Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, we want to take up the most misunderstood, distorted time in the history of Christianity and Islam, the relation between the two, and that is the Crusades. Islam is increasingly more and more in our headlines, in our daily lives, whether it's the Somalis in Minnesota, or whether it's Mayor Mamdani in New York, or whether it's Iran in the Middle East. In general, we are coming in increasing conflict with the religion of Islam.

And at the center of that relationship is a period when perhaps the Christian West was coming closest to defeating and beating back the aggressive nature of Islam. And that was during the period of the Crusades. So, so many misconceptions about them. So today, I wanted to begin to address those. And our title today is The Crusades, Brutal Holy War Against Islam, or a War of Resolve and Redemption.

Those are the two perspectives that we can take. Were the Crusades a Brutal Holy War Against Islam, or were they wars of resolve and redemption? The History of Religion author Karen Armstrong characterizes the West's efforts in the Crusades as a brutal holy war against Islam. And she blames the hostility between Christianity and Islam on Christianity, a religion with what she says is a long record of intolerance, inquisition, crusade, and persecution. While she says that Islam is, and I quote, a far more tolerant faith than Christianity.

And the Quran is a pluralistic scripture, which sees all rightly guided faiths as coming from God. Muslims are innocent bystanders, according to her, victims of the Crusades. Now, this is a prevalent view. This is the view that obtains in general her opinion. Ms. Armstrong, opinion represents most opinions on the Crusades today.

When seen through the eyes of people who lived it, however, the Crusades become understandable without excusing its excesses, that is. And there were excesses on both sides. So, unforgivable to the progressive is that although he did not, the medieval man should have behaved like a good progressive, right? Therefore, he's judged because the medieval man was not a good progressive. Richard the Lionhearted, for example, one of the great kings of England.

I love Richard the Lionhearted. He was noble and brave and swaggering. He was brutal and he was honest. He was passionate. He was deeply religious.

He was coarsely male, too. He would have belched and swore and drank and he would have smelled worse than any husband after two weeks hunting. None of these qualities, of course, fit the progressive picture. Very offensive to a militant feminist like Ms. Armstrong. No, it's the pencil-necked, man-bun, skinny-jean soy boy that she favors.

Not a man like Richard the Lionhearted. But against this, we maintain that the Crusades were a war of resolve and redemption, not a brutal holy war against Islam. No. So, let's examine the causes of the Crusades, shall we? That will give us a sense for why the Crusades were launched in the first place.

A very different day, a very different time. And we must be willing to put ourselves in their shoes before we judge them, okay? So, one of the causes, the first cause that we have here for the Crusades. Number one, the Crusades were launched as a response to prior Muslim aggression. This is foundational to understanding the Crusades, which point is rarely, if ever, brought up.

The Crusades were launched as a response to prior Muslim aggression. The first crusade, launched in AD 1096, was a delayed response to the prior invasion of Muslims into Christian lands. Christians of the East, in Byzantium, bore the brunt of brutality and conquest. For centuries, the West heard reports of these strange militant Bedouins coming from Arabia, who were sweeping through the lands of the Bible. And gradually, these vague reports clarified into an accurate picture of the Arab Saracens, with a strange new religion at the time.

And that new religion was cobbled from Christianity and Judaism and, frankly, the paganism of Arabia. But the Christian West was slow, very slow, to respond to the desperate need of her Eastern brothers. There were deep divisions between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome over who had authority over whom. And in the meantime, in all the bickering, why Islam conquered on and on and on. There were widening doctrinal and worship differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the distances between Rome and Constantinople as well, made close communication very difficult.

Only with difficulty, the passage of centuries when Islam conquered the Middle East, and Egypt, and North Africa, and Spain, and Byzantium, all did the Byzantine Emperor, finally, the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I, who ruled from AD 1081 to 1118. Finally, Emperor Alexius I swallowed his pride, and he appealed to the West for help. And Pope Urban II, who was at the time Pope in Rome, he roused the West from sleep to launch the first crusade. So, do not lose sight of this fact, dear listener. Islam did not appear in the lands it now subjugates.

