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Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.
“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion” (Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist).
A number of deeply regrettable things have happened over the course of Christian history.
But nothing seems to top the crusades.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that at least some of the turmoil and bitterness we read in the never-ending news reports from the Middle East are distant echoes of things that happened more than 900 years ago. The crusades remain a festering open wound.
But the greatest tragedy is that these misadventures happened in the name of Jesus.
As the 11th century drew to a close, a wily and ambitious pope named Urban II faced a laundry list of challenges. Land-hungry nobles were confiscating property throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Knights were running amuck, seemingly looking for ways to release pent-up energies. Muslims dominated the Holy Land, controlling a key pilgrimage destination for Europeans. And Urban’s spiritual counterpart in the East, the Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople, was humbly asking him for help in keeping the Saracen Turks at bay.
The pope yearned to bring peace and unity to Christendom. What if he proposed a military venture that might simultaneously address all of these concerns?
Urban gathered key leaders at the Council of Clermont in 1095 – an assembly that quickly took on the atmosphere of a pep rally.
His sermon was visionary and emotional. “A horrible tale has gone forth…an accursed race utterly alienated from God…has invaded the lands of Christians and depopulated them by sword, plundering, and fire… Tear that land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves!” In a page taken directly from the Muslim playbook, the pope promised that anyone who participated would be forgiven all his sins, and if slain in battle would be granted immediate access to heaven.
A cheer went up from the crowd. Deus vult! Deus vult! “God wills it! God wills it!”
Emissaries crisscrossed Europe searching for knights, nobles, and financial investors willing to underwrite this holy mission.
Some participants cherished sincere religious motivations. The pope’s voice was reckoned to be God’s voice, and God’s people should respond. There also seems little doubt that others imagined an armed invasion might be an excellent way to accumulate treasure. Still others were simply eager to test their fighting skills in combat.
The First Crusade marched through Constantinople. Tensions ran high. The spiritual leaders of both East and West, after all, had excommunicated each other only 40 years earlier.
Moving on, the troops conquered Antioch. Next they overwhelmed Jerusalem, indiscriminately slaughtering Muslims, Jews, and fellow Christians. An eyewitness left this account: “Men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers…” This was hardly a moment that sensitive souls could celebrate.
The crusaders organized the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. They then began constructing a defensive constellation of thick-walled castles, a number of which remain standing today.
It quickly became clear, however, that the struggle for Palestine and neighboring regions had just begun.
Well-organized Muslim forces struck back. New popes called for new assaults to retake the sacred real estate.
Of the five major crusades that were launched over a period of two centuries, only the first one accomplished its stated goals. The fourth one (1202-04) was a catastrophe. Those crusaders didn’t even bother venturing all the way to the Holy Land. They roared into Constantinople and unleashed an unconscionable wave of pillaging, looting, murder, and rape.
Mobs of “holy warriors” walked away with many of the priceless treasures of art that had long found a secure home in the city. Historian Steven Runciman asserts, “There was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.”
Observers agree that this event inflicted a far deeper wound to the East-West relationship than the Great Schism of 1054.
Occasionally it’s alleged that there was a so-called Children’s Crusade – a humble gathering of kids who were dispatched to the Holy Lands in the expectation that God would grant them victory simply because of their innocence. We can feel relieved that no evidence for such an initiative has ever been found.
By 1291, Muslims had recaptured all the territory that had been seized by the Europeans. The status quo was restored. The crusading age finally ground to a halt.
The legacy of that age endures as a tarnished chapter in the history of the Church, and a key source of present-day tension between Muslims and the so-called Christian West.
In the eyes of those outside our faith, it was painful when businessman Bill Bright named his far-reaching parachurch ministry Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as Cru); when Billy Graham identified his evangelistic rallies as “crusades;” and when President George W. Bush declared, in a post-9/11 speech, that America was now launching a crusade against terrorism.
Even after nine centuries, words still matter.
Looking back, how can we understand the crusades?
We can begin by taking seriously Jesus’ words at the end of the Sermon on the Mount: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). There is a world of difference, in other words, between authentic disciples of Jesus and those who represent him in name only. During many seasons of Christendom, there seemed to be far more of the latter than the former.
But seasons change – something we know all too well on this first day of spring.
When the medieval “spiritual winter” finally began to thaw, some of the most remarkable characters in the history of Christianity suddenly appeared on the scene.
One of them was named Francis.
And his remarkable legacy is one of the reasons that Nobel Prize-winning physicists don’t get to have the last word on religion.