Abstract
Jason Bruner’s title is a lesson in truth in advertising. In a brief preface, Bruner flatly declares that both true believers who understand anti-Christian persecution as a current and egregious human rights issue and skeptics who see the claim of persecution as frequently over-stated are bound to be disappointed with this book. This is because, although Bruner makes careful reference to the topic of persecution within Christianity over two millennia, he mainly is tracking late 20th–early 21st-century US-based discourse on anti-Christian persecution, presenting nuance that situates that discourse in a wider context.
Those readers more inclined to the second skeptical group will not be totally disappointed, as Chapter 4 scrupulously examines the evidence used to claim that Christianity has had several million martyrs since 1990. Key to that discussion is an evaluation of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity’s counting as martyrs both all Rwandan Tutsis killed in 1994 along with a large percentage of the reported 5.4 million deaths from wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 1996–2010. While always respectful of the magnitude of tragedy involved, Bruner notes several mitigating factors, such as the presence of other motives for killing and the fact that neither case displays clear anti-Christian intent on the part of the perpetrators (who frequently are Christian themselves). Bruner also discusses what constitutes acts of war and violence and the questions around how those differ from acts of religious persecution.
To track how and why the discourse of a global war on Christians seems attractive to so many late 20th- and early 21st-century American Christians, Bruner offers helpful historical context.
In a discussion in Chapter 2 of what constituted persecution historically from New Testament times through the Reformation, Bruner notes that Eusebius shifted attention to martyrs as upholders of orthodoxy. In a situation in which the Empire no longer persecuted Christians, this move allowed for the inclusion of martyrs among those who were killed by other Christians deemed to be less orthodox.
Chapter 3 notes that with the early 20th-century Armenian genocide, the focus shifted back to the state as perpetrator. As that happened, the question of who is a Christian and what constitutes Christianity shifts—unlike previous centuries, the discourse on anti-Christian persecution at that moment casts a very wide net on who counts as a Christian. Eastern Christians, formerly considered nominal or heretical by American Evangelicals, figure prominently from that time as part of Christianity that is persecuted. The chapter also notes connections to the history of Christianity in the USA, noting for example, that some 19th-century southern white Christians understood the Civil War as religious persecution against them.
In Chapter 5 Bruner notes how the discourse on anti-Christian persecution today seems to lack sufficient reference to context, and that that lack of context seems to favor, unfortunately, a narrative of Christian innocence.
This book could be a helpful companion to courses on American Christianity and on missions.