{"id":4492,"date":"2025-03-20T08:53:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T12:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4492"},"modified":"2025-03-20T08:53:54","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T12:53:54","slug":"the-crusades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/20\/the-crusades\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crusades"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Each day this Lent we\u2019re looking at major \u201cturning points\u201d in Christian history \u2013 moments or seasons in which the story of God\u2019s people took an important and often unexpected turn. \u00a0<\/em>

\u201cWith 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\u201d (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\u2019s 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. \u00a0

But the greatest tragedy is that these misadventures happened in the name of Jesus.

As the 11th<\/sup> 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 an assembly that quickly took on the atmosphere of a pep rally.

His sermon was visionary and emotional. \u201cA horrible tale has gone forth\u2026an accursed race utterly alienated from God\u2026has invaded the lands of Christians and depopulated them by sword, plundering, and fire\u2026 Tear that land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves!\u201d 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!<\/em> \u201cGod wills it! God wills it!\u201d

Emissaries crisscrossed Europe searching for knights, nobles, and financial investors willing to underwrite this holy mission.

Some participants cherished sincere religious motivations. The pope\u2019s voice was reckoned to be God\u2019s voice, and God\u2019s 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. \u00a0

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: \u201cMen 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\u2026\u201d 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\u2019t 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 \u201choly warriors\u201d walked away with many of the priceless treasures of art that had long found a secure home in the city. Historian Steven Runciman asserts, \u201cThere was never a greater crime against humanity than the Fourth Crusade.\u201d

Observers agree that this event inflicted a far deeper wound to the East-West relationship than the Great Schism of 1054.

Occasionally it\u2019s alleged that there was a so-called Children\u2019s Crusade \u2013 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 \u201ccrusades;\u201d 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\u2019 words at the end of the Sermon on the Mount: \u201cNot everyone who says to me, \u2018Lord, Lord,\u2019 will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven\u201d (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 \u2013 something we know all too well on this first day of spring.

When the medieval \u201cspiritual winter\u201d 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\u2019t get to have the last word on religion.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Each day this Lent we\u2019re looking at major \u201cturning points\u201d in Christian history \u2013 moments or seasons in which the story of God\u2019s people took an important and often unexpected turn. \u00a0 \u201cWith or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39,430,412],"class_list":["post-4492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-failure","tag-sin","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4494,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492\/revisions\/4494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}