# Two Christianities, two crosses: Rhetorical victimhood versus embodied witness American Christianity today contains two fundamentally different understandings of "martyrdom" and "taking up the cross." One claims persecution while wielding extraordinary political power. The other accepts physical danger in solidarity with the genuinely marginalized. The theological and ethical chasm between them reveals a church divided not merely by politics but by competing visions of what following Jesus actually requires. This matters because language shapes reality. When "persecution" means losing cultural dominance rather than facing shotguns, when "martyrdom" describes social media criticism rather than pepper balls to the face, Christianity's moral vocabulary becomes weaponized against its own stated purposes. The scholars who have documented these patterns—Samuel Perry, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Matthew Taylor, Bradley Onishi—are not offering partisan critique but recovering the church's capacity for honest self-examination. ## The persecution complex without persecution Matthew Taylor, whose scholarship on the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) represents the most comprehensive academic treatment available, has identified what he calls "the Evangelical Persecution Neurosis"—a cultivated sense of embattlement that bears no relationship to actual physical danger. His research documents how NAR leaders "were at the heart of the Christian Trumpism of the J6 Insurrection" while simultaneously claiming Christians face existential threat. Samuel Perry's experimental research at the University of Oklahoma produced a striking finding: "Whenever we told a group of white Christians that Christians are under attack, it makes them feel that white people are under attack. It doesn't work that way for any other group." Perry recognized this as "politically strategic"—a way to invoke ethnic and racial threat through religious language without stating it overtly. His work with Philip Gorski in _The Flag and the Cross_ demonstrates how Christian nationalism "manufactures the past and cultivates an ideology of victimhood." Kristin Kobes Du Mez documented in _Jesus and John Wayne_ that by 2021, two-thirds of Protestants reported feeling "embattled" and **41% of evangelical Protestants** said practicing Christianity was becoming harder—despite Christians comprising approximately 71% of the U.S. population. The gap between subjective victimhood and objective power defines the phenomenon. Bradley Onishi, himself a former evangelical insider, describes the pattern in _Preparing for War_ as "this persecution complex... this desire for martyrdom and to be seen as a persecuted class that justifies basically any actions on your behalf because you inherently see yourself as always on the verge of being stamped out." André Gagné's work at Concordia University emphasizes NAR's stealth quality: movements that claim persecution while "using the levers of democracy to eventually subvert democracy." ## What NAR "persecution" actually looks like The New Apostolic Reformation's institutional power contradicts its persecution rhetoric. Bethel Church in Redding, California—home to Bill Johnson, who C. Peter Wagner called one of the "apostolic pillars of today's church"—is the fifth-largest employer in Shasta County. Bethel Music generates massive cultural influence. IHOP Kansas City trains thousands annually. The Seven Mountain Mandate, which Johnson co-articulated with Lance Wallnau in _Invading Babylon_, explicitly calls for Christian dominion over government, media, education, business, arts, family, and religion. The specific claims of "persecution" reveal the gap between rhetoric and reality: The **"War on Christmas"** emerged prominently through Fox News after 2004. Scholar Jeff Schweitzer noted: "An 80 percent majority can claim victimhood only with an extraordinary flight from reality." The pattern—dominant groups experiencing equality as oppression—recurs consistently. **LGBTQ+ rights advances** get framed as religious persecution. When Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop faced Colorado's civil rights enforcement, his attorneys characterized it as "religious persecution." The actual dynamic: a business facing legal consequences for discrimination, reframed as martyrdom. **COVID restrictions** activated pre-existing persecution narratives. NPR reported that "for a small minority of American Christians, [the pandemic] shifted them from claims of persecution to ambitions of taking over politics and culture." Sarah Riccardi-Swartz of Northeastern University observed these individuals "were already right-wing or conservative, and they just became more radicalized." The paradox of claiming silence while commanding massive platforms deserves emphasis. Sean Feucht built wealth and fame through "persecution-narrative concerts" defying COVID restrictions. FlashPoint programming reaches thousands of households. NAR figures met with Trump administration officials, spoke at pre-January 6th rallies, and held White House access through Paula White-Cain. **Four of six January 6th protest permits were issued to NAR-affiliated groups.