The whole topic of “Christian persecution” makes me a little nervous, since so much of what’s claimed as “persecution,” is really just mainstream culture disagreeing with an intolerant position. I don’t think it’s persecution of Christians to offer full rights to LGBT people, or for our society to subsidize women’s reproductive health products, such as birth control, the way we subsidize male reproductive health products, such as Viagra.

Which is not to say that persecution of Christians no longer happens. Witness the story of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman sentenced to die for refusing to renounce her conversion to Christianity.

So when Christian History magazine asked me to write for their special issue on “Eyewitnesses to the modern Age of Persecution,” I was a little hesitant, until the editor said she wanted me to write about St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest who offered to die in place of a Jewish father in Auschwitz.

It was a difficult story to write, but I learned a lot, even traveling to the St. Maximilian Kolbe Shrine at Marytown in Libertyville, Illinois.

You can read the article (and even the entire Issue #109, published in Spring 2014) here or below.