That's Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Turkey. Islam did not appear with a wave of a wand from a magic fairy. No, Islam gained these lands by conquering with the sword, by offering the pagans of the land the option, convert or die. That is the basic deal that's offered to the pagan, convert or die. But the people of the book, that is the Bible, that would be Jews and Christians, they were required to pay the jizra, as it's called, that is the poll tax, and then come under the pact of Omar, as it's called, which is a brutal subjugating deal that's offered, if you will, the pact of Omar, and we'll cover that in the future.

Well, the crusades were launched as a response to prior Muslim aggression. Always keep that in mind. The crusades were launched as a response to prior Muslim aggression. Well, the second reason for the crusade, the second reason for the crusades, okay, persecution of Christians, persecution of Christians in the holy lands had increased. Yes, there had always been some persecution in the holy lands for pilgrims who were visiting from the West.

But under a new regime, persecution of Christians in the holy lands had increased. And that new regime, the nemesis, remember this name, the ascendancy of the Seljuk Turks, the ascendancy of the Seljuk Turks, very brutal people. The Seljuk Turks had recently swept into these lands from the steppes of Asia, defeating the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV at the Battle of Manzakurt in AD 1071. Now, that's a lot of historical fact in detail, but I encourage you to unpack it because it's very significant in our relationship with Islam and very important for understanding why the crusades were launched, the Seljuk Turks.

This defeat at Manzakurt in 1071 left all of Turkey open to conquest. And the Muslim Seljuk Turks conquered Jerusalem finally in 1077, subjecting the people to fresh persecutions, okay? Germain to the crusades is that they also persecuted Christian pilgrims who flocked to Jerusalem from all over the world. Understand this, dear listener. Their property of the pilgrims would be stolen by petty Turkish emirs soldiers who behaved like brigands.

Pilgrims would be kidnapped and held for ransom, even as the Taliban does today, like the missionaries held for ransom in Afghanistan. Or pilgrims traveling from the West would be killed or tortured at the whim of a local official. No pilgrim was safe from the predatory greed and bloodlust of the Turkish followers of the religion of peace. Keep in mind, dear listener, the importance of religious pilgrimage in these days. And the historian, Dr. Madden, in his concise history of the crusades, puts it this way, and I quote, from a distance, the crusades do look like great armies organized and directed by the church against the enemies of Christ.

But from within the ranks, it was a very different picture. Each crusader took a pilgrim's vow to reach the Holy Sepulchre. The crusader was a pilgrim first and foremost. Keep that in mind. The crusader was a pilgrim first and foremost.

The oath he swore was to God, not to the Pope or any other man, unquote, from Dr. Madden in his concise history of the crusades. So, to the medieval pilgrim, Jerusalem was a holy city where biblical kings like David and Solomon ruled, where prophets preached and were martyred, where our Lord himself ministered and was crucified, and where the apostles preached and were martyred. So, in the holy city were shrines and churches and relics and bones of the saints on every corner, where miracles were being performed and where the Lord would return.

This was the mindset, if you will, of the medieval pilgrim who journeyed to Jerusalem during this period. Those of you in our audience today who are LDS, for example, you Latter-day Saints, imagine for a moment if Osama bin Laden conquered the city of Nauvoo, turning the temple into a mosque or the temple in Salt Lake City in its precincts, and stopped you from going there. How would you feel? Multiply this religious feeling, and you might grasp the motivation of the crusader. His faith was being persecuted and destroyed in the land of its birth.

This is why the crusader swore an oath and was given a red cross to sew upon his cloak, and he would therefore be called the Crucisignati. Crucisignati, that is, the crusader, a man signed by the cross. In Latin, he was known as the Crucisignati, the crusader. Okay, that was our second reason for the crusades. The third reason for the crusades, there was a sincere desire by all to heal the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Sincere desire to heal the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Now, for centuries, the split between the Western Church, centered in Rome with the Pope, and the Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople with the Patriarch, had been festering this division. Differences over doctrine and worship styles and the division over who had the primacy, either Rome or Constantinople, all of these would stress the union to the breaking point. And this split became known as the Great Schism of A.D. 1054, another crucial point in history, the Great Schism of 1054 between the Eastern Church and the Western Church.

