Blandina’s Cry: I am Christian

From as far back as I can remember, I’ve been into horror, supernatural, ghosts, and more. I love Halloween and all the movies that show up around that time of year. What can I say, I enjoy a good calculated fright. I think, in some ways, this childhood interest primed me to be a Christian later in life, because I already had such a deep curiosity about all things spiritual. In addition to the barrage of fiction around all things scary and weird, I enjoy deep diving into the history behind some of our favorite ghost stories, Appalachian folklore, and more.

In January, I visited a place I have yearned to visit since childhood—Salem, Massachusetts, known, of course, for the Salem Witch Trials. In case you aren’t familiar, between February 1692 and May 1693, hundreds of people were accused of witchcraft in Salem. Thirty people were found guilty, and of those 30, 19 were executed by hanging. Additionally, at least 5 people died in jail.  It all began because young women pointed fingers at others, often those who seemed different from them, claiming they were witches.

A man named Giles Corey was killed by torture because he did not enter a plea. The means of torture was called “pressing,” which is a process by which his naked body was covered with wooden boards, then atop those wooden boards, stones and boulders were slowly and progressively added, the whole time being asked to make a plea, but he refused.  Instead, it is believed that he responded to them by saying, “More weight.”

One of the deep sadnesses of the Salem Witch Trials is, of course, that it is a horrific part of U.S. history—and the blame for it lays at the feet of Christians. It was fear and theocracy taken to their worst end. And, as we should expect, many other sins that show up in the history of Christianity showed up in this story as well, like colonization and racism. 

There were no witches. Most of the people accused in the Salem Witch Trials were women, many of them healers within their communities. While I was in Salem, I visited the museum which tells this history, but they don’t stop there. They go on to recognize how this historical mass hysteria continues to show up in our world today. How, woefully, we continue to launch witch hunts just as horrific as the one we could have repented of and learned from in the 1690s.

Today, we turn our attention to Blandina and her companions, the Martyrs of Lyon, whose history comes to us from the year 177. During a time of Christian persecution by the Romans, a mob awakened in Lyon. They did not understand Christian customs, and thus decided they were evil.  

Violence against Christians moved quickly, carrying a massive death toll. Among them, we hear the story of Blandina and her companions, who suffered incredible torture—imprisonment in cages, burning of their flesh, being dragged by soldiers in the streets, and even being torn apart by wild beasts in front of a cheering crowd as entertainment. What was most remarkable about these saints is how they turned, again and again, amidst their torture, to their faith in Jesus Christ. Blandina is recorded as only having one response: “I am a Christian and nothing wrong is done among us!” 

Blandina was innocent and cried, “I’m Christian.” Giles Corey was innocent and cried, “More weight.”

As we rightly grieve for Blandina and her companions, how they were tortured, and the disturbing realities of their deaths, may we repent of the ways we have, in our history, treated others the way our saints were treated.  May we acknowledge how the very actions we find disturbing when they happen to our saints, remain disturbing when they happen to those we don’t know—in our past, in our present, and in our future. 

Any disturbing act committed against a human being must be grieved, and if we are to follow Christ, we must refuse to be on the other end of that violence.  Our saints don’t just show us images of people in the past, they are offered to give us insight into what it means to live as a Christian, no matter where our lives show up in the stretch of history.  

The life of Blandina and her companions shows us the horrors of this world; we see the deep sin of how humans so often respond to that which they don’t understand with power and violence instead of care and compassion for one another. And the history of the Salem Witch Trials shows us the same sin. Receiving their stories should inspire us as Christians to not want to repeat this history any more than it has already been repeated, no matter who is in the arena.