Exactly. He wasn't presented with a choice of either denouncing his cause, or dying. He was arrested...he had been arrested over a dozen times in his life, and he had technically been an outlaw on the run for the last 6 years of his life.
"A martyr (Greek: μάρτυς, mártys, "witness"; stem μάρτυρ-, mártyr-) is somebody who suffers persecution and death for advocating, refusing to renounce, and/or refusing to advocate a belief or cause, usually a religious one."
If you want to argue that his "belief or cause" were his criminal pursuits, then yes, he was a martyr. He died for the cause of treason, murder, theft, polygamy...
If you want to claim that he died for Christ, then no.
Well he didn't die willingly, he fired back at the mob. Certainly didn't go "like a lamb" the way TSCC puts it. And since he earned his death because of all the atrocious acts he committed, I'd call it execution rather than martyring.
I don't think he died a Martyr. He was in jail for breaking the law. No matter how you twist it, destroying property was not legal (see Steven Benson's post from earlier today).
I don't think that the fact that he defended himself has anything to do with whether he was a martyr or not. It is strictly a matter of what charge caused him to be available to a mob who killed him.
If the mob had taken him alive, tied him to a stake and demanded that he recant his testimony at pain of death and he chose not to do that, then he would have been a martyr.
I wish that the mob had done that, because I think he would have said anything to save his own skin and then convinced his followers that it just wasn't his time to go because they needed him so much.
I think it is technically accurate to say JS was murdered.
I think martyr is technically no - he did not die for a cause.
However, I think his followers considered him a matyr and thus in many ways he was a matyr in that the result was the same as him being an actual matry.
No. He was not defending the faith. As the situation unfolded: 1. He was in prison because the destroyed personal property. 2, He was killed in vengence either because a) local Masons knew where he was, and were pi$$ed because revealed parts of thier "secret" ceremony, or b) ex-mos knew where he was, and were determined not to let him "violate" more (young?) women.
2 years ago I visited Nauvoo and Carthage. It seemed while everyone else was morning his "maryrdom", I was trying to figure out why he would use a "Masonic" phrase as his last words on this earth. It was early in my de-conversion, and I wanted to see what eveyone else saw, but just couldn't "feel" it.
He's a martyr if he was killed for polygamy or for stealing masonic rites, and possibly indirectly if he was killed for sacking the anti-polygamy newspaper.
He's not a martyr if he was killed in retaliation for violent Danite crimes by a rival "mob". That basically makes him just a crime boss.
He was murdered by vigilante action, not martyred. Illegal though his killing was, he brought it all upon himself. This guy pissed off so many people that I'm very surprised he lasted as long as he did! As mayor of Nauvoo, he surrounded himself with vicious henchmen and had people's property destroyed and even had people killed. This man was off the rails, mad with power and got what he asked for.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2013 09:27PM by rationalist01.