So, the crusades were one attempt to heal this breach. Understand this, rather than division and conflict, the crusades were an attempt to heal this breach in peace. On the side of the Eastern Orthodox Church, it was hoped that the Roman Catholic Church would find in salvation of the East that its true destiny lay in union with the Eastern Orthodox Church coming under its authority. On the side of the Roman Catholic Church, it was hoped that the Eastern Orthodox Church would find in being saved by the efforts of the crusaders that its true destiny lay in coming under its authority. Those were the expectations.

Now, both of these hopes would be in the long run dashed by the realities of human nature as it manifested itself in the history of the crusades. But at first, hopes ran very high that Jesus' words might be fulfilled, that as Jesus said in John chapter 17, they may be one even as we are one. Unquote. But, dear listener, do not neglect that the unity of the Church of Christ came very close to being realized in the desperate struggle between the Christian Church and militant, rapacious Islam. Yes.

Well, the fourth reason for the launching of the crusades, the West had the uneasy feeling that it would only be a matter of time before Islam conquered them. Yes, there was this feeling of inevitability unless something was done. The West had the uneasy feeling that it would only be a matter of time before Islam conquered them. The West found itself in the place of one of the two men in the old Zook about the charging bear, right? One stopped to put on his running shoes as the bear began to charge them both, and his friend said, why are you putting on running shoes?

Don't you know you can't outrun a bear? But the man replied, I don't have to outrun the bear, only you. Well, Islam was gobbling up the East, but unlike the bear, he was not going to stop with the East. Do you know how unstoppable Islam appeared to the West at this time, right? The 11th century, late 11th century.

Islam was moving ever westward across Anatolia, that is Asia Minor, and moving into Greece and would advance into the Balkan Peninsula all the way to the gates of Vienna. Who would stop her? Would the Muslim call to prayer be soon heard in the towers of the church in Rome instead of rebels? Unlike today, the people of the 11th century Europe had a realistic sense of Islam's ambitions, and they attempted to counter them, albeit a day late and a dollar short.

The Crusades were also a realistic appraisal of Islam's ambitions to transform the entire, what they call, Dar al-Harb, that is the house of war, that would be us, the unconverted, to transmit, transform us, the Dar al-Harb, the house of war, into the Dar al-Islam, the house of Islam. That was her ambition. So, do not be fooled, dear listener. The ambition of the ancient caliphs of Turkey have not changed. One wit from the ambitions of the first missionaries to our shores.

We have record of the first Muslim missionaries that came to America, and they said, our goal is to conquer America. This is from the first Muslim missionaries interviewed by the New York Times in New York City in 1920. So, after reviewing these reasons, dear listener, for launching the first crusade, it's apparent why we prefer the title, a war of resolve and redemption, rather than a brutal holy war against Islam. The word resolved to stand against the rising tide of jihad bearing down on them, and it was a war of redemption, since they set out to redeem the city of Jerusalem and their brothers who were in Constantinople.

So, we must also deal, then, with the myths that have grown up around the crusades. Yes, there are many myths that have grown up around the crusades, and I think I have time to treat at least one of them right now before we conclude. One of the great myths of the crusades is, number one, the crusades were launched by greedy men who calculated that they could plunder the hapless Muslims for their gold in their lands, right?

The caricature portrayed is of a sword-wielding mercenary who cold-heartedly plucks the gold ring from the poor Muslim woman and her children and sends it back to a miserly clergyman in Rome who's wringing his hands and exclaiming, more, more, right? That's the picture of the greedy men, right, who calculated they could plunder these hapless Muslims. Oh, but the reality was quite different. Now, while there were bums among the crusaders who raped and murdered and plundered their way to the Holy Land, and the adventurer out only for his fame and fortune, it would be dishonest if we were to ignore the true spirit of most of the men of the day.

