The Martyrs of Columbine

The Martyrs of Columbine

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  • Author: J. Watson
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISBN: 1403970009
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 212

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Two of the victims of the Columbine massacre, Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, reportedly were asked by the gunmen if they believed in God. Both supposedly answered 'Yes' and were killed. Within days of their death, Cassie and Rachel were being hailed as modern-day martyrs and are seen by many American evangelicals as the sparks of a religious revival among teenagers. Cassie and Rachel, as innocents martyred for faith, also became useful symbols for those seeking to advance a conservative political agenda and to lay the blame for Columbine at the feet of their liberal opponents. According to police investigators, however, Cassie and Rachel may never have been asked by their killers about God. They may have been simply victims of a senseless crime rather than martyrs to a cause. The Martyrs of Columbine provides a careful examination of the available evidence and attempts to discover what really occurred. Despite these questions the martyr-stories continued to be told and the religious and political use of Cassie and Rachel continues. The popular significance of the martyrs of Columbine persists, and may even be growing. How and why is this happening? The Martyrs of Columbine is a groundbreaking investigation of what this tragedy has come and will come to mean in American religion, politics, and culture.


A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha

A Feminist Companion to the New Testament Apocrypha

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  • Author: Amy-Jill Levine
  • Publisher: A&C Black
  • ISBN: 9780826466877
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 312

The eleventh volume in this series examines New Testament Apocryphal texts, including the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts of John, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Martyrdom of Perpetua, the Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena, the Acts of Andrew, the Acts of Thomas, and the Apocalypse of Peter, as well as Joseph and Asenath, the Irish apocrypha, and the Greek novels. In this diverse collection the contributors utilize a variety of approaches to explore topics such as the construction of Christian identity, the Christian martyr, heterodoxy and orthodoxy, conjugal ethics and apostolic homewreckers, trials and temptations, the rhetoric of the body, asceticism, and eroticism.


Martyrdom and Memory

Martyrdom and Memory

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  • Author: Elizabeth Castelli
  • Publisher: Columbia University Press
  • ISBN: 023150344X
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 360

Martyrs are produced, Elizabeth Castelli suggests, not by the lived experience of particular historical individuals but by the stories that are later told about them. And the formulaic character of stories about past suffering paradoxically serves specific theological, cultural, or political ends in the present. Martyrdom and Memory explores the central role of persecution in the early development of Christian ideas, institutions, and cultural forms and shows how the legacy of Christian martyrdom plays out in today's world. In the pre-Constantinian imperial period, the conflict between Roman imperial powers and the subject Christian population hinged on competing interpretations of power, submission, resistance, and victory. This book highlights how both Roman and Christian notions of law and piety deployed the same forms of censure and critique, each accusing the other of deviations from governing conventions of gender, reason, and religion. Using Maurice Halbwachs's theoretical framework of collective memory and a wide range of Christian sources—autobiographical writings, martyrologies and saints'lives, sermons, art objects, pilgrimage souvenirs, and polemics about spectacle—Castelli shows that the writings of early Christians aimed to create public and ideologically potent accounts of martyrdom. The martyr's story becomes a "usable past" and a "living tradition" for Christian communities and an especially effective vehicle for transmitting ideas about gender, power, and sanctity. An unlikely legacy of early Christian martyrdom is the emergence of modern "martyr cults" in the wake of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School. Focusing specifically on the martyr cult associated with one of the victims, Martyrdom and Memory argues that the Columbine story dramatically expresses the ongoing power of collective memory constructed around a process of rendering tragic suffering redemptive and meaningful. In the wake of Columbine and other contemporary legacies of martyrdom's ethical ambivalence, the global impact of Christian culture making in the early twenty-first century cannot be ignored. For as the last century's secularist hypothesis sits in the wings, "religion" returns to center stage with one of this drama's most contentious yet riveting stars: the martyr.


Rethinking Christian Martyrdom

Rethinking Christian Martyrdom

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  • Author: Matthew Recla
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
  • ISBN: 1350184268
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 233

This book argues that we have been mistaken about the fundamental assumption that Christianity is the key to understanding the “Christian” martyr. Examining martyrdom in early Christian history, Matt Recla argues that the violent deaths of martyrs, real and imagined, were appropriated for Christian institutional life. Through deconstructing martyrdom and appreciating the complexity of the martyr, we recognize martyrdom not as a socio-historical phenomenon inherent to particular ideologies, and not as a religious “identity” but as the institutional co-optation of violence. The Christian apologist Tertullian argued that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, but while the seed may be the key to martyrdom, the blood is the key to the martyr. The book shows how martyrs exceed the bounds of institutional narrative. Centering analysis of martyrdom first around the martyr's existential difference and the complex biological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors that lead to willing death, this book sheds new light on the motivations of martyrs, our fascination with them, and the parasitic relationship of religion to violent death. In challenging long-held beliefs about the praiseworthiness of martyrdom, this book is of interest to scholars of religion as well as those concerned about the relationship between religion and violence.


