On Tuesday, I published, 35 Years Without Óscar Romero. This led to my discovering THE PROJECT: Martyrs Prayers. It is a collection of explicitly religious songs about Christian martyrs. On the CD they’ve released, there are ten songs, each about a specific martyr. Interestingly, one of them is “Clement,” which I assume is about Pope Clement I. Personally, I find Clement of Alexandria a more interesting guy — admittedly, not a martyr. But he argued against what I think of as the Saint Sebastian form of martyrdom. The question is, if you are clearly just trying to get yourself killed, are you a martyr? I don’t think so.

The martyrs on this album represent what I consider the real deal. Ultimately, most of the martyrs are political in nature. And that goes right along with my feelings about religion as being fundamentally political — at least when it comes to religion and not ontology. And as you should know, when it comes to politics, I have a great deal of faith. Because what’s the option? Applying the same thing to God isn’t much of a stretch, even if it isn’t something that I personally feel.

I’ve only heard two of the songs: the ones that they’ve produced highly evocative videos for. Interestingly, they are both assassinations. The first is the song “Becket.” But I want to highlight “Romero.” In addition to it being a beautiful song, the video includes lots of footage of Romero himself (something we don’t have for most of the others — although they do include two other 20th century martyrs). It’s really great. Give it a listen: