I have always heard the Crusades were an example of Christian imperialism, greed, intolerance, and involved all sorts of injustices and evils against Jews and Muslims that have served as a source of bitterness between Christians and Muslims ever since. After reading, God’s Batallions: The Case for the Crusades by Rodney Stark, I realize that this story of the Crusades is not one that matches the historical record. Among other things, Stark argues for the following propositions:
- The Crusades began due to Muslim aggression against Christians, not a vision for Christian imperialism or the evangelization of Muslims.
- The Crusaders were not seeking to expand the Christian faith, but to defend pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem and to free Christians that had been conquered and subjugated by Muslims. The Crusades were wars of defense.
- Crusaders did not go on Crusades to gain wealth. Rather, Crusaders spent enormous amounts of money funding and sustaining their mission. Wealth flowed from Europe into the holy land, not the reverse.
- Only a small minority of knights joined the crusades. If there was great glory and wealth to be made from crusading, the small turnout is inexplicable.
- The two reasons most people joined the crusades was out of their need for penance (full forgiveness of sins was promised to all who went) and a desire to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims. Piety, not greed, motivated the crusaders.
- The Crusades were not a source of anger for Muslims against Christians until little more than 100 years ago.
- While there were some atrocities committed against Jews, Muslims, and Eastern Orthodox, these were not sanctioned by the church, were not characteristic of all crusades or crusading groups, and those who committed them were condemned by both the pope and the bishops.
- Muslims were not the poster children for tolerance, nor were the Christians the poster children for brutality.
- As for the notion that Muslim culture was enlightened, most of the cultural achievements attributed to Muslims (architecture, mathematics, medicine, etc.) were actually inherited from the people they conquered.
- In the Crusader kingdom, Muslims were never forced to convert and their lands were not confiscated. In fact, many preferred to live under Christian rule because taxes were lower and justice was meted out equally between Christians and Jews.
While the Crusades are not the highlight of Christian history, they are not the epitome of Christian evil either. They were necessary wars to stop Muslim aggression against Christians and to make it safe for Christians to make pilgrimages to the holy land. I encourage you to read the book and evaluate the evidence for yourself.
Thinking to Believe 
December 31, 2014 at 9:19 am
Still killed people in the name of a god. Still nonsense
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December 31, 2014 at 9:26 am
Great insight. I have been rather negligent in regards to the study of the crusades as my perceptions led me to believe it was not a Holy War, rather a war predicated on greed, warmongering, and injustice.
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December 31, 2014 at 11:02 am
The Christian /Muslim bitterness has existed since the Muslims lost their warmongering battles in their unsuccessful attempt to invade and conquer the world as Muslim radicals continue to proclaim today from mosque minarets and streets of European countries where Muslim immigrants have the freedom to denigrate the West with shouts by banner carrying protesters predicting eventual Westerndom downfall at the hands of Islamist extremists.
You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why he was fighting the Muslim Army at the Battle of Tours in 732? (The Battle of Tours was fought during the Muslim invasions of Western Europe in the 8th century. In the early 700s, after conquering the Iberian Peninsula, Umayyad forces pushed north into modern-day France. Initially meeting little resistance, they were able to gain a foothold and began launching attacks against Aquitaine. At the Battle of Toulouse in 721, Duke Odo was able defeat the Muslim invaders and forced them out of his realm. Returning ten years later, Umayyad forces led by the governor of Al-Andalus, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, crushed Odo at the Battle of the River Garonne. Fleeing north, Odo sought aid from the Franks.
Coming before Charles Martel, the Frankish mayor of the palace, Odo was promised aid only if he promised to submit to the Franks. Agreeing, Martel began raising his army to meet the invaders. In the years previous, having assessed the situation in Iberia and the Umayyad attack on Aquitaine, Charles came to believe that a professional army, rather than raw conscripts, was needed to defend the realm from invasion. To raise the money necessary to build and train an army that could withstand the Muslim horsemen, Charles began seizing Church lands, earning the ire of the religious community.)
Do you want to ask people what happened in Constantinople and why today it is called Istanbul because they lost that fight in 1453? (The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire by an invading army of the Ottoman Empire on Tuesday, 29 May 1453. The capture of Constantinople and two other Byzantine splinter territories soon thereafter) marked the end of the Roman Empire, an imperial state which had lasted for nearly 1,500 years. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople also dealt a massive blow to Christendom, as the Ottoman armies thereafter were free to advance into Europe without an adversary to their rear.)
