Martyrdom is murder purely for a person’s beliefs, and it is a word we most associate with religious persecution. And tragically, martyrdom is a stark and constant reality in the world today.
Today, Catholics honor Thomas Becket, the medieval archbishop who was murdered in his own cathedral in Canterbury for refusing to allow King Henry II of England supremacy over spiritual matters. Anglicans are now beginning to recognize his importance as well, as when I went to Canterbury Cathedral, I found that Catholics had been allowed to erect a memorial to Becket, and there was restoration work ongoing for stained glass depicting the saint. Similarly, when I went to the Tower of London, my Beefeater guide paid tribute to Thomas More and John Fisher, Catholic martyrs under King Henry VIII, because they had had the courage to sacrifice everything for their faith.
I was reflecting on these martyrs as we come to the end of a year filled with violent attacks from deranged leftists and Islamic terrorists, many of them deadly. The most infamous attack, of course, was the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Too many American Christians have fallen into a state of spiritual somnolence where they think of martyrs vaguely as being part of a misty past. That is not true. Persecution of Christians is rising around the world, with literal genocide ongoing in Nigeria and Syria. Many other African, Asian, and South American nations harshly target Christians too, like Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, China, Indonesia, Sudan, Vietnam, DRC, and Iraq. And as we saw this year, martyrdom can even occur in the United States of America.
Related: Do Not Forget Persecuted Christians This Christmas
Charlie Kirk undoubtedly was a martyr. He was murdered not only for his political beliefs, but for his religious ones. LGBTQ leftist Tyler Robinson inscribed messages on his bullet casings not only referring to Kirk as a fascist, but also referring to Kirk‘s biblically based opposition to homosexuality and transgenderism. Kirk rightly believed that God created only two sexes and that the Bible explicitly condemns homosexuality (e.g., Genesis 19, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Leviticus 18:22).
Robinson was so enraged at Kirk‘s very charitable but firm discussion of this issue that he murdered him. Indeed, Robinson fatally shot Kirk just after Kirk had highlighted the problem of transgender mass shooters for his audience at a Utah university.
Not long before his assassination, someone asked Kirk what he most wanted his legacy to be. He responded that he most wished to be remembered for “courage for his faith.”
Kirk and Becket share in common that their martyrdoms were partly political and partly spiritual. It is another truth that many Americans have forgotten that politics has serious moral ramifications, especially if power-hungry dictators decide they should dictate religious beliefs to other people, as Henry II did and modern Democrats do. Abortion is not just an election issue; it is baby murder. Transgenderism and homosexuality are sins as well as cultural controversies. Democrats not only undermine free speech, but they also undermine freedom of religion.
Thomas Becket is still honored almost a thousand years after his martyrdom. Let it not be said of us one day that we forgot so quickly the martyr of our time, nor his message of courage in the face of evil.
