the Crusades

There is an oft-quoted piece of Internet lore known as "Godwin's Law", which more or less states that the longer an online discussion continues, the greater the chance there will be a statement related to Nazis or Hitler. I think a similar rule holds: the longer an online discussion about Christianity continues, the greater the chance there will be a statement related to the Crusades.

I'm certainly not going to try to defend the Crusades; that's the rhetorical counterpart of a Mission Impossible. It's not my place, either, to defend or ask forgiveness for actions which I had nothing whatsoever to do with. However, I will try to put this dark period of history in proper context.

First, no action performed by a nominal Christian implicates Christianity itself. If Norman claims to be a bicycle repairman but then fails to repair a bike properly, that wouldn't mean that bicycle repair is a lot of hooey or that all bicycle repairmen are crooks. Norman may have been lying when he said he was a bicycle repairman. He may have been a bicycle repairman, but a bad one. He may have been a good repairman, but had an off day. I realize that comparing bicycle repair to the Crusades is ludicrous, but I'm only trying to illustrate the faultiness of the argument by reapplying it to a different situation. Moreover, I will go a step further. I assert that someone who participates in a bloody Crusade is not a Christian or follower of Jesus. Or, to put it another way, someone who has interpreted Christianity to allow for a Crusade has twisted it beyond recognition. A Crusade is not a Christian action.

Second, the Crusades happened during one of the times in history when church and state were all tangled up into a gnarled mess. Read some of the history of the Middle Ages; it's a sordid tale. Kings claiming to be God's Gift to Man, church officials running various pieces of government (remember cardinal Richelieu from the Three Musketeers?), etc. Jesus lived during the time of the Romans, yet He didn't overthrow the government and place the disciples in charge. In fact, I've heard it argued that the disciples were often confused why He didn't do so. Jesus' mode of operation was not force, and there's an excellent reason for this: forced conversions are not conversions. One can't force people to be good, at least not in the way that Jesus kept describing: from the inside out (showing the condition of the heart by the attitudes that naturally flow out--the "fruit"), rather than from the outside in (keeping stringent laws but not having inner devotion--the Pharisees' "white-washed tombs"). The Crusades were carried out by governments that had usurped the true Christian community. To return to the increasingly-strained bicycle repairman analogy, this would be like the town mayor declaring that the holy cause of bicycle repair justifies ordering the police department to demolish all motorized vehicles. Again, Christians did not wage the Crusades; unchecked governments that paid lip service to Christian virtue and humility waged the Crusades. As I've heard, "the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman". By the way, from what I can tell, government entanglement in other religions hasn't done them any favors, either, in endearing them to unbelievers.

Third, if one insists on tallying the good and bad that have come from Christianity over the course of its existence, I think it's more than a little disingenuous to bring up the Crusades but neglect to mention the sacrificial giving performed under the same banner in countless times and places. It's impossible to state, for example, how many servings of soup or how much education outweigh one killing. Ultimately, I think the Crusades are the exception, not the rule. At the very least people must admit that those who have carried Christianity's legacy through the years have done a mixed job of it.