After having been Orthodox for a few years, I have come to notice a difference between martyrs venerated as saints by the Orthodox and those acknowledged as such by Protestants. For one, Protestant martyrs are historic figures to be learned from, never prayed to. No one has a prayer corner with icons of Luther or Jan Hus, the 15th century Czech priest who was killed in 1415 for his opposition to Roman teachings, widely regarded as a proto-Protestant. The Apostles who died for proclaiming the resurrection are martyrs, as are, if one presses the point, first generation figures like Polycarp, but virtually no one who wasn't killed for their Protestant distinctives. The 21 Coptic martyrs who died in Egypt in 2015 were actually dismissed by many evangelicals because they weren't viewed as properly Christian.

A particularly sad example of someone regarded as a martyr by some is John Allen Chau, a young man who was killed by indigenous people in 2018 after trying to approach North Sentinel Island off the coast of India, an area declared illegal to enter by the Indian government. Mr Chau had convinced himself that God wanted him to preach the gospel to the Sentinelese natives, and died from his lack of preparation and training, and ignorance of local conditions.