Goshen Martyrs

A sentence from Stephanie Krehbiel's essay “Staying Alive: How Martyrdom Made Me a Warrior” caught my eye. Krehbiel writes, “In the end, it seems the martyr and warrior archetypes both harbor the same dangerous potential: to make us locate evil solely in the Other and imagine ourselves pure, be we sword-bearers or victims” (Tongue Screws and Testimonies 143).

At Goshen College we talk a lot about the Other in cultural/ racial/ socioeconomic terms, attempting to unite ourselves with people who are very physically and tangibly different from ourselves. But while divisions between these groups definitely do exist, I do not think that racial or socioeconomic othering is our main problem here at Goshen. I know that I am much more likely to think positively of a person of a different race or culture from me than I am to think positively of a person whose ideologies differ from mine. I think Krehbiel's analysis of “martyrs” and their othering is dead on.

To be willing to die for your beliefs, your convictions have to be pretty strong and dogmatic. And to have such strong beliefs, you can't really allow for any flexibility in considering other perspectives or points of view. Because the martyr's beliefs are so strong, he or she must consider anyone who has even a slightly different perspective wrong. Thus, anyone whose values don't match the zeal of the martyr's convictions become the Other. Martyrs are so focused on belief that this, rather than race or culture or socioeconomic class, is the main point of tension in their lives.

While we don't really have too many Mennonites running around dying for their beliefs anymore, I think that the dogmatism of martyrdom survives in the Mennonite culture. At least at Goshen, these days the issues so important to Mennonites seem to be somewhat different. Goshen martyrs get their sense of minority “persecution” from their beliefs that in some way differ from mainstream culture. So, for instance, more liberal Goshen Mennonites sense that they are a minority in their beliefs in environmentalism, feminism, pacifism, and a number of other isms—and so they think of themselves as “martyrs” for these causes. These issues are so important to them that they would do anything to advance their causes. And these definitely are really important causes. But unfortunately, I think this more modern martyrdom is just as apt at “locat[ing] evil solely in the Other [people who may disagree with these beliefs] and imagin[ing] ourselves pure,” as the martyrdom that Krehbiel describes.

Last week in The Record, Patrick Maxwell, a senior at Goshen, wrote a perspective about this very issue. Maxwell writes, “The level of thinking that created our current environmental crisis was characterized by divisiveness, party-line voting, and warlike language; we in the environmental movement would do well to take Uncle Albert’s advice and expand our thinking across the aisle. [We need to take] a higher-minded, more inclusive approach if the planet is truly to be saved.”