The Church of England is planning to commemorate 21 Christian men martyred by ISIS in 2015.
The victims, 20 Egyptians and a Ghanaian, were mostly migrant labourers working in Libya. They fell into the hands of ISIS when the phobia group took control of the town of Sirte. In a typical try to stoke up the drama, ISIS filmed the moments before the lads were beheaded for refusing to resign Christ.
The Coptic Orthodox has already recognised the lads as martyrs.
This week the Church of England’s General Synod received a proposal to make 15 February the feast day of the slain men. A motion to “take note” of the proposal was passed by a show of hands, meaning that the memorial has not yet change into an element of the Common Worship Calendar, but plans to accomplish that are progressing.
In a proposed biography of the lads, the Church said, “The men’s steadfastness within the face of this brutal act has been widely recognised as a profound witness to the Christian faith. These martyrs … refused to resign Christ despite the specter of death.
“They affirmed their faith with the supplication O my Lord Jesus as they met their end. They were targeted specifically for his or her Christian identity. Their murder was intended as a message of terror, yet it became a rare testimony to Christian courage and perseverance.”
Additions to the Church’s Common Worship Calendar are rare. One of the newer additions was the marking of 24 April in memory of the Seven Martyrs of the Melanesian Brotherhood.
Seven members of the Melanesian Brotherhood, an Anglican religious community of men within the Solomon Islands, were killed in April 2003 throughout the ethnic tensions and civil unrest on Guadalcanal within the Solomon Islands.
Six of the brothers knowingly walked right into a conflict zone unarmed in an try to secure the peaceful release of a brother who was missing. The brother had actually already been murdered by militants believed to have been led by self-proclaimed prophet Harold Keke. The militants killed all of them, with some being tortured beforehand.
