Tertullian, that great Church Father from North Africa once remarked that the blood of Christians is the seed (for the Church), for ‘the oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow.’ He crafted his work Apology as a response to the calamitous persecutions of Christians by the Roman empire.
The Christian Faith then was young and fragile amidst this mighty and merciless empire. Tertullian pleaded for religious tolerance and Reason to reign in Rome.
By all means, this African Christian giant of Faith was among the first to plead for freedom of religious expression to be guaranteed by the governments that be, a sort of ‘separation of Church and State.’
Christianity was introduced to our homeland sometime late in the 19th century by missionaries sent by the British Church Missionaries Society and the French Catholics of the White Fathers at the invitation of Kabaka Muteesa.
The King, being wary of the Islamic influence in his kingdom and the threat posed by Egypt imagined Christianity to be a way out of his dilemma. It is, therefore, safe to say that Christianity’s coming to Uganda had some political undertones to it.
The chief cause of persecution towards Christians by the Roman Empire was that the new Faith made its adherents more committed to Christ than to Caesar. We do well to remember that Rome had an Emperor cult, in which Caesar was considered and worshipped by many as a god.
Christians insisted that Christ is the only supreme King and God to whom they owed worship. They refused to sacrifice to Caesar and the gods of Rome and were thus charged with treason for disturbing the peace and forsaking the traditions of the empire.
Muteesa’s successor Kabaka Mwanga was exceedingly disturbed that converts to Christianity were more loyal to Christ than they were to him and the local gods. In effect, they claimed that Christ is the supreme King and true God to whom all worship must go.
The resolving of this (if it can be called a resolution) was what we remember as a nation every third day of June. It was the martyrdom of thirty-two young men who would rather die than be forced to go against their Christian conviction. Tertullian’s cry for religious tolerance could be heard here, albeit as an undertone.
But rather than spelling doom for Christianity, the blood of the martyrs indeed became the seed for the Church in Uganda to grow, overtaking Islam as the most dominant religion in the land that Mwanga once ruled. According to the Pew Research Center based in Washington DC, Uganda is poised to be among the top ten most Christian nations in the world by 2050. Saint Tertullian was right, again, after all.
In all this, we may care to note that whenever conscience and reason are supplanted, tyranny reigns. The role of the Church of Christ amidst the State is to be its conscience. Israel’s prophets spoke to and often against the king, not afraid to stand up to the king’s unrighteousness when the need arose.
To echo prophet Micah, Christians are indeed “full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin” (Micah 3:8).
To do this, Christians must expect (but not unwisely cause) persecution, even the loss of their lives. Christ was crucified as a criminal for supposedly sabotaging the State. Whether it is Caesar or Mwanga or Amin, the State will always be threatened by those who pledge allegiance to the One it cannot bring under its power. To serve Christ especially when it means making enemies of the king is costly, and those willing to risk that can be deemed dangerous to the status quo.
It follows then that a generation that hardly has convictions worth dying for misses the very gist of 3rd June 1886, for it has forsaken the hope in the resurrection Christians so dearly hold and proclaim. Only those who hold to the divine justice in the age to come can correctly and with conviction fight the injustice that currently is.
It would surely be a significant loss to a man who loses this life with no hope of the life to come. It is because Christ died and rose from the dead that the martyrs could stand the scourge of the State, for he who has only this life to live will avoid its loss at whatever cost, soon losing his conviction at the slight sight of the State’s sword.
A generation whose hope does not transcend the grave cannot dare die for the sake of the future generation’s hope, and until a man has a reason strong enough to die for, he has not yet truly lived.
In all this, we must pray for the peace of the land in which we live, rejoice in the good and weep for the sin in our nation. We must love the people among whom we live, be so fond of them as to give our lives for their salvation and peace.
For this reason, Martyrs Day is not merely about eating and drinking, but about living daily for the righteous love of God to be incarnated in our midst, even at the cost of our lives.