Want to ask the Venetian Fleet at the Battle of Lepanto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571? (The Battle of Lepanto took place on 7 October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of southern European Catholic maritime states, decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire in five hours of fighting on the northern edge of the Gulf of Corinth, off western Greece. The Ottoman forces sailing westwards from their naval station in Lepanto met the Holy League forces, which had come from Messina, Sicily, where they had previously gathered.
The victory of the Holy League prevented the Ottoman Empire expanding further along the European side of the Mediterranean. Lepanto was the last major naval battle in the Mediterranean fought entirely between galleys and has been assigned great symbolic importance by Catholic and other historians. Some historians argue that a Turkish victory could have led to Western Europe being overrun.)
Want to ask the Germanic and Austrian Knights why they were fighting the Muslims at the Gates of Vienna in 1683. (The Battle of Vienna is a battle that took place on 11 and 12 September 1683 after the imperial city of Vienna had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. It was a battle of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in league with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Holy League) versus the Muslim Ottoman Empire and chiefdoms of the Ottoman Empire, and took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna. The battle marked the first time Poland and the Holy Roman Empire had cooperated militarily against the Turks, and it is often (though debatably[) seen as a turning point in history, after which “the Ottoman Turks ceased to be a menace to the Christian world”. In the ensuing war that lasted until 1698, the Turks lost almost all of Hungary to the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I)
Islam is a religion, a theopolitical construct that has been doing wars since 622CE. Since the 7th century, 1388 years!
You need to get into the Quran and understand their precepts, the Surah, the Hadith and then you can really understand this is not a perversion, Muslims are doing exactly what this Book says. (Col. West: Allen Bernard West (born February 7, 1961) is an American political commentator, former member of the United States House of Representatives, and retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Florida’s 22nd congressional district in the House from 2011 to 2013.)
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January 1, 2015 at 12:16 pm
IN MEMORY OF THE TRUTH JOHN LENNON SAID IN SONG:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
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January 1, 2015 at 2:09 pm
Wow, Jason. This post makes me worry about you. Have you spent too much time around liberal evangelicals, so that now you are thinking Roman Catholics are true “Christians”?
Your comments should make no sense at all to a Born Again, Bible based saint whose fundamental definitions of the terms involved in this discussion, like “Christian, piety, forgiveness of sins, the church,” etc., are radically opposed to those of the RCC, way back then and still today.
Rodney Stark, the author, makes not such distinction because he is but a sociology professor at Baylor, the very-liberal Baptist college. He is not a Born Again Bible based believer, nor does he claim to be (e.g. -reference the article on him at Wikipedia). He is also a researcher and supporter of the Mormon church, as well, a position not uncommon these days among liberal Christians. They all serve “another Jesus, another gospel” (Gal. 1).
Who are you serving these days?
Desert Sage
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January 2, 2015 at 1:32 pm
Jason, What you think about the Roman Catholic Church?
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January 2, 2015 at 1:38 pm
That’s a wide open question. What specifically about the RCC do you have in mind?
Jason
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January 3, 2015 at 5:15 pm
And the WordPress world waits with bated breath as Jefferson formulates a series of questions for Jason about the Catholic Church. After being on pins and needles for 27 hours and counting Jefferson is still trying to figure out what he wants to know. BTW Jefferson, while you compile your list of specific questions for Jason, for starters, It is not, by the way, properly called the Roman Catholic Church, but simply the Catholic Church.
The term Roman Catholic is not used by the Church herself; it is a relatively modern term, and one, moreover, that is confined largely to the English language. The English-speaking bishops at the First Vatican Council in 1870, in fact, conducted a vigorous and successful campaign to insure that the term Roman Catholic was nowhere included in any of the Council’s official documents about the Church herself, and the term was not included.
Although the Diocese of Rome is central to the Catholic Church, this does not mean that the Roman rite, or, as is sometimes said, the Latin rite, is co-terminus with the Church as a whole; that would mean neglecting the Byzantine, Chaldean, Maronite or other Oriental rites which are all very much part of the Catholic Church today, as in the past.
https://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/churb3.htm
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January 5, 2015 at 10:17 am
Jason, shame on you for proclaiming Catholics are actually Christians !
How can you be so liberal to think that salvation belongs to those outside of the UPC ! Have you lost your mind Jason….don’t you know that we have the market cornered on salvation and that we certainly won’t let Catholics in with all there false doctrines, no way. They do everything wrong, they baptize wrong, they don’t speak in tongues and they pray to Mary to say the least…..what a bunch of false prophets….to hell with them all, every single Catholic that ever lived is damned to hell, they are NOT Christian.
The above is exactly what I “would” have said about 8 years ago…I would not say it today.
