Yeah, well, but what about the Crusades?

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

An interesting perspective on the Crusades that doesn't vilify Christians OR Muslims..

 

Yeah, Well, but What About the Crusades?

 

By Kevin DeYoung

 

We are coming up on a thousand years, and Christians still haven’t made up for the Crusades. No matter how many times Billy Graham makes the most admired list, we’ll still have the Crusades to deal with. When President Obama encouraged humility in denouncing ISIS today in light of the Crusades from close to a millennium ago, he may have been making a clumsy moral equivalence argument, but he was only voicing what many Americans (and many Christians) have articulated before. Remember the faux confessional booths from way back in the 2000s when Christians would apologize to non-Christians for the Crusades? If there is one thing in our collective history that we cannot apologize for enough, it is the history conjured up by pictures like the one in this post.

Yet, for all the times we’ve lamented the Crusades, how many of us know more than two sentences about them? Isn’t it wise to know at least a little something about the Crusades before we borrow them to get an advanced degree in self-recrimination?

 

A few years ago I picked up a copy of The New Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden, a history professor at Saint Louis University. It’s a fascinating book. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know more, but not too much (it’s only 225 pages), about the Crusades.

 

What Are We Talking About?

The Crusades refer to a series of military expeditions over several centuries, beginning with the First Crusade in 1096 through the end of the Fifth Crusade in 1221, and continuing on in more sporadic fashion up until the Reformation. The term “Crusade” is not a medieval word. It is a modern word. It comes from crucesignati (“those signed by the cross”), a term used occasionally after the 12th century to refer to what we now call “crusaders.” Contrary to popular opinion, the Crusades did not begin as a holy war whose mission was to convert the heathen by the sword. In fact, very few of the crusaders saw their mission as an evangelistic one. The initial purpose of the Crusades, and the main military goal throughout the Middle Ages, was quite simply to reclaim Christian lands captured by Muslim armies.

 

The popular conception of barbaric, ignorant, cruel and superstitious crusaders attacking peaceful, sophisticated Muslims comes largely from Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Talisman (1825) and Sir Steven Runciman’s three-volume History of the Crusades (1951-54), the latter of which concludes with the famous summation now shared by most everyone: “The Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

 

Scott and Runciman did much to shape the entirely negative view of the Crusades, but it isn’t as if they had no material to work with. The Crusades were often barbaric and often produced spectacular failures. Children died needlessly. Coalitions splintered endlessly. Jews were sometimes persecuted mercilessly. Ancient cities were ransacked foolishly. And on occasion (e.g., the Wendish Crusade), infidels were forced to convert or die, while the crusaders holding the swords were guaranteed immortality. In short, many of the Christians who went to war under the sign of the cross conducted themselves as if they knew nothing of the Christ of the cross.

 

But that’s not the whole story. The Crusades is also the story of thousands of godly men, women and children who sacrificed time, money and health to reclaim holy lands in distant countries overrun by Muslims. The Christians of the East had suffered mightily at the hands of the Turks and Arabs. It was only right, it seemed to medieval Christians, to go and help their fellow Christians and reclaim their land and property.

 

Not What You May Think

Many crusaders were knights (and their families) who left lands and titles. They saw their journey to the Middle East as an act of piety, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the center of the earth and the center of their spiritual world. To be sure, the crusaders could be arrogant and savage, but they could also be pious, compassionate (e.g., the Hospitallers) and courageous.

 

And they did not always fail. The First Crusade, unlike most of the others, actually worked. Against all odds, a fractious group of Christians made their way from Western Europe to the Middle East and conquered two of the best-defended cities in the world (Antioch and Jerusalem). Their triumph was nothing short of remarkable, and for the crusaders, it signaled nothing less than the hand of God restoring his city to his people.

 

A popular poem of the 15th century captured the heartbeat of the crusading spirit:

Fifteenth century/ Our faith was strong in th’ Orient/ It ruled in all of Asia/ In Moorish lands and Africa/ But now for us these lands are gone/ ‘Twould even grieve the hardest stone …We perish sleeping one and all/ The wolf has come into the stall/ And steals the Holy Church’s sheep/ The while the shepherd lies asleep/ Four sisters of our Church you find/ They’re of the patriarchic kind/ Constantinople, Alexandria/ Jerusalem, Antiochia/ But they’ve been forfeited and sacked/ And soon the head will be attacked.

We are right to deplore the cruelty meted out by crusading Christians, but should not ignore their plight. Christian lands had been captured. Surely, they thought, this could not stand. For an American, it would have been as if Al-Qaeda sacked Washington D.C. following 9/11, set up shop for Bin Laden in the White House, and turned the Lincoln Memorial into a terrorist training center. It would be unthinkable, cowardly even, for no one to storm the city, liberate its captives and return our nation’s capital to its rightful owners. We should never excuse the atrocities that occurred under the banner of the cross during the Crusades, but we should, at least, take pause to understand why they set out on what seems to us to be a fool’s errand.

