I decided to look on Walmartipedia to see what trouble Butch Hartman has been causing lately. He is working at an explicitly Christian network titled Great American Pure Flix. I went to the search function and entered this:

‘Armenian’

Results:

We’re sorry. We are having trouble finding a match to your search.

…

Okay, so much for finding a film on the Meds Yeghern. How about the Shoah? Many Evangelicals at least pretend to care about the Shoah, and some of the victims were either Judeo-Christians or at least legally ‘Jewish’. We’ll have a higher chance finding something therein.

‘Holocaust’

Results:

We’re sorry. We are having trouble finding a match to your search.

Let’s try again.

‘Shoah’

Results:

We’re sorry. We are having trouble finding a match to your search.

Okay, we can’t go wrong with this next one!

‘Nazi’

Results:

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon

Sabina: Tortured for Christ

Hey, we got something! Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon has nothing to do with Christianity, but that other one should. Let’s look it up.

https://www.sabinamovie.com/

Sabina: Tortured for Christ, the Nazi Years is the story of how G-d’s love transformed an ambitious, worldly atheist into one of the greatest Christian women of the 20th century. The film opens with Sabina Wurmbrand risking her life to show Christ’s love to three Nazi soldiers. Why would a Christian from a Jewish background risk her life to help her enemies — members of the army that killed her entire family? Experience a true story of biblical love and forgiveness that has inspired millions around the world.

I quickly notice that this website is heavily targeted at churches. This would explain the film’s limited reach or niche appeal. The website features brief biographies on Sabina and her husband Richard, ‘who suffered under Nazi and Communist oppression’. Remember: merely suffering under Fascist oppression = Snoozeville. But suffering under Fascism and a people’s republic? Jackpot!

Anyway, I did some more research and was disturbed by what I found:

Voice of the Martyrs’ founder Richard Wurmbrand has his own story in Jesus Freaks, though it’s not clear who authored it. I was surprised to read that his first infraction—the act that supposedly put a target on his back and led to his arrest and torture by the Communist government—was kind of in opposition to other Christians.

It was a year after the Communists had seized power in Romania. The government had invited all religious leaders to attend a congress at the Parliament building over 4,000 attended. First, they chose Joseph Stalin as honorary president of the congress. Then the speeches began. It was absurd and horrible. Communism was dedicated to the destruction of religion, as had already been shown in Russia.

Yet bishops and pastors arose and declared that Communism and Christianity were fundamentally the same and could coexist. Out of fear, these men of G-d were filling the air with flattery and lies.

It was as if they spat in Jesus Christ’s face.

Sabina Wurmbrand could stand it no longer. She whispered to her husband, “Richard, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ.”

Richard knew what would happen. “If I speak, you will lose your husband.”

Sabina replied, “I do not wish to have a coward for a husband.”

Pastor Wurmbrand took the stage. To everyone’s surprise, he began to preach. Immediately, a great silence fell on the hall.

“Delegates, it is our duty not to praise earthly powers that come and go, but to glorify G-d the Creator and Christ the Savior, who died for us on the cross.” […] The atmosphere began to change. The audience began to applaud. He was saying what they had all wanted to say, but were afraid to.

The book’s introduction claims that “Our culture understands heroism. But we don’t understand martyrs.” It’s true, there is something compelling about sacrifice, particularly if it is selfless. But this seems like an odd dichotomy—heroism versus martyrdom—for a book so hagiographically valorizing martyrs to set up.

“I do not wish to have a coward for a husband,” Wurmbrand’s wife prompts. These ideas of cowardice and bravery flatten the martyr just as the role of evil persecutor flattens the enemy, preventing any cooperation or coexistence.

Later in the story, after describing the tortures he faced while under arrest, Wurmbrand says that it was important for him to learn to pity and love his torturers—in fact, that he was divinely inspired to do so. “Only love can change the communist and the terrorist,” he says.

But when I look at these stories, I don’t see any love. I see loopholes, ways out—ways to politicize faith without saying it, and ways for aggressors to feel like victims.

If his tale about the SRR’s authorities torturing him is true (and who knows, maybe it is true) then I am unhappy that that happened. That being said, it was also unacceptable for him to tell his tale of oppression as if it were solely his Christianity that was to blame and not his anticommunism. I find that framing to be dishonest or at least highly misleading. Also, his wife sounded mean. ‘I do not wish to have a coward for a husband’…? Was that really the type of attitude that he needed from his wife of all people?

Here is some more information on Voice of the Martyrs:

VOM clearly distinguishes itself from its secular counterparts by working exclusively on behalf of Christians. Addressing the audience at Calvary Chapel in 2012, VOM board member Mark Shumaker explained, “We don’t let ourselves get off track by helping people who aren’t persecuted Christians.”

This is one of the many reasons that Christian conservatives get on my nerves: they (almost) always prioritise the others in their sect first and foremost; everybody who turns down the offer to join their sect—even if they do it as politely as possible—can literally go to Hell. There is very little biblical basis for this principle; we therefore cannot reductively blame it on ‘religion’, but this phenomenon’s prevalence despite its lack of biblical support remains an important reason that I tend to keep my expectations low when I hear ‘Christian’. No offense to @mathemachristian@hexbear.net.