Image used with permission by the artist. 

Mural by Kirollos Kilada in the St. Pope Kyrillos VI Chapel at St. Paul American Coptic Orthodox Church in Irvine, CA. 

Artist’s Website: https://kkilada.com/

Church’s Website: https://www.stpauloc.org/about/chapel

Modern Martyrs

We correct a claim about martyrdom by telling the story of the 21 Coptic workers executed in Libya, a witness captured on video that terrorists meant as propaganda. 

We follow how their calm, their prayer, and their families’ response reshape what we mean by freedom, courage, and unity across centuries of division.

• visiting a Coptic Orthodox church and noticing the icon of “the 21”
• the workers’ background in Alwur and why they went to Libya for labor
• how ISIS separated Christians using IDs and cross tattoos
• captivity details and the repeated offer to recite the shahada
• Matthew Ayariga’s choice to die with the others
• the execution video as propaganda that accidentally becomes testimony
• families speaking with pride and refusing revenge
• canonization, recovered bodies, and the shrine church in their village
• Pope Francis, Pope Tawadros II, and the “ecumenism of blood”
• a parallel with Alexei Navalny and interior freedom under coercion

A single sentence could have saved their lives, and they had six weeks to say it. Instead, 21 men knelt on a Mediterranean beach in orange jumpsuits, lips moving in prayer, while their executioners filmed a spectacle meant to terrify the world. We started with a correction and ended with one of the most unsettling stories of modern Christian martyrdom: the 21 Coptic Orthodox martyrs of Libya, ordinary Egyptian construction workers whose witness exists not only in ancient texts but in high-definition footage.

We walk through how they were identified and taken in Sirte, Libya, how pressure was applied with the “door open,” and why the offer to recite the shahada matters so much when you’re thinking about faith, coercion, and what freedom really is. Then we linger on the 21st man, Matthew Ayariga of Ghana, who was given a unique chance to step away and reportedly answered, “Their God is my God,” choosing to die alongside men who had become his people.

The story doesn’t end at the beach. It keeps going through the families who speak without revenge, the Coptic Church’s swift canonization, and a historic moment when Pope Francis adds these martyrs to the Roman Martyrology, calling it the “ecumenism of blood.” We also draw a modern parallel to Alexei Navalny and the strange power of interior freedom, the kind no prison, knife, or regime can finally touch.

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Instagram: @subversiveorthodoxy

Host: Travis Mullen Instagram: @manartnation

Co-Host: Robert L. Inchausti, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and is the author of numerous books, including Subversive Orthodoxy, Thomas Merton's American Prophecy, The Spitwad Sutras, and Breaking the Cultural Trance. He is, among other things, a Thomas Merton authority, and editor of the Merton books Echoing Silence, Seeds, and The Pocket Thomas Merton. He's a lover of the literature of those who challenge the status quo in various ways, thus, he has had a lifelong fascination with the Beats.

Book by Robert L. Inchausti ”Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise” Published 2005, authorization by the author.  

Intro & Outro Music by Noah Johnson & Chavez the Fisherman, all rights reserved.