Church history’s darkest moment? Looking back at the Crusades
What’s the worst thing Christians have ever done?
If you said “the Crusades,” it’s hard to argue with you. What could be more disturbing than the followers of Jesus Christ—whose most famous sermon specifically praised peacemakers and encouraged his followers to “love your enemies”—taking up the sword to slaughter their foes? The Crusades’ bloody legacy continues to plague Christian-Muslim relations even today, 900 years after the fact!
Church historians have struggled for centuries to figure out exactly what went wrong—how the church of Jesus Christ came to champion violent “holy war.” As uncomfortable as it is to think about such an ugly period of church history, Christians need to grapple with the Crusades if they’re going to understand the story of the Church.
We’ve tracked down several resources from around the Gospel.com community that should help you better understand what the Crusades were, how they happened, and why they’re still so important to us today. If you know the Crusades were a stain on church history but don’t know exactly how and why, explore these links and see what you learn:
- The Day of Discovery TV show aired a half-hour episode called The Crusades: War in the Name of God that provides an excellent overview of the Crusades from a Christian perspective. (You can watch the full episode online at that link.) The episode talks to several historians to try and understand the historical events and context that prompted followers of a peaceful religion to go to war.
- Not surprisingly, the Christian History Institute has a lot of good material about the Crusades. Read about the First Crusade—who started it, who embarked on it, and what they were hoping to accomplish. Other infamous campaigns include the Fourth Crusade, in which Christian Crusaders laid siege to the capital of a Christian empire, and the Children’s Crusade, one of the bleakest points in an already-bleak time. Also of interest are articles on the massacre at Beziers, the epic capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, and a piece on the much-discussed Templars, whose history is bound up in the Crusade period. There’s also a good essay that talks about the bloody history of Christian/Muslim relations.
- Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all that info? Try What Were the Christian Crusades?, a shorter article that sums it up without going into too much detail.
When confronted with the Crusades, Christians often feel defensive and even angry that the modern-day Church still cannot shake the legacy of these wars. After all, it’s been almost a millenium since they were launched, and isn’t it true that the Crusades were carried out by individuals acting specifically against the teachings of Christianity? That’s true, and Christians today aren’t responsible for what others have done in the name of Christ. But the Crusades remain a powerful reminder of what happens when fallen human beings decide to follow their own desires rather than the teachings of Christ, and it’s important that Christians understand how and why that happened.