** ## The bodies on the line at Broadview The contrast with clergy facing actual physical danger in 2025-2026 could not be starker. On September 19, 2025, Rev. David Black of the Presbyterian Church (USA), "visibly attired in clerical garb" with arms outstretched in prayer position outside the Broadview ICE detention facility in suburban Chicago, was shot at least seven times with pepper balls—twice in the head, once in the face. Video shows a federal agent firing from a rooftop. Black was subsequently pepper-sprayed directly in the face at close range. He became lead plaintiff in an ACLU lawsuit that resulted in a temporary restraining order limiting agents' violence against "religious practitioners." On October 23, 2025, Rev. Jorge Bautista of the United Church of Christ was shot in the chin at close range by a CBP agent at Coast Guard Island in Oakland. The agent "locked eyes" with Bautista, raised his launcher, and fired. Bautista recalled: "I immediately felt burning pain. I was in shock, disoriented, and terrified that I might stop breathing altogether." Emergency room doctors told him he was lucky his chin wasn't broken; a shot to his eyes could have caused permanent damage. Rev. Hannah Kardon of the United Methodist Church was shot multiple times with pepper bullets while praying with eyes closed and hands lifted, then thrown to the ground and arrested. Approximately **100 clergy were arrested** at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport on January 24, 2026, in negative-20-degree weather, singing hymns and kneeling on roads to protest airline cooperation with deportation flights. The Department of Homeland Security's response reveals the power dynamics: spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin called the clergy "violent rioters and imbecilic morons" who need to "get a job." ## Bishop Hirschfeld and the preparation for martyrdom On January 9, 2026, Episcopal Bishop A. Robert Hirschfeld of New Hampshire delivered a statement at a vigil in Concord honoring Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis two days earlier. His words went viral: "I have told the clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness [as martyrs]. And I've asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable." Hirschfeld explicitly invoked the lineage: Jonathan Daniels, the New Hampshire seminarian killed in Alabama in 1965; Oscar Romero, assassinated in 1980; the Maryknoll sisters murdered in El Salvador. Bishop Craig Loya of Minnesota echoed the call: "This may be a time when we are called to put our own bodies on the line." The White House responded by calling his comments advice to "commit crimes." This framing—peaceful nonviolent resistance as criminality—represents the state's position. What it does not represent is persecution of those clergy. They face consequences for action, not for identity or belief. The distinction matters theologically. ## Jonathan Daniels and the pattern of solidarity martyrdom The historical lineage Hirschfeld invoked deserves detailed attention because it establishes what Christian martyrdom has actually looked like on American soil. Jonathan Myrick Daniels was a 26-year-old Episcopal seminarian from Keene, New Hampshire—Hirschfeld's diocese—who answered Martin Luther King Jr.'s call after Bloody Sunday in March 1965. He intended to stay a weekend but remained for months, living with a Black family in Selma, tutoring children, registering voters, and helping poor locals apply for federal assistance. On August 20, 1965, after six days in the Hayneville jail following arrest for picketing whites-only stores, Daniels walked with Catholic priest Richard Morrisroe and two Black teenagers—Ruby Sales and Joyce Bailey—toward Varner's Cash Store. Tom Coleman, a highway worker and part-time deputy, confronted them with a shotgun. When Coleman aimed at 17-year-old Ruby Sales, **Daniels pushed her aside and took the full blast to his chest**, dying instantly. Morrisroe was shot and seriously wounded but survived. An all-white jury acquitted Coleman in less than 90 minutes. King called it "one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I've heard in my entire ministry." The Episcopal Church designated Daniels a martyr in 1991. James Reeb, a 38-year-old Unitarian minister and father of four, traveled to Selma after Bloody Sunday. On the evening of March 9, 1965, he was attacked by white supremacists near the Silver Moon Cafe and struck in the head with a club, fracturing his skull. Montgomery hospitals refused to treat him. He died March 11. President Johnson personally called his widow and invoked his memory when introducing the Voting Rights Act to Congress four days later. Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old Unitarian mother of five from Detroit, drove to Selma after witnessing Bloody Sunday on television. On March 25, 1965, while transporting civil rights worker Leroy Moton between Selma and Montgomery, her car was spotted by Klansmen at a traffic light. They pursued her for twenty miles and killed her with a shotgun blast to the head. She is the only white woman honored on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery. ## Oscar Romero and the crucified peoples Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador was assassinated on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. Two weeks earlier, he had told a Mexican journalist: "I have often been threatened with death. I must say that, as a Christian, I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador." The day before his death, Romero delivered his famous homily ordering Salvadoran soldiers: "In the name of God and the name of the suffering people, I implore you, I beg you, I order you, stop the repression!" Romero articulated the theological framework: "Christ invites us not to fear persecution because... the one who is committed to the poor must run the same fate as the poor, and in El Salvador we know what the fate of the poor signifies: to disappear, be tortured, to be held captive—and to be found dead." Nine months later, Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan were abducted by Salvadoran National Guardsmen, raped, and murdered. The slogan circulating among right-wing extremists at the time: "Haz patria, mata un cura"—"Be a patriot, kill a priest." In 1989, the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion entered the campus of the Universidad Centroamericana and executed six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her sixteen-year-old daughter. The university's president, Ignacio Ellacuría, had been advocating for a negotiated peace settlement. Jon Sobrino, who survived only because he was abroad that night, developed the concept of "the crucified people"—those "routinely dehumanized by violent and oppressive systems" in whom Christ is present. This became liberation theology's central Christological insight: Jesus is found not with the powerful but with those who share his fate. ## The 1980s Sanctuary Movement faced federal prosecution The contemporary Sanctuary Movement traces to John Fife and Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, which on March 24, 1982—the second anniversary of Romero's assassination—became the first church to declare itself a sanctuary. Within a year, 1,600 Salvadorans had transited through Southside. By 1985, over 500 congregations nationwide had joined. The government responded with Operation Sojourner, sending paid informants into sanctuary communities. In January 1985, a Phoenix grand jury indicted 16 sanctuary workers on 71 counts, including Fife, two Catholic priests, and three religious sisters. The charges: conspiracy, harboring, transporting, and aiding "illegal aliens." **Eight of eleven defendants were convicted**, though none received jail time—only probation. The sanctuary workers had explicitly accepted the risk. As Fife later reflected: "When government violates human rights, the church needs to be a safe place." Today, approximately 290 Chicago-area faith leaders have signed a letter accepting "that following Christ's example may mean we are mocked and assaulted, opposed and even arrested." The White House has warned that "interfering with federal law enforcement is a crime and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." ## Bonhoeffer belongs to the crucified, not the powerful No theologian is more misappropriated in contemporary American Christianity than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His distinction between "cheap grace" and "costly discipleship" has been weaponized by movements whose politics he would have recognized as fascist. In October 2024, **86 of Bonhoeffer's 100 adult descendants** issued a formal statement: "We are horrified to see how the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is increasingly being distorted and misused by right-wing extremists, xenophobes and religious agitators... Never would he have seen himself associated with far-right, violent movements such as Christian Nationalists." Bonhoeffer scholars condemned the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 citation of Bonhoeffer's "cheap grace" to "discredit protection of refugees and care for the environment" as a "perfidious appropriation." What Bonhoeffer actually wrote: "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession." And: "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." And, in a letter to resistance members: theology must mean seeing history "from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed." Bonhoeffer warned against Christian nationalism as early