The Crusades, good or bad?

[Knee V]

If we last another several thousand years, I'm curious to see what becomes of Islam in that time.

 

[Albion]

I'll tend to agree with you about that characteristic of Islam - once it takes root somewhere, it seems that it's there to stay.

I have a hunch that the test case will be somewhere like Dearborn, Michigan where there's a large Muslim population but not primarily immigrants, living in a routine American setting of longstanding. If, in time, they develop some kind of "Reformed Islam" or culturally slide into the great American melting pot, that'll be our answer....or if they don't, it'll still be the answer.

 

[Bethesda]

"When Christ disarmed Peter, He disarmed every soldier." - Tertullian

The Crusades were a bad thing. Taking up the sword in the name of Jesus is like prostituting oneself in the name of chastity.

-CryptoLutheran

Interesting quote - one can of course discuss what Jesus and Paul did or didn't say to the Roman centurions who were believers. Tertullian of course also took a fairly ascetic view on many things (women should be veiled, the unmarried state is the highest etc) - ie like any other Christian (eg Martin Luther mentioned on another thread) he was a fallible human being with a variety of opinions. You will never get 2 Christians to agree on everything even though sometimes it seems on this board that that is what some people think should happen. Given say that most police officers in the world carry guns, so is having a Christian Police Association (or similar) thus the same as a Christian Burglars or Bank Robbers Society?

 

[Michael Snow]

"When Christ disarmed Peter, He disarmed every soldier." - Tertullian

The Crusades were a bad thing. Taking up the sword in the name of Jesus is like prostituting oneself in the name of chastity.

-CryptoLutheran

A great English preacher who is the hero of many evangelicals and Calvinists would agree. But it seems they have never heard these words by the positions they take in supporting war.
Charles Spurgeon: On War and Christians | QUOTES

 

[Bethesda]

A great English preacher who is the hero of many evangelicals and Calvinists would agree. But it seems they have never heard these words by the positions they take in supporting war.
Charles Spurgeon: On War and Christians | QUOTES

Though people like Oliver Cromwell and many other Puritans took a different view as did those who founded the Naval Military and Air Force Bible Society (in that they did not presumably distribute the Bible with the aim of causing those in the military to leave it per se!)
History

And interestingly someone from the Calvin Theological Seminary wrote in Phd thesis at that institution
http://www.calvin.edu/library/database/dissertations/Larson_Mark_James_ABS.pdf
'An aspect of Calvin’s teaching on the state relates to his position on war. This study shows that Calvin positioned himself in continuity with the medieval just war tradition established by Augustine of Hippo. He did not believe in either element of what constituted a holy war—authorization by the church or the prosecution of war without restraint. He stood within the mainstream tradition when it came to both the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello. He always insisted that the private individual may only offer passive resistance to a ruler’s ungodly commands. A parliamentary body alone is authorized by God to resist a tyrannical prince.'

 

[Root of Jesse]

The crusades were self serving in many ways. Many of the men bought indulgences from the church which forgave them ahead of time for any sin they might comitt. As they traveled across the continent, they robbed, raped, and killed at will. And all this was done in the name of Christ????? that had nothing to do with rescuing Christians or Jerusalem. In fact, they killed Christians and Jews in Jerusalem. How did that glorify God????

grandma

Ma'am, with all due respect, you cannot, now, nor could you ever, buy indulgences. Secondly, an indulgence does not get anyone out of hell. That's a total mis-read of what an indulgence is, and what an indulgence does.

First, to gain an indulgence, you must have already repented of a certain sin, and promise never to do it again (whether or not you're successful in keeping that promise), then you must do works of mercy.
While the Church promised heaven to Crusaders who went on crusade, it was for those killed in honorable service to the Church. Not raping and pillaging.

Lots of people do things in the name of Christ which do nothing to serve Him, Catholics included. The purpose of the Crusades, and the promises made (including the conditions placed on those promises) were honorable. Some of what was done in the name of the Church was definitely not in the name of the Church, and those who served their own ambitions were not absolved of those sins.

 

[nota]

Prior to the First Crusade there were thousands of Jews in Jewish communities up and down the Rhine. After the First Crusade those communities were all but completely destroyed.

Whatever good that might have been the original motivation behind the First Crusade was thoroughly extinguished right from the onset as Christian crusaders committed gross acts of mass violence against innocents all along the journey.

The Crusades are nothing but a massive blight on the reputation of the Christian Church. Christians murdering Muslims, Christians murdering Jews, Christians murdering Pagans, and Christians murdering Christians--that is the legacy of the Crusades.

-CryptoLutheran

You summed it up poignantly and precisely.

Ah, the glory of just wars!
The end justfies the means.
The superior chosen ones divinely called to enslave or exterminate those who are deemed inferior or subhuman. Or just to keep the rabble down.
Either way, it is Manifest Destiny marching on.....

nota

 

[StarOfSorrow]

The Crusades were a series of religious expeditionary wars blessed by Pope Urban II and the Catholic Church, with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem. Jerusalem was and is a sacred city and symbol of all three major Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). The background to the Crusades was set when the Seljuk Turks decisively defeated the Byzantine army in 1071 and cut off Christian access to Jerusalem. The Byzantine emperor, Alexis I, feared that all Asia Minor would be overrun. He called on western Christian leaders and the papacy to come to the aid of Constantinople by undertaking a pilgrimage or a crusade that would free Jerusalem from Muslim rule. Another cause was the destruction of many Christian sacred sites and the persecution of Christians under the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim.

The crusaders comprised military units of Roman Catholics from all over western Europe, and were not under unified command. The main series of Crusades, primarily against Muslims in the Levant, occurred between 1095 and 1291. Historians have given many of the earlier crusades numbers. After some early successes, the later crusades failed and the crusaders were defeated and forced to return home. Several hundred thousand soldiers became Crusaders by taking vows; the Pope granted them plenary indulgence. Their emblem was the cross — the term "crusade" is derived from the French term for taking up the cross. Many were from France and called themselves "Franks," which became the common term used by Muslims.

The term "crusade" is also used to describe religiously motivated campaigns conducted between 1100 and 1600 in territories outside the Levant, usually against pagans, heretics, and peoples under the ban of excommunication for a mixture of religious, economic, and political reasons. Rivalries among both Christian and Muslim powers led also to alliances between religious factions against their opponents, such as the Christian alliance with the Islamic Sultanate of Rûm during the Fifth Crusade.

The Crusades had major political, economic, and social impact on western Europe. It resulted in a substantial weakening of the Christian Byzantine Empire, which fell several centuries later to the Muslim Turks. The Reconquista, a long period of wars in Spain and Portugal (Iberia), where Christian forces reconquered the peninsula from Muslims, is closely tied to the Crusades.

 

[football5680]

Bad, only because the goals were not accomplished.

Many people have misconceptions about the crusades and think that they started because the Christians wanted to regain Jerusalem. The war started because the Turks were steadily taking land and growing and the Byzantine Empire knew they would have to fight them eventually so they wanted help. The pope backed this up because he understood that if he didn't stop them early enough Europe wouldn't have a chance at surviving. Reclaiming Jerusalem was a motivational factor to the people fighting but the goal was to resist the Turkish expansion into Europe. The goal of retaking Jerusalem definitely influenced some people who may have just ignored the Turks and said that it wasn't their problem. It was used as a tool to unify Europe against a common enemy.

 

[Knee V]

As a side note, there was never any such thing as the "Byzantine" Empire. There was simply the Roman Empire, whose capital city for about 1,000 years was Consantinople.

 

[pgp_protector]

What do you think of the Crusades? Good or bad?

Good or bad for whom?