If you visit Westminster Abbey anytime soon, be sure to pay attention to the statues that you pass below as you enter the west entrance, because they’re not what you might expect.
Unlike the saints and monarchs that you’ll find installed in niches elsewhere on the building’s exterior, these ten statues were only installed in 1998, and represent 20th century figures who were persecuted and ultimately killed for the work that they did to promote peace and tolerance. Amongst them you’ll find Martin Luther King, the American evangelist and civil rights activist, and founder of the Confessing Church and member of the small German resistance movement, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed at the Flossenburg concentration camp in 1945. These days Bonhoeffer is perhaps most well known for his often repeated and prophetic saying, “Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither…”. There’s a full list of these modern day martyrs on the BBC website here – some of their stories will certainly give you pause for thought…