Can Martyrdom Survive Secularization?

• Autores: Lacey Baldwin Smith
• Localización: Social research: An international quarterly of the social sciences, ISSN 0037-783X, Nº. 2, 2008 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Denial), págs. 435-460
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The advent of the suicide bomber as a global phenomenon during the past decade and a half has vastly increased our interest in but only marginally improved our understanding of martyrdom. The word remains as mysterious, hard to define, and highly explosive as ever. Modem scholars much prefer the term “self-sacrifice” to martyr dom largely because it reveals the complexities of the subject: to what extent does the self gain by the act of sacrifice and is the sacrifice indi vidualistic or communal and its motivation economic, political, religious, or social? Martyrdom, in contrast, is, in its strictest sense, the witnessing unto death of divine truth.