Did early Christian martyrs choose to be burned alive during the Roman persecutions? Earlier today, David wrote about Leftists celebrating the bizarre suicide of Aaron Bushnell, done in nominal protest of US policy in the war between Hamas and Israel. 

Now we have Time Magazine attempting to normalize it by proclaiming its equivalency to the early Christian martyrs, and ... hoo boy:

.@TIME says Christian martyrs "committed" self-immolation when the Romans tortured and burned them alive for refusing to reject Jesus Christ. pic.twitter.com/inbOAJOkrs

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) February 27, 2024

The practice of self-immolation dates back centuries, according to ancient Hindu tales of Sati, the wife of a Hindu god who got married without her father’s approval. Some retellings of her life say that Sati burned herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre, and are used as justification for the practice of ritual suicide that has long been banned in India. Self-immolation was also seen as a sacrificial act committed by Christian devotees who chose to be burned alive when they were being persecuted for their religion by Roman emperor Diocletian around 300 A.D.

Their source for this claim comes from a totes reliable academic source ... an op-ed piece at the New Yorker that's now behind a paywall. That seems like an odd source for a mainstream-media article claim about religious history, especially given all of the rich resources online to check this hypothesis -- the Vatican, various encyclopedias, Lexis/Nexis, you name it. Even if reporters Solcyré Burga and Simmone Shah couldn't or wouldn't bother to look for a more substantial source, Time's editors certainly could have -- and should have.

Because, in short, this claim is utter nonsense. At least two different emperors in the Roman period burned Christians alive in an attempt to destroy their church: Nero and Diocletian. Nero used Christians as street torches in an attempt to distract from his incompetence and tyranny during the period when the Apostles had gone into the world to convert it. There was no choice involved in the matter except the choice to refuse to convert to paganism, and the immolation was punishment for refusal rather than a protest.

Time's reporters bring up Diocletian, who was just as bad as Nero or arguably worse. Christians by this time had been allowed to operate openly and had acquired property, which gave Diocletian a better range of victims for his persecution. Encyclopedia Brittanica explains in brief:

After a period of initial indifference toward the Christians, Diocletian ended his reign by unleashing against them, in 303, the last and most violent of their persecutions. It was urged on him by his Caesar Galerius and prolonged in the East for a decade (until 311) by Galerius as Augustus and by other emperors. As in earlier persecutions, the initiative arose at the heart of government; some emperors, as outraged by the Christians as many private citizens, considered it their duty to maintain harmony with the gods, the pax deorum, by which alone the empire flourished. Accordingly, Decius and Valerian in the 250s had dealt severely with the Christians, requiring them to demonstrate their apostasy by offering sacrifice at the local temples, and for the first time had directly struck the church’s clergy and property. There were scores of Christians who preferred death, though the great majority complied or hid themselves. ...

The progress of a religion that could not accept the religious basis of the tetrarchy and certain of whose members were imprudent and provocative, as in the incidents at Nicomedia (where a church was built across from Diocletian’s palace), finally aroused Galerius’ fanaticism. In 303–304 several edicts, each increasingly stringent, ordered the destruction of the churches, the seizure of sacred books, the imprisonment of the clergy, and a sentence of death for all those who refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods. In the East, where Galerius was imposing his ideas more and more on the aging Diocletian, the persecution was extremely violent, especially in Egypt, Palestine, and the Danubian regions. In Italy, Maximian, zealous at the beginning, quickly tired; and in Gaul, Constantius merely destroyed a few churches without carrying reprisals any further. Nevertheless, Christianity could no longer be eradicated, for the people of the empire and even some officials no longer felt the blind hatred for Christians that had typified previous centuries.

This historical context exposes the absurdity of Time's claim. In the first place, Christian doctrine on martyrdom developed very early (for obvious reasons), and one of its principles is that one cannot choose martyrdom in this manner. The Lord chooses His martyrs, not through suicide but through perseverance in the faith while being persecuted. These early martyrs were murdered by Diocletian and Nero; the only choice they made was to remain faithful to Christ, and their persecutors put them to death for it. To argue that this was in some sort of "protest" over imperial policy shifts responsibility for their grotesque and barbaric deaths from the murderers to their victims, let alone ignoring the fact that the Christians of the time were doing their best to survive Diocletian.

Of course, this attempt by the media to shift responsibility for grotesque and barbaric deaths from the murderers to the victims has parallels to their coverage of the war Hamas and the Gazans launched on Israel, too. 

As one might imagine, Christians on social media are not receiving this revisionist history with much enthusiasm. Without going all Twitchy on readers, I'll just include a few pointed criticisms that caught my eye:

Wow. Do not compare Christians who were and are given the option of denounce Christ or die as the same as a guy setting himself on fire. They were MURDERED. He committed Suicide. There is a difference. https://t.co/3IwVWCmVc5

— Force of Light Entertainment 🎙 (@ForceofLightEn1) February 27, 2024

@TIME is unhinged. The inability or unwillingness of our mainstream media to write with even a modicum of accuracy about matters of religion is proof of the lack of moral character of the writers and editors. https://t.co/1LJgpxpzGH

— Fr. John Naugle (@FatherNaugle) February 27, 2024

It certainly proves a lack of talent and professionalism. 

"Mostly peaceful self-immolation" - TIMES https://t.co/bu51JhQDVC

— Jonah Wendt 🦬 (@jonah_wendt) February 27, 2024

Sounds like a new Julio Rosas Substack, no? I kid, I kid ...

In today's edition of "stupidest take ever" riding shotgun to "no truth is worth your survival"... @TIME can't tell the difference between suicide and dying for your faith. https://t.co/2HXlH8gun7

— Erika Ahern (@ErikaAhern2) February 27, 2024

The ignorance of the secular elites about religion and history is matched only by their arrogant pretense of knowledge. https://t.co/f8AvDqMhfv

— Jason Bedrick 🇮🇱 (@JasonBedrick) February 27, 2024

I am begging legacy media reporters to have a modicum of historical literacy. https://t.co/3Ep6fJmShB

— Jeremiah Poff (@JJ_Poff) February 27, 2024

Or at least look for sources outside of a New Yorker op-ed before going to print with an argument based on the history of the early Christian church. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do ... and insist on continually proving it. 

The front-page image is "Nero's Torches" by Henryk Siemiradzki, 1882. In a private collection. Via Wikimedia Commons.