Many saints of the Church started out as criminals, cheaters, murderers, armed militants.... Saint Paul is the perfect example: He was a Roman military hunter and killer of Christians. He must have killed dozens, if not hundreds, of them, but then the made-up BS legend says that he got an epiphany on the road to Damascus, changed camps, changed his name from Semitic Shawuul (distorted by westerners as Saul) to western (Greek) Pavlos to indicate his rejection of his Semitic culture and adoption of western culture (therein lie the roots of antisemitism), and became a Christian who now started persecuting pagans like Romans, Phoenicians and Jewish refusniks of the new religion.
What religious authorities keep under lid is the fact that the first Christians - during those first three or four centuries - were all Jews. Christianity was just another Jewish sect created by the followers of Jesus (like the Pharisees, the Sadducees, etc.). The difference, though, with Christianity is that it migrated from the eastern Levant to the western Rome. It didn'y stay in Palestine. Had it stayed in Palestine, Christianity would be just another Jewish sect.
So, obviously the Jews of the time were deeply divided between, on one hand, the Jewish conservative establishment who thought that Jesus was just another crazy self-proclaimed prophet, and those who rejected his followers' claims (eventually laid down in the Gospels mythology: son of God, immaculate conception and birth, turning miracles, resurrecting etc.). Because Rome was the center of the political world, its adoption of Christianity as its official religion imposed this new Jewish denomination across the empire. This Jewish sect became more of a global international movement, not unlike the Communist movement of the late 19th early 20th centuries. Just like Christians, the Communists were first an underground movement persecuted by the power holders, who later took power in Soviet Russia, etc.). Whereas Christians were the enemy under pagan Rome, pagans suddenly became the enemy of Christian Rome. The new Christians undertook campaigns of mass killings, destructions of temples, erasure of the old pantheon by re-naming old pagan gods into Christian saints, forced conversions under the sword... Read about what happened to Hypatia of Alexandria (Egypt) who was tortured and killed by a mob of early Christians because she was a scientist who refused to convert to the new religion.
In Lebanon, the Phoenicians - pagans for the early Christians - were persecuted and forced to become Christians. When their temples were not destroyed, they were turned into churches. Their gods changed their names: Baal became God, Ishtar became Mary, and Adonis became Jesus (Adonis too was killed but resurrected).
People like Paul start out as policial heroes for some, enemies for others. I don't believe that the Roman Empire persecuted the early Christians because they were all meek and mild people; they must have been what we call today "terrorists" carrying out criminal and illegal actions against the state. It's just that when Rome officially turned Christian during the 4th century, suddenly all those outlaws were forgiven their crimes, and only their loyalty to the new faith was maintained in the collective memory of the new order. Time and propaganda have a way of erasing from the collective memory the bad actions of these individuals and filtering them into heroes and saints.
Because he turned coats from a Roman pagan killing the rebel Christians to a Roman Christian killing pagans, Paul's original criminality was forgiven and fogotten,while his new criminality was used to elevate him to the rank of saint.
Saint Elias is another one. He was a mass murderer, depicted in paintings as a slayer of pagans with his sword.
Charlie Kirk may not have killed people, but his racism, hatred and fascism are being slowly erased and his image is being purified by his followers to the point that he is being made untouchable by his followers. The fact that he was murdered makes him a martyr, which accelerates the purification. Had the protestant evangelical sects kept the tradition of producing saints, there is no doubt in my mind that a few miracles would have been made up and he'd be beatified on the road to sainthood. Had he been a Catholic, this process would be well under way.
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“She’s 100% Correct”: People Are Praising Amanda Seyfried For Her Latest Comments On Charlie Kirk, And She Did NOT Hold Back
Ellen Durney
Thu, December 11, 2025
Earlier this year, Amanda Seyfried publicly criticized Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was shot and killed during a public speaking event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10.
"He was hateful," the Mean Girls star commented under an Instagram Reel that compiled some of Kirk's offensive quotes about Black women, immigrants, and transgender people, just to highlight a few.
Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
The comment obviously gained a lot of attention, and a couple of days later, Amanda followed up by providing some extra context in a longer statement posted to her Instagram page. "We are forgetting the nuance of humanity," she wrote. "I can get angry about misogyny and racist rhetoric and ALSO very much agree that Charlie Kirk's murder was absolutely disturbing and deplorable in every way imaginable. No one should have to experience this level of violence. This country is grieving too many senseless and violent deaths and shootings. Can we agree on that at least?"
Now, three months later, Amanda is firmly standing by her words, telling Who What Wear in a new cover interview: "I'm not fucking apologizing."
Mike Coppola / Getty Images
"I mean, for fuck's sake, I commented on one thing," she recalled. "I said something that was based on actual reality and actual footage and actual quotes. What I said was pretty damn factual, and I'm free to have an opinion, of course."
Amanda also discussed the decision to post a longer message explaining the comment at the time, saying, "I was able to give some clarity, and it was about getting my voice back because I felt like it had been stolen and recontextualized—which is what people do, of course."
Though Amanda's stance is sure to rile up some folks, her latest comments have already been met with a wave of praise online. One post reacting to the quotes with over 110,000 likes reads: "Thank god someone with a fucking spine."
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