When you look at the amount of persecution and martyrdom of Christians around the world, the statistics tell a sobering story. According to Open Doors’ World Watch List, 4,476 Christian were killed for faith-related reasons in 2024, and some 380 million Christians today suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.[1] A martyr is literally a …
How they persecuted the prophets
Persecution for political or religious beliefs is never pleasant. I am grateful that we live in a time and place where human rights are respected and defended, and where persecution is unacceptable in law, and eschewed by the vast majority of our fellow Australians. Sadly, that is not the case generally in our world today. …
The test of true discipleship
Romanian Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a great twentieth-century scholar of religious history and religious experience. He is perhaps best known for his work on seeking to identify universal patterns in human history and experience, and for his theory of hierophanies, or “manifestations of the sacred.” For Eliade, persons and objects “acquire their reality, their identity, only …
The purpose of theology (part 3)
Welcome to The Theology Whisperer, a series of short blog posts on theology and theological education. In this third and final post on the purpose of theology, I want to further explore the relations between theology and discipleship, theology and piety. Click here for parts one and two. There will always be more to …
iDigress 