 

We should also resist the temptation to blame present day Muslim extremism on the Crusades. This is not to say that the Crusades don’t loom large in the Islamic consciousness. It is to say that this was not always the case. The Crusades were always a big deal in the Christian West, but for Muslims, as late as the 17th century, it was just another futile attempt by the infidels to halt the inevitable expansion of Islam. From the time of the Prophet Mohammed through the Reformation, Muslims conquered three-fourths of Christian lands. Once the Muslims united under Saladin, the crusaders, themselves divided, were no match for the armies of Islam.

 

The Crusades were not a major factor in shaping the Islamic world. The Crusades were just another unsuccessful attempt to thwart the spread of Islam. The term for the Crusades, harb-al-salib, was only introduced in the Arab language in the mid-19th century, and the first Arabic history of the Crusades was not written until 1899. Because the crusades were unsuccessful, they simply did not matter much to Muslims. But all this began to change when European nations colonized  Muslim nations and brought their schools and textbooks, which hailed the gallant crusaders and heroic knights who tried to bring Christianity and civilization to the Middle East. Like sports, like war, like life—when you’re winning, you don’t care who’s losing; but when you’re losing, it matters a lot who’s beating you.

 

A Little Caution Goes a Long Way

The point of this article is not to make us fans of the Crusades, but to make us more careful in our denunciation of them. We fight for nation-states and democracy. They fought for religion and holy lands. Their reasons for war seem wrong to us, but no more than our reasons would seem wrong to them. Madden writes:

It is easy enough for modern people to dismiss the crusades as morally repugnant and cynically evil. Such judgments, however, tell us more about the observer than the observed. They are based on uniquely modern (and, therefore, Western) values. If, from the safety of our modern world, we are quick to condemn the medieval crusader, we should be mindful that he would be just as quick to condemn us. Our infinitely more destructive wars waged for the sake of political and social ideologies would, in his opinion, be lamentable wastes of human life. In both societies, the medieval and the modern, people fight for what is most dear to them. That is fact of human nature that is not so changeable.

Maybe the crusaders can teach us something after all. Maybe their example can force us to examine what we hold most dear. In America this may be freedom, democracy and a hard fought peace in a world of terror. In the church, we will establish different priorities.

 

We are in a battle, and the Master has called us to fight—not with the weapons of the world, but with the word of God and prayer; not against our neighbors, but against the world, the flesh and the devil. Some things are worth fighting for. Some things are worth dying for. Our land? Perhaps. Our Lord? Always. So let our struggle be valiant, our suffering be purposeful and our strategy be Christ’s, who triumphed over the enemy not by taking life, but by giving his own.

 

http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/249789-yeah-well-crusades.html/3

[JoeMo]

I'm reading a book "Jerusalem - A Biography" by Simon Sebag Monitiore; and he takes pretty much the same position as is shown in Pam's post.  In fact, it seems like the Crusaders who decided to stay in the Middle East after they recaptured Antioh and Jerusalem actually got along quite well with the Muslims. The book even claims that Christians, Jews, and Muslims actually shared the Dome of the Rock (which Crusaders called "the Temple of Solomon") and the Al-Asqa Mosque well into the 12th century. 

[joeb]

I guess I simply do not understand why I should apologize for someone else's "sins".  Why would I feel guilty for the Crusades?  It happened a long time before I was born.  I see the same thing in the slavery issue here in the US.  Why should I feel guilty for something that happened before my ancestors even emigrated here?  

 

All I see at work here is an agenda to make people feel guilty for that which they have no control over and no responsibility for.  It's like "liberal white guilt".  I see all this as attempts to manipulate for who is easier to manipulate than someone who feels guilty about something?  Guilt can make people to submit to things they would never otherwise submit to, and our society right now uses the club of political correctness as a club to engender guilt where none actually exists.

[Bravus]

I don't think it's so much about guilt as simply about perspective - and the avoidance of ignorance.

It's when someone decides they are in a position to criticise others for something that it's as well to ensure that they are not guilty of the same thing.

Some facets of Islam - small ones - are unquestionably violent today. Most factions of Christianity are not - unless, for example, American wars are taken to be Christian wars. I don't believe they are, but some of President Bush 43's rhetoric would disagree with me on that point.

I think that the article Pam shared is important because it says, among other things, "The Crusaders were trying to win back land taken over by the Muslims". Some of the Muslim violence today is very much about trying to take back land taken over by Israel.

