go to the stake

To be willing to do anything in defense of one's beliefs. These protests are dangerous—are you really ready to go to the stake for your beliefs? How many innocent women had to go to the stake because powerful men found them guilty of witchcraft? I knew that only a select few from our movement would be willing to go to the stake.

go to the stake

mainly BRITISH, OLD-FASHIONED

If you say that you would go to the stake to defend a principle or aim, you mean that you believe in it completely and would do anything to prove it. It's certainly not a cause that I would go to the stake for. Note: A stake is a wooden post. In the past, people were sometimes tied to a stake and burned alive for refusing to give up beliefs which the church considered heretical and wrong.