Judge not lest you be judged. I don’t think we can make sweeping generalizations on who is or isn’t born again, Catholic or not. Do they have false doctrines, yes, so does every other denomination including the UPC. The message of salvation by grace is for everyone, yes, even Catholics. If we measure salvation by a “to do list” then we have fallen from grace and are trying to earn God’s grace by works. This is no different than the Galatians who started in the Spirit and tried to continue using the Law.
Jason, sorry, I know this is off topic…..
Naz
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January 5, 2015 at 10:55 am
Odd that you should say this to Jason, Naz:
Jason did not use the word “Catholic” in his commentary. Ron Myrick used the word first in post # 5 and jefferson Post # 6. Jason used the acronym RCC in answering jefferson’s question and I put in my two cents worth Post # 8.
Your comment more reflects a rebuttal to Post # 5, not to Jason.
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January 5, 2015 at 12:33 pm
Leo, my comment was a “tongue in cheek” response to Jason based on the post by Ron Myrick to Jason regarding Catholicism.
You are correct, it is a rebuttal of post #5 and not really addressed to Jason. I am overly sensitive these days to comments like this, there is too much of this going on in the so called “church world”….it has to stop.
Naz
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January 5, 2015 at 12:35 pm
Naz:
Understood….
Leo
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January 5, 2015 at 2:26 pm
In response to Naz, your key thoughts were: “Judge not lest you be judged. I don’t think we can make sweeping generalizations on who is or isn’t born again, Catholic or not…The message of salvation by grace is for everyone, yes, even Catholics.”
Really? At what point does some sort of discernment begin about who is and who is not a true Christian? As I mentioned in the earlier post, are Mormons also Christians, as they claim? Then also, how about Jehovah’s Witnesses? Are Universalist Unitarians and New Age Spiritualists like Oprah also Christians as they claim? Are Muslims our spiritual brothers because they say they worship the one god of Abraham and call Jesus a prophet?
Was the new pope correct in inviting Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists to the Vatican to pray for peace and unity together, and was he correct to say that they are all “brothers”?
Discernment is not “judging” as you assert. We are called to wisely discern the truth. Jesus certainly taught, ““Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” but should be understood as the Amplified Bible says: “Do not judge and criticize and condemn others, so that you may not be judged and criticized and condemned yourselves (Matt.7:1).” Please read the context of Matt. 7 and note how Jesus, in the very same teaching immediately spoke of the “narrow gate”, “false prophets”, and “false disciples,” all of which clearly call for discernment on our part. Jesus clearly taught in another context, “Be honest in your judgment and do not decide at a glance (superficially and by appearances); but judge fairly and righteously (John 7:24 Amp).”
BTW, I am not a member of the UPC church, although, as an educated Bible teacher, I am very familiar with all their teaching. I accept, as Scripture clearly directs us, all who have been Born Again according to the Gospel of grace as my brothers and sisters in the faith (including Jason and probably you). Catholics are not taught the Gospel of grace, but another gospel, one of works, as do all the pseudo-Christian cults. Its ironic that you would charge me with supporting salvation by works, when all I am speaking out for is clear discernment. (See 1 John, 1-2 Timothy, etc.)
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January 6, 2015 at 10:49 am
Ron, I did not know you were not a member of the UPC and should not have assumed, sorry about that. I too ascribe to the Gospel of grace and am your brother in Christ.
My point about the Catholics is that we don’t know on a person by person basis what God has done in the lives of the these believers. I don’t disagree or argue that their core message is one of salvation by works, but not all Catholics believe the same thing or even really know or understand what their denomination teaches. I am a former Catholic also. The farther you get from the message of Christ obviously it is less likely that these people would be born again as in the case of the Muslims, Buddhists etc… As for the Catholics, they still believe in Jesus Christ even though many of their doctrines are in error. However, they are not the only ones in error.
As a former member of a UPC church, I learned that at least for the particular church I belonged to, what started out as a liberating message of grace, eventually morphed into a performance based, works based salvation although no one would openly admit that. It was all double-talk. On the one hand God forgave you of all your sins past, present and future, but then on the other hand you would lose your salvation unless you did A,B,C and D…..I eventually found that there was a lot of error in their teachings. That said, I still considered the people of that church as brothers in Christ, even to this day.
So from my perspective there is a lot of error in churches and I am very hesitant to make sweeping generalizations about any Christian denomination, including Catholics, regrading an individual’s salvation. That would make me a judgmental person and even “racist” since I would be grouping all Catholics in the same boat.