In the end, it's not about guilt, it's about recognising our shared humanity. No race and no religion is unalloyed good or evil. Our motives are mixed, and the reasons we say we do things are not always the real reasons. Accidents of history and wealth and security mean different people are violent at different times, and that needs to be resisted, but no-one is in a position to say "it's them but never us".

It's us. Us humans.

[8thdaypriest]

I've another book to recommend:

"The Politically Incorrect guide to ISLAM and the Crusades".

 

Seems - if the "Christians" had not halted the spread of ISLAM, Pam and I would be wearing burqas.  

[Tobiwan]

If christians had taken to heart and mind the Christ like way of dealing people, I wonder would the Muslem challenge be as large as it is today.  If the crusaders had been more interested in the people of the area then the land and shrines that could be built.  children's crusade?  give me a break.  christians sent children to fight for buildings and land.  If they had focused on taking the good news about God.....

 

It is probably more complicated then this, but "what the world needs is Jesus, just a glimpse of Him

[8thdaypriest]

When I hear the ISIS stories on the news, I can't help thinking about the LORD's commands concerning the cities of the Canaanites.

 

Deuteronomy 20:16 "But of the cities of these peoples which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive," (NKJ)

 

Deuteronomy 2:24 "`Rise, take your journey, and cross over the River Arnon. Look, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Begin to possess it, and engage him in battle. 25 `This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the nations under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you, and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you.' (NKJ)

 

Deuteronomy 7:1 "When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 "and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 5 "But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. (NKJ)

 

CONCERNING CITIES THAT WERE "FAR" - NOT WITHIN THE PROMISED TERRITORY

 

Deuteronomy 20:10 "When you go near a city to fight against it, then proclaim an offer of peace to it. 11 "And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace, and open to you, then all the people who are found in it shall be placed under tribute to you, and serve you. 12 "Now if the city will not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 "And when the LORD your God delivers it into your hands, you shall strike every male in it with the edge of the sword. 14 "But the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself; and you shall eat the enemies' plunder which the LORD your God gives you. 15 "Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations. (Deu 20:10 NKJ)

 

Seems like ISIS was reading Deuteronomy.

 

CONCERNING BEAUTIFUL WAR CAPTIVES

 

Deuteronomy 21:10 "When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hand, and you take them captive, 11 "and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her and would take her for your wife, 12 "then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. 13 "She shall put off the clothes of her captivity, remain in your house, and mourn her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14 "And it shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall set her free, but you certainly shall not sell her for money; you shall not treat her brutally, because you have humbled her." (NKJ)

 

It seems that ISIS is practicing "ancient" war tactics.

 

We forget that such things are described in our Bible, and were done at the command of Yahweh.

 

And I think that we forget what the "religion" of those ancient Canaanite peoples involved.  Child sex slavery, child sacrifice by burning or burying (in a foundation), fertility rites (women required to give themselves to the Temples for use by male "worshipers" (for periods of time). 

 

IT WAS A BRUTAL TIME!!

[Gail]

EGW had an interesting view of the Crusades. Because the church was occupied with these wars the Reformation had space to develop.

[LifeHiscost]

 

It seems that ISIS is practicing "ancient" war tactics.

 

We forget that such things are described in our Bible, and were done at the command of Yahweh.

 

And I think that we forget what the "religion" of those ancient Canaanite peoples involved.  Child sex slavery, child sacrifice by burning or burying (in a foundation), fertility rites (women required to give themselves to the Temples for use by male "worshipers" (for periods of time). 

 

 

I'm so happy and here's the reason why. Jesus took my burden all away.

 

27“But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you. 28Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. 29If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also. If someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also. 30Give to anyone who asks; and when things are taken away from you, don’t try to get them back. 31Do to others as you would like them to do to you.

32“If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! 33And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you get credit? Even sinners do that much! 34And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit? Even sinners will lend to other sinners for a full return.

35“Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. 36You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate....Luke 6

 

Shabbat Shalom! God is Love!  Jesus saves!

[Bravus]

So in this thread we have one Christian saying "Love your enemies" and another saying "Kill 'em all", and both quoting the Book...

[CoAspen]

So in this thread we have one Christian saying "Love your enemies" and another saying "Kill 'em all", and both quoting the Book...

 

What!! Extremism amongst SDA's??

[LifeHiscost]

…7So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. 8Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor....1 Cor 3

 

God is Love!  Jesus saves! 

[phkrause]

So in this thread we have one Christian saying "Love your enemies" and another saying "Kill 'em all", and both quoting the Book...

Does that "Book" say both those things??

[Bravus]

It does, and therein lies the problem. A choice must be made. What we choose defines our actions. The point is, even without the Book, the same choice must be made. In that case, how much help is the Book?