A few weeks ago, I wrote a sermon about the ways in which rumor and insinuation is used as a tool of oppression to demean people groups.
I talked about the early Christian church’s need to refute rumors that they were cannibalistic. The rumor spread throughout the countryside that this new ‘superstition’ involved rituals that included eating bodies and drinking blood. This was one of the ways that the dominant authority demonized and slandered the ‘other.' How many of those early Christians were martyred on the strength of that lie? How many people were subject to abuse because people are hardwired to hate those who are different?
The early Christians were a new thing, something unknown, something disruptive. The governor Pliny wrote to the Roman emperor, saying:
The contagion of that superstition has penetrated not the cities only, but the villages and country; yet it seems possible to stop it and set it right.
This new, disruptive, foreign, different group of people was seen as a disease. They were poisoning the blood of the Roman country. This challenge could not go unaddressed, and so power did what power has always done.
The good news was that there were chances for the Christians to be back in the good graces of the state. They could have assimilated into the normal fabric of Roman culture and escaped their persecution. Pliny also said:
I asked at their own lips whether they were Christians and if they confessed, I asked them a second and third time with threats of punishment. If they kept to it, I ordered them for execution; for I held no question that whatever it was that they admitted, in any case obstinacy and unbending perversity deserve to be punished.
These people did not renounce their identities. They did not give up something that was intrinsic to who they were. The early Christians proved resilient in the face of a hostile public and oppressive government.
Because they were different and new, it was easy to spread lies about them. How awful is it that they had to publicly state that they did not eat people? How demeaning it must have been to even feel that the accusation needed to be addressed?
The lie perpetuated, though, to the point where we have a century of writers defending against the accusations of cannibalism. Even after the lie was refuted, even after the basic absurdity of the premise was exposed, people were still spreading that lie.
Thanks be to God for those who stood in opposition to that lie. Thanks be to God for the resilience of the people. Thanks be to God for communities that sheltered and protected them. Thanks be to God they are still here. Thanks be to God for all of the positive things that have happened because of them.
Christians aren’t cannibals. This is a laughable lie. But people were hurt by that lie. People died because of that lie. To share the lie was to violate the image of God in that community.
Thank God we know better than to believe such offensive lies, right?
Peace,
Rev. Jeff Fox-Kline
Twelve Corners Presbyterian Church is located at 1200 S. Winton Road in Rochester, NY in the heart of Brighton. We gather on Sunday mornings at 10:00 a.m. for worship in the sanctuary and livestream on YouTube. If you have any questions, thoughts, or concerns you'd like to share, or you'd like to visit us and have a chat, you're welcome to call our office at 585-244-8585 or send an email through our secure contact form.
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