldn’t pay me to be out in this weather. But for our neighbors, we’ll freeze for free!” The sign is a moving illustration of this concept of martyrdom; thousands of people were willing to give up their time, endure bodily discomfort, and, for a few, risk arrest out of a sense of solidarity with neighbors who are vulnerable. Surely every Christian could find at least some small act of self-sacrifice, even a few minutes of prayer each day, for the sake of immigrants and refugees in our country and for authentic peace in our society founded on the dignity of every person. And it is these small acts of death to the self that prepare us, if the dreadful occasion arises and it is God’s will, to accept death for the sake of love of God and neighbor.
"I didn't sign up to be a martyr."
Yikes. We Episcopalians have a unique talent for becoming utterly nonplussed when confronted with relatively mundane ideas that most Christians wouldn't bat an eye at.