Co-opting the sacred tradition of martyred truth-tellers
Stop using words like sacrifice, courage and integrity to describe a rejection of faith and truth.
I just returned from a trip back to Nauvoo, Illinois, where 180 years ago, the man I’m named after was physically paralyzed and driven into poverty with his young family after their farm was burned by people who eventually drove all Latter-day Saints from the state and country as a whole.
Buried in 1846 in a mass grave on the Iowa trail, Jacob Hess was one of millions of believers who have accepted aching sacrifices for the truth they followed – demonstrating a courage that is rare today, even among the many who like to use the word.
Monique has read to our boys Mark Twain’s history of Joan of Arc and was touched by the history of **, another British Christian who was persecuted.
We reverence these people’s lives for a reason – Hus, Tyndale, Bradford, Rogers – passing down their lives and teachings as a treasure for the generations. Twain highlights the “miracle” of Joan’s life during a time which he calls “the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages”:
She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions … she was unfailingly true to an age that was false to the core….she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation.
At the same time we’ve been discussing these noble stories as a family, I’ve been noticing how often words like “integrity” and “courage” are being used by people disparaging and condemning faith online, who say things like:
“People are stepping away because of their integrity and honesty to what they’re found the truth really is.”
“Rejecting family and tradition may be the epitome of courage.”
“This is about following conscience enough to move forward with integrity.”
Based on language alone, one could be forgiven for believing that you were reading the words of someone making serious sacrifices to advance truth. But you don’t even have to look that close to realize you’re dealing with something very different.
For me, this is apparent in at least three ways.
1. Embracing truth, or undermining it?
Although some of these prominent influencers are also fond of representing themselves as enlightened – having “both eyes opened” – in many cases, they’re actively attacking and undermining truths generations of Christian witnesses suffered and died to defend.
This denial and discrediting isn’t so easy to see when someone is publicly using a language of seeking truth. But for many prominent influencers, it’s clear they are actively undermining faith in a pattern that is predatory more than anything else.
This is fully the opposite of the martyr tradition – which centered around bridging sacred truth to light, strengthening others’ faith and sharing it with the world.
2. Standing apart from popular norms, or going along with them?
The martyrs became memorable precisely because they stood against the moral and intellectual currents of their own age. By comparison, modern narratives promoted about faith transition often end not in greater estrangement from prevailing culture but in greater harmony with it.
Even though plenty about integrity and courage may be woven into this rhetoric, the practical endpoint is often embracing philosophies and lifestyles that are widely popular with the world, rather than standing up for truth that attracts the scorn of the world.
In a day and age when wearing a costume from another culture can raise questions about misappropriating that culture, all this seems a wrongful appropriation of the historic and sacred tradition of courageous truth-tellers as a cloak or masquerade around what’s actually going on.
3. Accruing enormous personal costs, or sundry worldly benefits?
The personal cost of early believers was enormous – even to giving up their own lives and sanity. For many who step away from faith, they can also acknowledge some significant costs, as my friend Betsy VanDenBerghe wrote about for Deseret News.
But when it comes to the loudest voices who actively disparage faith while representing themselves as advancing truth, something very different is taking place.
Indeed, some of the most influential voices have built organizations with substantial audiences, conferences, books, podcasts, and donor support – along with plenty of revenue. As one commentator noted, “the more faith they shake, the more money they make.”
What courage is – and isn’t
While the world now often treats courage as the willingness to be authentic, historically, Christians understood courage differently - centering more on remaining true when that became costly.
While modern authenticity culture often points inward, true sacrifice and courage points away from self. As G. K. Chesterton taught, “a martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside himself that he forgets his own personal safety.”
Earliest Christians weren’t admired merely because they believed something. They were admired because they witnessed to it at tremendous personal cost – reflected the word martyr comes from the Greek μάρτυς (martys) meaning witness.
In that case, the martyrs weren’t courageous because they changed their minds. They were courageous because they remained faithful despite extraordinary cost.
Integrity quietly lived
Walking the streets of Nauvoo, I was moved by the quiet faith behind the lives who gave up so much – among people who didn’t often speak about integrity.
They instead demonstrated it – burying children, walking away from homes, crossing frozen rivers.
Even giving up their lives.
Of course, there are many who step away from faith – including my own – who do feel in their own minds and hearts that they are doing so out of a sense of personal integrity, along with a willingness to make hard sacrifices. I’m not denying the reality of those feelings, or the goodness of the people experiencing them.
There clearly is an inner forcefulness people must have to be willing to sacrifice all they once experienced within a faith tradition like our own – and reject all they once knew and believed within it. Some would go so far as to call that a kind of bravery and courage – or integrity.
But are we too quick to use those words? The overarching narrative making sense of these feelings about disaffection comes from somewhere. Rather than simply descriptive of faith dissolution, personal narratives are adopted and taken from available rhetoric and interpretation.
I’m drawing attention here to the most active proponents of these narratives who advance a narrative of faith disaffection that recasts it as an inevitably noble act embodying courage, sacrifice and integrity.
If it’s true courage you want to hear about – or sacrifice and integrity – go back to the stories of people who embody it most.
After refusing to recant, Jan Hus was burned at the stake in 15th century Germany. But he wrote urging believers, “Seek the truth, hear the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, hold the truth, defend the truth until death.”
Words like integrity, sacrifice, and courage belong first to these stories – people who endured ridicule, loss, imprisonment, exile, and even death rather than betray what they know to be true.
History has already made that clear. And we should be careful before borrowing that language for something altogether different.