Today’s saint is one of the towering figures of the ancient Church. His name was Irenæus, and he lived in the late 2nd century; he was martyred around the year 202. He wrote prolifcally against heresies that kept springing up in what was at that time a highly decentralized religion. Irenæus also successfully (?!) converted many people in the area of Lyons in the late 2nd century, only for these newly minted Christians (roughly 19,000 of them along with Irenæus!) to passively die in a wholesale massacre–perpetrated by a combination of imperial edicts, opportunistic lackeys, and a stirred-up local populace armed with death-causing implements.

Here is what Butler offers up as a testimony to Irenæus and these persons slaughtered in Lyons:

It was not for want of strength or courage, that the primitive Christians sat still and suffered the most grievous torments, insults, and death; but from a principle of religion which taught them the interest of faith does not exempt men from the duty which they owe to the civil authority of government, and they rather chose to be killed than to sin against God . . . .

If the government sets a policy, no matter how vile, “good Christians” should abide by it; to do otherwise is “sinful”! This is very much what US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions, echoed by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, recently declared about the religious imperative to execute a law (or at least an Executive Order) that has ripped apart children from their parents and caregivers at the US border:

So it would appear that Irenæus led his converts to their death as a means of faithfully following these same biblical principles cited by Mr. Sessions. In Irenæus’ case, the message was eerily similar: If the government says a certain group is to be slaughtered, it would be sinful to resist. Nazi Germany, anyone? United States of America, this past week?

The idea that “God has ordained the government for His [sic] purposes” is, frankly, preposterous. Or, conversely, this “God” has purposes that go way beyond inscrutable to being downright fucked up. To accept death and destruction because someone in a position of power has declared it to be “governmental policy” is not an act of faith (at least not faith in anything worthy) but represents an abandonment thereof.

So I end this post, remembering what a professor of mine from Duke, Robert Osborne (who taught an undergraduate class in liberation theologies), pushed us each to wrestle with, and it is a question I still struggle with some three-plus decades later. Paraphrased, Professor Osborne stated:

The challenge to you as people of faith is not so much what you will do when violence–especially government-sanctioned violence–is directed at you individually. Rather it is this: What will you do when such violence is directed at others?