Sanctified Aggression

Sanctified Aggression

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  • Author: Jonneke Bekkenkamp
  • Publisher: A&C Black
  • ISBN: 0567112772
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 262

Sanctified Aggression allies itself neither with the easy assumption that religions are by definition violent (and that only the secular/humanist/humane can offer a place of refuge from the ravages of religious authority) nor with the equally facile opposing view that religion expresses the "best" of human aspirations and that this best is always capable of diffusing or sublating the worst. Rather, it works from the premise that biblical, Jewish and Christian vocabularies continue to resonate, inspire and misfire. Some of the essays here explore how these vocabularies and symbols have influenced, or resonate with, events such as the massacre of Jews in Jedwabne, Poland (1941), the Rwandan Massacre (1994), the tragedy at Columbine High School (1999) and the emergence of the "Phineas Priesthood" of white supremacists in North America. Other contributors examine how themes of martyrology, sacrifice and the messianic continue to circulate and mutate in literature, music, drama and film. The collective conclusion is that it is not possible to control biblical and religious violence by simply identifying canonical trouble-spots, then fencing them off with barbed wire or holding peace summits around them. Nor is it always possible to draw clear lines between problem and non-problem texts, witnesses and perpetrators, victims and aggressors or "reality" and "art".


The New Book of Christian Martyrs: The Heroes of Our Faith from the 1st Century to the 21st Century

The New Book of Christian Martyrs: The Heroes of Our Faith from the 1st Century to the 21st Century

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  • Author: Johnnie Moore
  • Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
  • ISBN: 1496429486
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 625

An inspiring keepsake that honors the heroic sacrifice of today's martyrs for the Christian faith--and shows how their actions mirror the courage of a long line of brave Christians. In the twenty-first century, we are witnessing an escalation in Christian persecution like we have rarely seen since the first century. Many people don't realize that today thousands of Christians are dying cruel deaths throughout much of the world. There were, in fact, more martyrs in the last century than in all the previous Christian centuries combined. Millions have given their lives since the fall of Rome, and today tens of thousands die annually for their faith in Jesus. Most of these modern stories are not legendary; in fact, many are unknown. The New Book of Christian Martyrs commemorates those modern-day heroes. In this update to Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Johnnie Moore and Jerry Pattengale highlight key martyrs of past centuries and feature stories of contemporary martyrs around the world. Through tears, Johnnie and Jerry offer this compendium of heroes from the first century to the twenty-first century, from Europe to Africa and from Asia to the Americas, to inspire Christians around the globe. Today, we live in solidarity with them and in the next life, we will rejoice by their side. We will never forget their sacrifice for the truth.


American Mass Murderers

American Mass Murderers

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  • Author: Valrie Plaza
  • Publisher: Lulu.com
  • ISBN: 1312961406
  • Category : Reference
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 694

American Mass Murderers collects nearly 700 pages of information about the most notorious killers in America, as well as some of the lesser-known murderers.


Memorials to Shattered Myths

Memorials to Shattered Myths

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  • Author: Harriet Senie
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0190248408
  • Category : Architecture
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 273

Although radically different, the Vietnam War, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School shootings, and the attacks of 9/11 all shattered myths of national identity. Vietnam was a war the United States didn't win; Oklahoma City revealed domestic terrorism in the heartland; Columbine debunked legends of high school as an idyllic time; and 9/11 demonstrated U.S. vulnerability to international terrorism.


Redeemed Bodies

Redeemed Bodies

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  • Author: Gail Corrington Streete
  • Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
  • ISBN: 0664233295
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 194

Why do religious people choose paths that lead to their deaths as martyrs? Why do some who are killed for their faith become known and revered while others do not? Gail Streete asks these important and disturbing questions in the context of early Christianity, looking at the stories of martyred women such as Thecla, Perpetua, and Felicitas--women whose stories helped shape Christian faith for centuries, yet are all but forgotten in the modern world. Streete reclaims these stories and relates them to tragic instances of martyrdom in our own world, pulling from stories as diverse as the victims of Columbine and female suicide attackers in the Muslim world. What do their deaths mean, and why do we find their stories so moving?


The Call of the Elijah Revolution

The Call of the Elijah Revolution

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  • Author: James W. Goll
  • Publisher: Destiny Image Publishers
  • ISBN: 0768497841
  • Category : Religion
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 118

The Call of the Elijah Revolution brings the pounding echoes of Christian hearts to life eternal life that begins here and now. We are not at the mercy of special interest groups, unethical businesspeople, ungodly politicians, and pornographers we are called to deliver the message of His saving grace. Learn how to combat the spirit of Baal that has permeated: Churches in the United States. The bull market. Our social, political, and educational cultures. The entertainment industry. Individual consciences. Authors James Goll and Lou Engle seek to inspire an entire generation to exchange temporal pleasures for a radical and passionate leap into the spiritual joy of Jesus Christ. You will be propelled into joining the cries of other lovers of the Savior Is there not a cause in the land? His answer is, Yes!