As the charity Open Doors celebrates its 70th anniversary, Daniel McIlhiney considers how the conviction that Jesus is Lord remains the same death sentence it was in the first century AD.
The church was birthed in blood. All the apostles, bar one, were brutally murdered for their beliefs. Jesus promised that this would happen. The early Christians were accused of all manner of things: incest (calling one another 'brother' and 'sister' even within marriage), cannibalism (the Lord's Supper) and, perhaps most surprisingly for a modern audience, atheism.
Rome was dominated by the gods. Soothsayers, augurs, oracles, and haruspices were paid by the state to interpret the will of the gods. Temples were erected on every street corner, and even the emperors were deified. For Christians to worship only one God was almost as good as worshipping no gods.
Of particular concern was the lack of adherence to the Imperial Cult. Like many minority religions, even today, this lack of worship of the state, or dominant belief, was deemed to show Christians had dual allegiances. Like Pharaoh before him, Nero was the first to crack down on this new group through some of the most brutal persecution imaginable.
