In 1950, a poet, professor and Episcopal priest named Chad Walsh - the man who introduced Americans to C.S. Lewis - published a book that looked to the 21st century, fifty years into his future, to prognosticate what the world and the church would look like. How would they relate to one another? His book, called Early Christians of the 21st Century, got many things right. He saw the rise of postmodernism and the decay of culture and the arts. He alluded to the possibility of the persecution of Christians, but did not get into what that might look like. He also got a lot of things wrong, and comes across in many places as idealistic and naïve.
But in fairness, who could have predicted what we have seen - in our culture, our country, and our churches - just in the past twenty years since the dawn of the 21st century - much of it led by Walsh’s (and C.S. Lewis’s) own church body?
For a contemporary snapshot of where we are, Wesleyan minister Andrew Iskar’s piece “Martyrdom in Trashworld” is an accurate assessment - beginning around the year 2000, and taking us to the present.
Every generation’s cross is different, and Iskar shows us how we can learn from the martyrs of the past to live the Christian life of today - even in Trashworld.
Martyrdom in Trashworld
FEBRUARY 25, 2023
The Psychological and Social Persecution of Christians in Current Year
Most American Christians have been told their entire lives to be ready to give their lives for Jesus Christ. But the enemies of Christ in the modern globalist world are not going to feed you to lions or burn you at the stake. Instead, if you are a Christian in modern trashworld, your martyrdom will be psychological. Not only will this psychological torment happen to you, it already has begun.
Thank you brother, for sharing this!