By Peter Stanford 26 Sep 2013
Archbishop Justin Welby’s choice of the word “martyrs” to
describe the 81 Pakistani
Christians killed when their church in Peshawar was targeted by suicide bombers has raised
eyebrows. It is the sort of language avoided nowadays in the secular, sceptical
West, with its taken-for-granted religious freedoms, in case it makes people
feel uncomfortable.
Yet in terms
of Christian history the Archbishop of Canterbury’s description is surely
accurate. These 81 worshippers at All Saints Anglican church, a 19th‑century
colonial legacy in the Kohati Gate district of the city, died because they
insisted last Sunday on practising their faith, as martyrs in all religions
have done through the centuries.
In contrast to
some of the more high-profile Christian martyrs, though, they were going about
their religious practice quietly and without fuss, as befits a minority
community of just 2.5 million (or 1.5 per cent) in a nation of 175 million that
is overwhelmingly Muslim. They weren’t evangelising. They weren’t discussing
missions to convert Muslims. And they weren’t falling foul of Pakistan’s strict
blasphemy laws. They were simply, in the archbishop’s words, “testifying to
their faith in Jesus Christ by going to church”......To Read More......
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