The Crusades: God's Battalions

Long term readers of hebel might remember that one of my earliest post's was on the real history of the Crusades. American sociologist Rodney Stark has just released a new book on the crusades that I read over the October long weekend.

God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades is Stark's attempt to redress the imbalance in Crusader history. Stark not only reviews the several major Crusades from 1095 to 1291, he also explores the history of the Muslim occupation of formerly Christian lands in the Middle East since the seventh century. The status quo in Crusader historiography is to explain the Crusades as the beginning of European colonialism. Barbarian Christians from the 'dark ages' victimized the cultivated and tolerant Muslims of the Middle East in the European quest for land (especially all those un-landed second sons), treasure and converts.

In contrast, Stark argues that the Crusades arouse out of a deep devotion from the Christians in response to centuries of Muslim aggression towards Christian nations and pilgrims. His central thesis is:

"The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot or converts. The Crusaders sincerely believed that they served in God's battalions."

Stark also wants to argue that the 'Dark Ages' were much more technologically and culturally advanced than we often recognize. He also contends with the idea that ancient wisdom and philosophy was passed down to the West from Islam. It is both convincing and balanced. Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of Christianity (reviewed by me here) writes:

"Through his many books, Rodney Stark has made us rethink so much of what we had assumed about the history of Christianity and its relations with other faiths, and now God's Battalions launches a frontal assault on the comfortable myths that scholars have popularized about the Crusades. The results are startling. His greatest achievement is to make us see the Crusaders on their own terms."

With so much Islamic and atheist propaganda directed towards the Crusades, where Christians are portrayed as brutal colonizers, this 248 page book is worth picking up and engaging with our history.

Why Churches Die

A little while ago I 'reviewed' The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins. Jenkins has been interviewed on Christianity Today about the other of church growth - and why some churches die.

It's well worth a read, and you can find it here.

Here's an excerpt:

CT: Why does persecution sometimes strengthen a church and other times wipe it out?

PJ: The difference is how far the church establishes itself among the mass of people and doesn't just become the church of a particular segment, a class or ethnic group. In North Africa, it's basically the church of Romans and Latin-speakers, as opposed to the church of peasants, with whom the Romans don't have much connection. When the Romans go, Christianity goes with them.

But Christianity establishes itself very early as a religion of the ordinary, everyday people in Egypt as things get translated into Coptic. As a result, after almost 1,400 years under Muslim rule, there is still a thriving Coptic church that represents [perhaps] 10 percent of the Egyptian people—which I would personally put forward as the greatest example of Christian survival in history

Our Lost History

I recently read The Lost History of Christianity - The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia- and How It Died by Philip Jenkins (2008). It is a magisterial introduction to a rich but largely forgotten history. The lands Jenkins has in mind were well and truly the center of the Christian world for well over a thousand years, even after the Muslim invasion of these lands from the seventh century. To understand the Middle East, Africa and Asia as the center of Christian gravity at any time might now seem as natural today as arguing that the Buddhist homeland was once Buddhist. But Jenkins argues that even in 1200 AD there were 21 million Christians in Asia and the proportion of the world's Christians living in Asia and Africa was 34 per cent. These Christians are different from us, but they had a rich and vibrant church life of academia (far above anything the Western Church approached until at least the 14th century), liturgy (which may be the source of Gregorian Chants) and mission (particularly the Syrians, who quite successfully reached into India, central Asia and China). Before England had an archbishop of Canterbury - possibly even before Canterbury had a church - the Syrian church had established metropolitan sees in Merv and Herat, modern Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Before Poland was Catholic, before Good King Wenceslas ruled a Christian Bohemia, the church in Bukhara, Samarkand and Patna had all reached metropolitan status. Our mental maps of Christianity are too small, and we can't understand Christian history without Asia - or Asian history without Christianity.

Which makes the decline of these churches all the more tragic. The number of Christians in Asia in 1500 had fallen from 21 million to just 3.4 million. Most of these great churches ceased to exist, whilst the ones that did were small, marginalised and associated ethnic minorities. Churches who's leaders had once commanded the respect and obedience of at least a quarter of the world's Christians (and had prayed for the gospel of Yeshua to transform lives in Tibet and Java) was reduced to scratching out an existence in the hills.

Jenkins tells the stories of the churches and what happened to their survivors in the 20th Century. He also offers advice on what to do when churches die, particularly such large slabs of area where almost all Christian history has been totally eradicated. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Church history, particularly for those interested in the meaning of that history for today.