Persecution has played a principal role in the formation and development of the Christian identity and serves as one of the many distinctive markers for adherents of the world’s largest religious group. Understanding this persecution has been essential to understanding the Christian faith ever since Christianity’s first centuries. As anti-Christian persecution continues to manifest itself in the contemporary world, it has cultivated an “us against the world” ethos. Furthermore, it has come to serve as an imaginary adhesive binding Christians in the global South and in the global North to a shared religious identity despite being “separated by vast geographical, linguistic, political, and cultural differences” (33).
Jason Bruner’s monograph, Imagining Persecution: Why American Christians Believe There Is a Global War against Their Faith, primarily investigates how Christians in the twenty-first century have come to utilize persecution in shaping “a new global understanding of their faith” (viii). In his deconstructive...
