David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen has stirred up serious controversy about the character and meaning of Western resistance to Islamic terrorism.  Dismayed by the “conversion” to Islam of Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, the two Fox News journalists held captive in Gaza, Mr Warren wrote:

They were told to convert to Islam under implicit threat (blindfolded and hand-tied, they could not judge what threat), and agreed to make the propaganda broadcasts to guarantee their own safety. That much we can understand, as conventional cowardice. (Understand; not forgive.) But it is obvious from their later statements that they never thought twice; that they could see nothing wrong in serving the enemy, so long as it meant they’d be safe.

I assume they are not Christians (few journalists are), but had they ever been instructed in that faith, they might have grasped that conversion to Islam means denial of Christ, and that is something many millions of Christians (few of them intellectuals) have refused to do, even at the cost of excruciating deaths. Christianity still lives, because of such martyrs. Not suicide bombers: but truly defenceless martyrs.

There’s a logical leap in the first sentence of the latter paragraph—from assuming the journalists are not Christians to what they ”might have grasped” if they’d ever been taught the faith.  Nevertheless, that leap captures Mr Warren’s alarm at the episode.  From the Christian perspective, the two journalists didn’t understand the full import of what they were doing.  For the sole purpose of saving their hides, they said—apparently without compunction or second thoughts—words that Christians, contemplating their reaction were they to be placed in the same situation, beseech divine strength to avoid, at all costs, saying those same words.  Clearly, two radically divergent understandings of what’s at stake.

The usually sharp Captain Ed sees it much differently than Mr Warren.  As a Christian, I must respectfully disagree with the good captain.

Ed rejects Mr Warren’s implicit call for all Westerners, whether Christian or not, to refuse Islam even if under threat of death.

Warren wants kidnapped hostages to die for Christianity and the West rather than jolly along their kidnappers to gain their own freedom. That may be a splendid sentiment, but it results in dead Westerners rather than dead Islamists, and I fail to see how that represents any kind of victory.

From Ed's perspective, nothing is gained in refusing to comply with terrorist threats by donning a strange costume and disingenuously reciting a few words.  The Christian, however, knows that embracing Islam is ipso facto denying God’s grace in Christ, something that kidnapped Christian hostages would be unwilling to do, except under the most extreme coercion—and, one hopes, not even then.

Even from the perspective of a Western secularist, moreover, an insincere conversion to Islam is arguably a defeat for Western civilisation and a victory for Islamofascism because it shows that, when it comes to the most fundamental and important questions of life, many Westerners have no firm foundational convictions.

Captain Ed really goes off the rails, I think, when he challenges David Warren on the place of martyrdom in early Christian history.

Christianity did not survive because of martyrdom; it survived despite it, and the martyrs prepared themselves for the task. The church survived the oppression of the Romans in its first centuries, not by mindlessly dying for Christianity but for living for it. Romans did not seize people randomly off the street and tell them to deny their faith, but instead arrested and tortured the leaders of the Church. Had Warren spent any time researching the age of martyrdom, he would know that the early church cautioned the unprepared not to attempt it because of the risk of apostasy.

Just about every assertion in that paragraph is inaccurate.

Many early Christian leaders held the view that martyrdom encouraged church growth.  As third-century theologian and church father Tertullian famously said to governors of the Roman Empire,

The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.

Ed’s comment about martyrs “preparing themselves” seems to suggest that a special group of Christians suitable for martyrdom was singled out and given special training for their day of glorious death.  There is no evidence of this; to the contrary, early Christian writings indicate that all believers were encouraged and expected to be ready for persecution and even death.  Several passages in the New Testament reflect that expectation; for example, this from the first epistle of St Peter, written to several churches in Asia Minor:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

St Peter issues a general caution to be ready for death by fire.  Apparently, there is no select group of “prepared” martyrs in those churches.

Captain Ed’s implicit equivalence between martyrdom and “mindlessly dying” is, to put it mildly, problematic.  As far as I’m aware, no Christian suffered martyrdom without considering whether the situation warranted such a sacrifice.  Indeed, Jesus himself warned all who would follow him to give careful thought to possible consequences of so doing.  (See St Luke 14:25-33 and St Matthew 8:18-22.)

As a matter of fact, Christians were indeed subject to sudden and often apparently random attacks, both from Roman governing authorities and town mobs.  Many were martyred in just such circumstances.  Sporadic but widespread official anti-Christian persecutions during the first three centuries AD resulted in the deaths of countless thousands of ordinary Christians.  Surely Ed has heard of the men, women, and children thrown to the lions simply for refusing to deny Christ?

Contrary to the contention that the Romans “arrested and tortured the leaders of the Church” to the exclusion of lay Christians, it is well-documented that civil authorities focused on both leaders and laity.  If the Romans went after church leaders only, how did so many women come to be martyred in the first three centuries?

Ed goes from bad to worse with this: “[T]he early church cautioned the unprepared not to attempt it because of the risk of apostasy.”  I’d like to know where he picked up that tidbit because the historical materials I have at hand say rather the opposite.  First of all, martyrdom was not something that early Christians were expected to “attempt”; it was thrust upon them unwillingly.  Moreover, those who goaded the powers that be into killing them for professing the faith were viewed by the church as suicides, not martyrs.

[T]he conviction that martyrdom granted immediate admission to paradise and conferred a victor's crown, combined with a sombre evaluation of the Roman empire as a political institution, led to a tendency towards acts of provocation on the part of over-enthusiastic believers, especially among the Montanists . . . who were especially prone to identify reticence with cowardice and moral compromise. Hotheads who provoked the authorities were soon censured by the church as mere suicides deserving no recognition.

Source: Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Penguin, 1967), p. 30.  (At the time he wrote the book, Rev Chadwick was Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge.)

Ed’s conclusion represents another fundamental disagreement between the secularist and Christian perspectives on this incident.

Everyone understands that statements made under duress have no meaning except to demonstrate the inhumanity of the captors rather than the politics or religion of the captured. Everyone understands this except for David Warren . . .

David Warren is far from being the only person holding that view.  I take the same view (and I doubt I'm the only one), based on such teaching from our Lord as this.

[W]hoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

If you read the whole chapter, you’ll see that Jesus makes no exceptions for duress or other extenuating circumstances.  That’s not to say that publicly denying Christ constitutes an unforgiveable sin, but clearly it is something Christians should not do—ever.

A few verses before that, Jesus warns his disciples that they will be persecuted for his name’s sake.

Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

“The one who endures to the end”, i.e., through all possible duress, pressure, coercion, even torture.

I hope and pray that I will never be faced with the choice between converting to Islam or being killed.  I do not condemn the journalists for their ill-advised action (although, to be honest, this makes me shudder).  If I were in their shoes, I would fervently pray for divine strength to resist the easy way out and remain faithful to the point of death, if necessary.

May God grant to all wisdom to know what is right and true, and courage to affirm the same, whatever befall. 

h/t: Relapsed Catholic

Previous related post: Martyrdom in Christianity and Islam

UPDATE (4 Sep.): Ted Byfield weighs in.