From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/candida-moss/the-myth-of-christian-persecution_b_2901880.html
Candida Moss
03/20/2013
Christians of all denominations maintain that the Early Church was widely persecuted. They state that in the first few centuries after the death of the Messiah, Christians were hunted, tortured and killed just for following Christ. This persecution is believed to have begun with the deaths of Stephen, the Apostles, and then the Christians persecuted under a long succession of cruel and vindictive Roman emperors.
This history of early Christianity establishes Christianity as a religion of innocent sufferers; as a church beleaguered and under attack. In periods of crisis or perceived crisis Christians of all stripes have returned to this stereotype of the early church in order to find themselves and understand their experiences. This is true even today: during the debate over the HHS mandate last year, a Catholic Bishop said that President Obama was attacking Christians just like the Roman emperors, Hitler and Stalin had. In August 2011 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum publicly complained that the “gay community … had gone out on a jihad” against him. In the course of the last election, similar statements were made by Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, to name but a few.
This is not just a case of election-day banter or political nastiness. Just recently, Fox News host Todd Starnes accused NBC of persecuting Christians because of a skit that aired on Saturday Night Live. The accusation may appear flimsy, but the advertising boycott of NBC that resulted was not. The rhetorical power of persecution language is very real.
These evaluations of modern society and Christianity’s place in it trace themselves back to the early Church. Christianity is responsible for changing the way that we think about persecution. Were it not for the belief that early Christians were persecuted, Christian identity would not be so intimately linked to the experience of persecution. It is precisely for this reason that understanding the history is so important.
Intriguingly, when we look at the ancient evidence for the treatment of early Christians a very different picture emerges. The vast majority of our ancient sources for persecution in the first century were written in the second century and beyond. The stories about the deaths of the apostles, for instance, were written as late as a hundred years later and modeled on the fanciful genre of ancient romance novels.
Even the earliest, most ostensibly trustworthy martyrdom stories have been edited and reworked. The authors of these accounts borrowed from ancient mythology, changed the details of events to make the martyrs appear more like Jesus, and made the Roman antagonists increasingly venomous.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/candida-moss/the-myth-of-christian-persecution_b_2901880.html
