I’m about two pages into the forward of Tripp York’s book The Purple Crown: The Politics of Martyrdom and I now know that I was right to be excited about finally getting it in the mail yesterday.

This from the forward by John D. Roth

Through their patient, nonviolent suffering, Christian martyrs expose the futility of the logic of violence. At the same time, they bear public witness to the power of the resurrection and the triumph of Christ–the Lamb who was slain–as the rightful ruler over all nations and the end toward which all of history is ultimately moving. The politics of martyrdom is not a flight from the world. Instead, by appealing to the power of love over the fear of death, and the logic of persuasion rather than the violence of coercion, the martyr participates in a different form of politics–the politics of Jesus. As such, Christian martyrs–not princes, parliaments or presidents–are the true “bearers of history.”

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