THE king’s word was law. Rules were made and amended according to his whim. He was elevated to the status of a deity – a spiritual being whose reign was shrouded in mysticism. Worshipping the Kabaka was the reason a Muganda lived. But the arrival of Anglican and Catholic missionaries in the Buganda kingdom from Europe in 1877 opened the gates for a religious, social and political revolution in a conservative traditional set-up.
The revolution would culminate into King Mwanga II’s vicious persecution of his servants. The missionaries taught a new religion (Christianity) and about a supreme loving God, who they said was the creator and ruler of everything, including Kabaka Mwanga, their king.
Whoever denounced all native religious behaviour and practices as heathen and satanic and converted to Christianity, would be rewarded with everlasting life in heaven.
Heaven, Mwanga’s subjects were told, was a place where there is no death, disease or suffering of any form.
They were martyrs for the faith. They were heroes for the faith. They were political inadverdently but effectively. It is not either/or but both/and. Caesar understood. Queen Elizabeth understood. We understand.
Glorious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints.
Definately “heroes” and martyrs.
All Pilate was trying to do was consilidate the Emperor’s traditional position. All Diocletian was trying to do was maintain the status quo for his time. All anyone who persecuted the church tried to do was to maintain what they understood as the correct position.
I am sure that Mwanga was not set on doing evil, but he understood good so poorly that he did evil when trying to do good.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
The author presents an interesting way of looking at it. As Phil points out though, that argument would suit any other pagan king (including the non-Hebrew kings in the OT).
We should remember we serve a zealous God! He brooks no idolatry.
It has been noted many times that Marcus Aurelius was one of the greatest pagan emperors of the Roman Empire, and a thoughtful Stoic moral philosopher to boot. Also, one of the great murderers of Christians.
If the righteousness of the Martyrs of Uganda is questionable because of their rebellion against the state (or the status quo, or what have you), then the moral position of the British citizens in the Thirteen Colonies in the late eighteenth century who took up arms against their king and country becomes highly questionable. The opposition offered in the Americas was violent and aggressive, and its motivations were political and economic – at best, philosophical – rather than a moral manner of living that resulted from a new-found religious conviction.
Interesting. I learned much about the Ugandan Martyrs, King Mwanga, and the White Fathers who brought the Good News of the Gospel to Uganda while writing my book GIRL SOLDIER: A STORY OF HOPE FOR NORTHERN UGANDA’S CHILDREN. It seems to me that the betrayal of tribe, the humiliation, had already come, with the hardly-ever-mentioned Arab Islamists who were taking Mwanga’s subjects as SLAVES, and whose advice to Mwanga was no more than a form of manipulation for their own purposes. Mwanga’s father had, like Festus (I think that’s the name) toyed with the idea of becoming a Christian, but Mwanga had, not only the traditional religious leaders discouraging him from Christianity, but the Arabs, who had already put the proverbial nose of the camel in the tent.
It goes without saying. The Ugandan Martyrs were heroes — great heroes of the faith.
Yes, everything can be examined in context. But the context here is between obedience to God and obedience to man (Mwanga). So is there really an issue .. traitors to a Godless system or loyal martyrs to God. Are we reasserters traitors to a Godless church system or martyrs (symbolic) to God?
We shouldn’t think of these martyrs as dead people. They are alive in Christ and Christ regards them as individuals having made individual contributions.