Today is good Friday… today we remember the murder of Jesus Christ at the hands of the Roman empire. Like many charismatic leaders before and after him, Christ who is viewed as a threat to the governing power is put to death out of the complex relationship between the conquered and the conqueror. Jesus was a socio-religious leader with a large following of the indigenous population, a following that presented a potential threat to the existing power structure among the population as well, to a lesser degree, to the governing Romans. This threat grew out of an internicene religious conflict between the power structure of the indigenous population and the followers of Jesus.
In the face of various revolutionary movements at the time,the Roman governor sought to quell any disturbance that could constitute a threat to his power. By killing Jesus he both mollified the existing indigenous power structure and secondly eliminated the head of a potential threat to Roman power. At the time, murdering Jesus was a political act that grew less out of a religious motivation and more out of political expediency.
We don’t celebrate the death of Jesus today, rather we remember it because of its religious significance as the first step in a sequence of actions which are the basis for the current religious beliefs of millions of people.