as 1930, reminding Christians they have "brothers and sisters not only in their own people, but in every people." He was executed by the Nazis on April 9, 1945, for his role in the resistance. His resistance was not triumphalist but agonized—he accepted it might bring God's judgment even as he believed it necessary. ## Two theologies of the cross Martin Luther distinguished _theologia crucis_ (theology of the cross) from _theologia gloriae_ (theology of glory). The theologian of glory "calls evil good and good evil." The theologian of the cross "calls the thing what it actually is." The NAR and prosperity gospel represent what Luther diagnosed as theology of glory. Their framework: "Mankind lost its dominion over earth as part of the fall of Adam. So Jesus' sacrifice on the cross not only resolved our sin debt, but it empowered mankind—specifically, Christians—to retake control." The cross becomes a platform for victory rather than a pattern for life. Suffering indicates insufficient faith or demonic attack. As one prosperity teacher articulated: "By overcoming the curse of the Law, the Cross and the Resurrection grant believers an open door to prosperity." Liberation theology and the mainline cruciform tradition read the cross differently. Douglas John Hall identified the cross as "both a critique of triumphalism and an ethical call to solidarity." Jon Sobrino developed the theology of "Jesuanic martyrdom": "Martyrs are those who follow Jesus in the things that matter, live in dedication to the cause of Jesus, and die for the same reason that Jesus died." When Jesus says "take up your cross daily" (Luke 9:23), the question becomes: what does that mean? The NAR/nationalist reading: face criticism for traditional values, endure cultural opposition, maintain Christian identity against secularizing forces. The liberation/cruciform reading: put your body on the line for the marginalized, accept physical risk in solidarity with the oppressed, participate in Christ's ongoing passion through the crucified peoples of history. ## Who actually holds power? The power analysis is definitive. Six Supreme Court justices sympathetic to Christian nationalist positions control constitutional interpretation. Justice Samuel Alito displayed the "Appeal to Heaven" flag—a Christian nationalist symbol—and was recorded agreeing that America must "return to a place of godliness." Justice Clarence Thomas has argued states should be allowed to establish official religions. House Speaker Mike Johnson represents, in journalist Sarah Posner's assessment, "the most unabashedly Christian nationalist Speaker" in American history. He believes separation of church and state is "a misnomer" and has stated: "I don't believe there are any coincidences... God is the one that raises up those in authority." He displays the Appeal to Heaven flag outside his congressional office. The NAR's political reach extends to an estimated **33 million Americans**. Paula White-Cain served as senior White House faith adviser. Dutch Sheets "did more than any Christian leader to organize Christians for January 6th." NAR leaders held permits for four of six January 6th protests. A 2024 Cambridge University study introduced the concept of "hijacked victimhood": "Political leaders who use the strategy of hijacked victimhood present dominant groups as in danger, as current or future victims, and in need of protection... from oppressive forces consisting of—or indirectly representing—marginalized and subaltern groups." Meanwhile, those with whom solidarity clergy stand—immigrants facing deportation, the poor, racial minorities targeted by state violence—possess no Supreme Court seats, no Congressional leadership, no massive media platforms. The moral inversion is complete: those with power claim persecution by those without it. ## The Jim Crow parallel This pattern is not new. Historians document that southern white evangelicals during Jim Crow actively defended segregation on religious grounds and framed civil rights advances as persecution. Historian Carolyn Dupont is direct: "Simply put, any suggestion that the religion of southern whites aided the civil rights struggle grossly perverts the past." Ministers who suggested integrating churches were "dismissed from their pulpits." As late as 1969, constituents wrote to church leaders that mixing races was "against [our] religion." The theological framework supporting segregation "slowly morphed from an outright defense of racial separation to a call to defend the family." Gorski and Perry trace how post-Civil War Southern Christianity adopted a "Christological narrative of crucifixion and redemption" that became "crucial to understanding contemporary claims of Christian victimhood and vengeance among white Christian nationalists." The pattern persists: dominant groups experiencing equality as persecution. ## What the contrast reveals theologically The comparison yields a clear theological diagnosis. The NAR/Christian nationalist martyrdom discourse functions as: - **Identity maintenance** for a movement experiencing demographic decline and cultural change - **Political mobilization** through manufactured threat - **Moral cover** for aggressive action framed as defensive response - **Inversion** that positions the powerful as victims of the powerless The liberation/cruciform martyrdom discourse functions as: - **Embodied solidarity** with those who actually face state violence - **Witness** (_martyria_) that the Gospel has material consequences - **Participation** in Christ's ongoing passion through the crucified peoples - **Truth-telling** that calls the thing what it actually is The theological question is not whether Christians should expect suffering—both traditions affirm they should. The question is _what kind_ of suffering and _for whom_. The NAR framework locates suffering in cultural grievance: we are persecuted when we lose dominance. The cruciform framework locates suffering in solidarity: we are called to accompany those who actually face violence, accepting that we may share their fate. ## For those processing the journey For someone moving from NAR/charismatic spaces toward mainline progressive Christianity, several theological markers may prove clarifying: **The cross as pattern, not platform.** In the cruciform tradition, the cross is not something Jesus overcame on the way to victory but the shape Christian life takes. Philippians 2 describes Christ's self-emptying (_kenosis_) as the pattern believers are called to imitate. **"From below" as epistemological commitment.** Bonhoeffer's insistence on seeing history "from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed" represents not sentiment but method. It determines what counts as persecution and who the martyrs actually are. **Power as diagnostic.** The question "who holds power here?" clarifies moral reality. Those with Supreme Court majorities and Congressional leadership claiming persecution by those facing deportation represents not martyrdom but its inversion. **Solidarity as Christological.** Liberation theology's central insight—that Christ is present in the crucified peoples—means standing with the marginalized is not merely ethical but sacramental. Rev. Bautista, shot in the face at Coast Guard Island, was not just doing good work; he was participating in the Body of Christ through solidarity with those Christ accompanies. **The difference between criticism and crucifixion.** Jonathan Daniels died pushing Ruby Sales out of the path of a shotgun. James Reeb died from a club to the skull. Oscar Romero died from a bullet during Mass. The four churchwomen died after rape and torture. The NAR figures claiming persecution have media platforms, political access, and economic power. The rhetorical equation of these experiences represents not martyrdom but its desecration. ## Conclusion Bishop Hirschfeld's call for clergy to prepare for martyrdom—to write wills, to place bodies between state power and the vulnerable—stands in the lineage of Daniels, Reeb, Romero, and the sanctuary workers who faced federal prosecution. It represents the costly discipleship Bonhoeffer described: grace that "is costly because it costs a man his life." The NAR/Christian nationalist persecution narrative, by contrast, represents what Bonhoeffer diagnosed as cheap grace—"grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ." It claims the vocabulary of martyrdom while facing no actual danger, positions the powerful as victims of the powerless, and deploys Christian language to justify domination rather than solidarity. The theological task is to recover the capacity to call the thing what it actually is. Clergy shot with pepper balls while praying outside ICE facilities are facing real consequences for embodied witness. Megachurch pastors with media empires claiming persecution for cultural criticism are not. The cross still divides—not between believer and unbeliever, but between those who carry it in solidarity with the crucified peoples and those who wield it as a weapon of dominance. As Romero prophesied: "If they kill me, I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people." This is what martyrdom has always meant: witness through participation in Christ's passion, which is always the passion of those the world crucifies. Everything else is performance. ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Historical Propaganda Manufactures Legitimacy for Contemporary Persecution]] — extends — both track persecution rhetoric as a political instrument; this note distinguishes dominant-group grievance from embodied solidarity by asking who holds power and who bears physical risk - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Faith & Theology MOC]] — places the distinction between grievance performance and costly solidarity inside the vault's work on public theology and Christian power.