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By Brien Pittman

The Diocletianic or Great Persecution was the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. In 303, the Emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding the legal rights of Christians and demanding that they comply with traditional Roman religious practices. Later edicts targeted the clergy and ordered all inhabitants to sacrifice to the Roman gods (a policy known as universal sacrifice). The persecution varied in intensity across the empire — weakest in Gaul and Britain, where only the first edict was applied, and strongest in the Eastern provinces. Different emperors nullified persecutory laws at different times, but Constantine and Licinius’s Edict of Milan (313) has traditionally marked the end of the persecution.

Today, for many right wing Christians, persecution is thought to be any instance, real or imagined, when society doesn’t accept Christian dogma as undisputed truth.

When I first arrived back in Spokane it was during the holidays, I was kind of taken aback, on several occasions from hearing complaints regarding, Happy Holidays vs Merry Christmas. The Christians I spoke with stated the problem was, “Happy holidays doesn’t single out Christianity’s holiday as being true and special.”

“Maybe a little affinity with diversity is needed here,” I remember thinking.

Recently, the conservative Christian world went crazy about a teenager who was being oppressed because a teacher gave her F’s on some essays she failed to write. Breitbart published, Professor Fails Student for Refusing to Conform to His Anti-Christian Bias. Fox News ran with, Student: Professor Gave Me Zeros for Refusing to Condemn Christianity. WorldNetDaily went with, Christian Girl Given Zeroes for Her Beliefs, with the subtitle, “No student should be subjected to such outrageous bias and outright hostility.”

Other headlines read: Marxist Professor Fails Student For Not Denouncing Christian Faith in Support of Feminism and Polk State Condones Discrimination Against Christians

If anyone took the time to look into this incident they would quickly see that this is not what is going on.

What actually happened in this case was that the student, young Grace Lewis, decided that she didn’t have to write essays that dealt with actual events in the history of Christianity. She preferred to talk about the way Christianity is today. Which is fine, no one likes to bring up ugly things from their past — especially their belief system. But the instructor, Lance Russum, was teaching an introduction to humanities course, not Christianity Today. So, when Lewis did not write her essays on the subjects assigned, he gave her zero credit. It wasn’t that he disagreed with her Christian apologetics; it was that her Christian apologetics had nothing to do with the assignment.

Here is one of the essay assignments:

What is something Lady Julian is saying/doing that women should not be saying/doing at that time under the Christian mythos?

From the article on the nuns, what makes their defiance of male dominance so important?

Why did Christianity, and its male gods, want to silence these women?

Apparently, by the time of this assignment, Russum had experienced Lewis’ approach to such questions.

So he added this note:

You are to only answer the above three questions. SECOND, and this is VERY important, I DO NOT want you to write about how wonderful you think Christianity is now because women can do A, B or C. History is history and facts are facts and your opinion on if it is better now or not is irrelevant for this discussion. This is a HISTORICAL discussion about the Middle Ages. If you really feel the need to express your opinion on how you think Christianity is now for women, you may email me, you may call my office or I would love for you to stop by for a nice cup of hot tea where we can talk about it, but it does not belong in this assignment. The pieces you are reading are from some of the greatest expressions of mythology by women ever, the question is to honor that voice in that moment of history.

If we change the subject from Christianity to Islam or Hinduism, how many Christians would see a persecution problem real or imaginary?

This highlights the biggest problem with dogmatic religion: it claims to be a destination. Too many followers of all the Abrahamic religions aren’t searching for the truth. They think they’ve found it. There is nothing they need to learn. The religion has already provided them with all of the answers.

In contrast college is for those looking to examine and expand upon their answers.