The Diocletianic or Great Persecution was the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. In 303, the Emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding the legal rights of Christians and demanding that they comply with traditional Roman religious practices. Later edicts targeted the clergy and ordered all inhabitants to sacrifice to the Roman gods (a policy known as universal sacrifice). The persecution varied in intensity across the empire — weakest in Gaul and Britain, where only the first edict was applied, and strongest in the Eastern provinces. Different emperors nullified persecutory laws at different times, but Constantine and Licinius’s Edict of Milan (313) has traditionally marked the end of the persecution.
Today, for many right wing Christians, persecution is thought to be any instance, real or imagined, when society doesn’t accept Christian dogma as undisputed truth.
When I first arrived back in Spokane it was during the holidays, I was kind of taken aback, on several occasions from hearing complaints regarding, Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas. The Christians I spoke with stated the problem was, “Happy holidays doesn’t single out Christianity’s holiday as being true and special.”
“Maybe a little affinity with diversity is needed here,” I remember thinking.
Recently, the conservative Christian world went crazy about a teenager who was being oppressed because a teacher gave her F’s on some essays she failed to write. Breitbart published, Professor Fails Student for Refusing to Conform to His Anti-Christian Bias. Fox News ran with, Student: Professor Gave Me Zeros for Refusing to Condemn Christianity. WorldNetDaily went with, Christian Girl Given Zeroes for Her Beliefs, with the subtitle, “No student should be subjected to such outrageous bias and outright hostility.”
Other headlines read: Marxist Professor Fails Student For Not Denouncing Christian Faith in Support of Feminism and Polk State Condones Discrimination Against Christians
If anyone took the time to look into this incident they would quickly see that this is not what is going on.
What actually happened in this case was that the student, young Grace Lewis, decided that she didn’t have to write essays that dealt with actual events in the history of Christianity. She preferred to talk about the way Christianity is today. Which is fine, no one likes to bring up ugly things from their past — especially their belief system. But the instructor, Lance Russum, was teaching an introduction to humanities course, not Christianity Today. So, when Lewis did not write her essays on the subjects assigned, he gave her zero credit. It wasn’t that he disagreed with her Christian apologetics; it was that her Christian apologetics had nothing to do with the assignment.
Here is one of the essay assignments:
- What is something Lady Julian is saying/doing that women should not be saying/doing at that time under the Christian mythos?
- From the article on the nuns, what makes their defiance of male dominance so important?
- Why did Christianity, and its male gods, want to silence these women?
Apparently, by the time of this assignment, Russum had experienced Lewis’ approach to such questions.
So he added this note:
You are to only answer the above three questions. SECOND, and this is VERY important, I DO NOT want you to write about how wonderful you think Christianity is now because women can do A, B or C. History is history and facts are facts and your opinion on if it is better now or not is irrelevant for this discussion. This is a HISTORICAL discussion about the Middle Ages. If you really feel the need to express your opinion on how you think Christianity is now for women, you may email me, you may call my office or I would love for you to stop by for a nice cup of hot tea where we can talk about it, but it does not belong in this assignment. The pieces you are reading are from some of the greatest expressions of mythology by women ever, the question is to honor that voice in that moment of history.
If we change the subject from Christianity to Islam or Hinduism, how many Christians would see a persecution problem real or imaginary?
This highlights the biggest problem with dogmatic religion: it claims to be a destination. Too many followers of all the Abrahamic religions aren’t searching for the truth. They think they’ve found it. There is nothing they need to learn. The religion has already provided them with all of the answers.
In contrast college is for those looking to examine and expand upon their answers.
Well done, it concerns me when “victimization” lends itself to a militant defense which it seems to be the direction it’s heading as a whole.
Thank you Charles for your comment. I always enjoy hearing your thoughts.
One of my main concerns when putting this together was:
Why are we (left and right) still having the same conflicts, using the same habitual language to condemn the other side, restating our own terms, our own principles in absolute terms that people who don’t buy into them can’t possibly work with?
Both sides have to look at a new uniting kind of strategy.
Not just fighting for the sake of fighting.
The country is in bad shape and it could get a lot worse. Both left and right are failing to achieve their own objectives with their adopted strategy of conflict.
Leaders from both sides need to step up and take the reins for their group, encouraging them to be as critical of the people on their own side who abandon principles of integrity as they are of people on the other side who have abandoned integrity in favor of impossible absolutes. History has shown that once people start talking with one another, they educate
and inspire one another, and move to even higher levels of convergence.
What I call affinity. Some people with little faith call it la la land 🙂
I think it boils down to a few things: honesty and giving others the benefit of the doubt. Truth is the first casualtiy in war, as they say, and the culture wars are no different.
At least one atheist blogger (Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist) came to the conclusion that the teacher was being a pushy jerk and condemned him based on the initial press releases (which I think was a bit of credulity on Hemant’s part), but he sided with the professor after more facts came to light. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/05/07/in-real-life-version-of-gods-not-dead-atheist-professor-accused-of-failing-student-for-being-christian/
Thanks Steven!
Correct information is indeed powerful…
Unfortunately, many times, incorrect information trumps it.
Glad to see Hermant reversed his initial conclusion.
One of my Dad’s favorite antidotes was the slowly-boiled frog complacently sitting in a pan of warm water until he was completely cooked.
Time to jump out
Thanks again,
Brien
I think anyone can see that the phrasing of the questions are clearly loaded to one side and don’t really leave a whole lot of room for elaboration — it’s basically “here’s the answer to the question in my question, so now tell me why I’m right.”
I know that if I were given those essay questions, I would say something along the lines of, “You say ‘Christian mythos’ and ‘its male gods…want to silence women’ but fail to realize the astounding amount of Catholic literature that explicitly debunks that assumption — ever heard of Perpetua & Felicity? St. Agnes? St. Catherine of Siena (who rebuked the pope himself and was listened to)? MARY? HELLOOOOO?” and decline to write them too!
Sure, by refusing to write the essay I would technically deserve a 0%, but don’t you see something wrong with the way this professor is phrasing his questions? A professor who is actually open-minded, at least in my assessment, would ask some actual open-minded questions to have the students present arguments for either side and encourage (and be open to) them finding appropriate literature supporting their point. God forbid we consider that the professor has only read the side of things that support his beliefs and never considered others that happen to be inconveniently disproving them!