The Cost Of Discipleship Award

Religious Right Martyr Kim Davis To Receive Award For Fighting 'Legal Tyranny':

As many predicted, Kim Davis is cashing in on her new role as a right-wing celebrity. The Family Research Council announced today that Davis will receive its “Cost of Discipleship Award” at the upcoming Values Voter Summit.

FRC head Tony Perkins has already compared Davis to the previous award winner, Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese woman who, unlike Davis, actually faced persecution for her faith, as she was arrested and imprisoned by Sudan’s government for converting to Christianity. Leading up to Ibrahim’s appearance at the FRC event, Perkins attempted to use her story to attack the Obama administration, even though her U.S. supporters actually thanked the State Department for working diligently to secure her release. An attorney working on Ibrahim’s case, who is also a Religious Right figure, criticized Perkins for his rhetoric.

In announcing the award, Perkins praised Davis for her “courage” in standing up to “militant secularists”.

Martyr? Is she dead?

I smell Martyr complex:

In psychology a person who has a martyr complex, sometimes associated with the term victim complex, desires the feeling of being a martyr for his/her own sake, seeking out suffering or persecution because it either feeds a psychological need, or a desire to avoid responsibility.

In some cases, this results from the belief that the martyr has been singled out for persecution because of exceptional ability or integrity.^[1] Theologian Paul Johnson considers such beliefs a topic of concern for the mental health of clergy.^[2] Other martyr complexes involve willful suffering in the name of love or duty. This has been observed in women, especially in poor families, as well as in codependent or abusive relationships.^[3][4] It has also been described as a facet of Jewish-American folklore.^[5]

The desire for martyrdom is sometimes considered a form of masochism.^[6] Allan Berger, however, described it as one of several patterns of "pain/suffering seeking behavior", including asceticism and penance.^[7]