As you yourself quoted Jesus,
“Be honest in your judgment and do not decide at a glance (superficially and by appearances); but judge fairly and righteously (John 7:24 Amp).”
Naz
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January 7, 2015 at 11:50 am
Naz— Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I agree with you that, “we don’t know on a person by person basis what God has done [or is doing] in the lives of the these believers [or, often, seekers who are not yet Born Again]. So, I concur, we should never “judge” individuals rashly based on their current religious association, whatever that may be. We should preach the gospel to all people, and expect them to grow in their understanding once converted, just as we have in our individual lives.
Like you, I have broad experience in the faith, walking the Way for over forty years, from young adulthood, after being radically regenerated during the Jesus People revival in 1970. I have ministered the gospel of grace to Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many more of various persuasions. It certainly is the truth, love and gracious tolerance of the true Gospel that draws souls away from deception and into the light. Never is it more legalism or harsh condemnation. But we don’t help anyone by treating unsaved religious people as if they are Born Again when they are not.
Back to the original point of this discussion, I disagree with your labelling of the Catholic Church as a “denomination,” just as I disagreed with Jason assuming that the Crusaders were “Christian.” The Medieval Crusaders were nothing more than the Catholic jihadists of their day, not even close to saints of God. To form armies and fight to free Jerusalem for pilgrims is the opposite of NT teaching (see John 4, “in Spirit and in truth,” John 18, “my kingdom is not of this world”, etc.)
By any objective standards, the Catholic institution is not a “denomination” but a pseudo-christian cult. If one only considers a common list of cultish attributes, the Catholic Church fits most. It has since its inception been a religion involving salvation by fleshly works and social-political membership, in complete opposition to the central message of the New Covenant.
I fully realize that every year fewer and fewer Evangelical Christians agree with this position. I have watched the “ecumenical” movement continue to spread and influence Born Again leaders to compromise the truths of the gospel for the sake of partnering with the Catholic Church (and recently, even Mormons and others) for common political goals, like fighting modernism and immorality, hunger and poverty. But is this not what the New Testament teaches us to do.
Discernment is desperately needed in these times. The primary theme of the Last Days teaching of Jesus was, “Be careful that no one leads you astray” (Matt. 24-25, etc.). Paul clearly warned, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Tim.4).
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January 7, 2015 at 12:49 pm
Ron, I think we are in agreement here……….
I fully understand and agree with you on where the Catholic church stands in light of biblical truth. Yes, they are far from it.
Personally, I don’t know why anybody that has the knowledge of the grace of God through Jesus Christ would be associated with the Catholic church. That said, I have known Catholics that do not follow some of the Catholic ways (such as praying to Mary, etc…) but still choose to remain in the Catholic church anyways. I know this would be the exception but this is where I leave the final judgment to God. Generally speaking, I agree with you that probably most Catholics are NOT born again based on what they are being taught.
As for the crusades, I didn’t read the book in this post, but I have always assumed that the crusades were very “un-Christiian”. I suppose I will suspend my judgment on that until I read the book.
Thanks for the discourse.
Naz
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January 8, 2015 at 11:08 am
Thanks for your response. I’m glad we’re in agreement. I too have run into people in the pseudo-christian cults (not only Catholic, but also LDS and JW) who are very sincere and zealous in their religious beliefs and practices. For example, I have many distant relatives in Arizona who are millionaires and have standards of pure living that most “holiness” churches would applaud, and many lukewarm mega-church evangelicals would idolize.
So I intimately know the temptation that many modern Christians fall into, influenced by prosperity and works doctrines. One can easily begin to accept these people as “fellow believers,” since they live commendable lives, have identical political convictions, and use the same vocabulary to describe their relationship with God. The modern Catholic church and the LDS churches have been actively borrowing the terminology, organization, and even music and worship practices of Evangelicals in recent decades. But when you look more deeply, when you ask the detailed questions, they do not hold to the fundamental truths of the Bible, and they have not been regenerated.
Be very careful when reading a book like “God’s Battalions!” Keep in mind that it was written by a confessed agnostic-evolutionist-sociologist whose view of the “Church” and general world view presumptions will have influenced his research and writing. Spending hours “listening” to his monologue of “facts and ideas” is potentially dangerous and can lead the reader astray. If one insists on reading such a source, it would be wise to add a second and third source, especially contrasted by someone with more fundamentally Biblical presumptions.
Thanks to Naz and to Jason for bringing up this subject. I consider it highly important.
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January 12, 2015 at 5:11 pm
I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness.
And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.
He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him—the words that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.
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January 14, 2015 at 7:39 pm
“Off topic” is religious doublespeake for censorship.
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