Yes. Now, Pope Urban II, who preached the first crusade, that is, he roused support for it by preaching and teaching and going across the West, Pope Urban decreed that the lands recovered from the Turks would be restored to Byzantium. Yes, there's no selfishness in that. As, once again, Robert Spencer, in his The Idiot's Guide to Islam, an excellent book, by the way, Robert Spencer's book, The Idiot's Guide to Islam. He says, and I quote, the Pope saw the Crusades as an act of sacrifice rather than profit, unquote.

The Crusades were an act of sacrifice rather than profit. Keep that in mind, dear listener. For the lords in Europe, crusading was expensive and it was risky. A meta-evil lord did not just sit back with a pint of mead and let the good times roll. No.

The lord continuously fought to maintain his holdings with a staff of knights to defend his interest with a sword on a daily basis, almost as a modern landholder must do with a staff of lawyers, right? There's a parallel there. Going on a crusade meant selling off much of his inheritance to his own disadvantage. In fact, there were no standing armies in those days. Keep this in mind, dear listener.

There was no such thing as a standing army in these days. The only way that a lord could protect his territory would be by raising up fighters for his own interest, and that would be knights. So, the knights were the modern equivalent of an army today. And there were no nation-states as we know them today, and there were consequently no standing armies or even militias as there would be later. No, it was the knight class who would defend their local people and their lords.

The vassals underneath the lord would be defended as well by this class of knights who were supported and held by the lord. And it would be these knights then that would be commissioned to go to Jerusalem to defend the pilgrims as well. So, it must be kept in mind that past works on the crusades like Ms. Armstrong's, they were written by irreligious moderns who cannot conceive of anyone believing all of that nonsense about religion, being motivated to make such monumental sacrifices for God and faith. Oh, there must have been something else at work in the minds of these people, people like Ms. Armstrong.

Things like profit or greedy gain of lands or a bloodlust driving them, well, such attitudes display an ignorance of the spirit of the day, I submit, selling short their true heart of a meta-evil man. As Dr. Madden puts it in his Concise History of the Crusades, he says, one must remember that they were meta-evil, not modern people. Yes, the idea of historical anachronism is at work here. That's a fancy term for failing to understand the life and conditions and circumstances of the people you're studying, but rather projecting your own values, your own circumstances on them, and then judging them harshly.

That's the idea of historical anachronism, which people like Ms. Armstrong do. And she should know better being a historian, but no, she does her own form of progressive projection of her values onto them and then judging them accordingly. Noblemen in the meta-evil period, they were noble because they acted nobly. Men of wealth and privilege, they were expected to make sacrifices and to be generous. As Dr. Madden puts it in his Concise History again, by expending great wealth, they were storing up treasure where moth and rust could not corrupt.

By defending the church, they defended all that was good and true in their world. In short, most noblemen who joined the crusade did so from a simple and sincere love of God, unquote. That's a very important qualification to the crusades. Let me cite that again. As Dr. Madden in his book, The Concise History of the Crusades puts it, he said, most noblemen who joined the crusade did so from a simple and sincere love of God.

So, as we face the continuing challenge of Islam in our own day and age, we must keep these perspectives in mind on the crusades. And I'll be dealing more with some of the myths of the crusades in our next broadcast together. But for now, understand that the crusades were not as they are being portrayed by the progressive left today, as they have been for decades now. No, and I urge you to stand against the stream and know that indeed, most who joined the crusade did so from a simple and sincere love of God. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Now, we meet for holy worship on Sunday. We have a sincere love of God as well. And we meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And we urge you to cross our threshold and visit us. If you haven't been before and you're considering it, perhaps, we would invite you to join us and you'll find a warm welcome.

And you'll find a church that does indeed preach the word of God and loves God sincerely. And you can call us for further information or give us some feedback on what you've heard. You can do that at area code 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.