I am currently doing an Independent Study in Jewish-Christian Relations with Dr. Paul Jones at Transylvania University. The sole purpose of the IS is to improve my writing. Every week, I turn in a piece of prose, and Dr. Jones and I tear it apart. This week I wrote on the word "crusade". I welcome any comments anyone may have; I need all the help I can get.
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A Contemporary Appearance of an Old Fear
Shortly after September 11, 2001, President Bush gave a speech that alarmed people across the globe. In a moment of gross historical insensitivity or ignorance, he referred to the impending war on terror as a "crusade.” The Associated Press and the Christian Science Monitor reported on the global reaction to Bush's poorly worded call to arms:
'His use of the word "crusade," said Soheib Bensheikh, Grand Mufti of the mosque in Marseille, France, "was most unfortunate.” "It recalled the barbarous and unjust military operations against the Muslim world," by Christian knights, who launched repeated attempts to capture Jerusalem over the course of several hundred years.' (Europe cringes at Bush 'crusade' against terrorists; by Peter Ford; Christian Science Monitor; 9/19/01)
"U.S. leaders should be especially leery of anything that hints at a holy war, many said, because it plays into the hands of Osama bin Laden, who has said he wants the world to plunge into a war, or jihad, between Islam and Christianity. 'It's what the terrorists use to recruit people -- saying that Christians are on a crusade against Islam,' said Yvonne Haddad, a professor of the history of Islam at Georgetown University in Washington. 'It's as bad to their ears as it is when we hear 'jihad.'" (Bush's use of word 'crusade' a red flag: Muslims link it with invasion by Europeans; by Sally Buzbee; Associated Press; 9/18/01)
"President Bush's reference to a "crusade" against terrorism, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in Europe. It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a 'clash of civilizations' between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust." (Christian Science Monitor 9/19/01)
"...to many Muslims, the Crusades represent the worst of Western expansionism and colonialism, said James Lindsey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution." (Associated Press 9/18/01)
"It is their support [that of moderate Muslims] for Washington's war that could be undermined by the sort of language on the president's lips, warns Hussein Amin, a former Egyptian ambassador who now lectures on international affairs. 'The whole tone is that of one civilization against another,' he finds. 'It is a superior way of speaking and I fear the consequences - the world being divided into two between those who think themselves superior' and the rest." (Christian Science Monitor 9/19/01)
In the aftermath of the President's speech, the press found that the word crusade could sow "fresh winds of hatred and mistrust" in Arab-American and Muslims-Christian relations; that the use of the word indicates a "'superior way of speaking and ... the consequences... [of] the world being divided into two between those who think themselves superior' and the rest" are to be feared; and that "to many Muslims, the Crusades represent the worst of Western expansionism and colonialism."
Benign words do not receive such lengthy treatment in press releases. Benign words are not given consideration. The word “crusade” is more than a combination of letters; it is a word laden with significance. The Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus, as well as most online dictionaries, define "crusade" in several ways - but the first listing in any entry points to its history: "any of several medieval military expeditions made by Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims" (Oxford).
The Crusades were initiated in 1096 after Pope Urban II called all Christians to a reconquest of Jerusalem, to retake it for Christianity after it had been held for years by Muslims. "God wills it!" was his cry. "A hundred thousand people dropped everything to... 'take the cross' (Carroll, 239)" and march on Jerusalem. However, the Crusades were far more than any simplified dictionary definition would lead one to believe. Beyond what the Crusades were, it also must be noted why the Crusades occurred at all. James Carroll writes that "the pope's impulse was to unite the warring princes and the divided Church" (241). He did this by calling them to band together "against a common enemy outside Christendom" (241). The drive to unify the Church was realized not by uniting Christians in common love of neighbor, or help of the poor, or Christ-like compassion, but in bloody brutality against outsiders. Carroll notes with sorrow that the unification of Christendom was both the cause and result of an unprecedented unleashing of horrific "ethnic and religious hatred,” and to the massacre of tens of thousands of dissenting Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
While the most basic definition mentions Muslims as the prime target of crusading fervor, the Crusaders impacted the lives of far more people. A firm theology of anti-Jewish, anti-eastern-Christian, and anti-Muslim hatred fueled the crusading impulse. In Mainz Anonymous, a surviving chronicle of a German Jewish community's experience of 1096, the author writes his understanding of the Christian crusading mindset: “We take our souls in our hands' in order to kill and subjugate all those kingdoms that do not believe in the Crucified. How much more so (should we kill and subjugate) the Jews, who killed and crucified him (Jesus) (Carroll 238).
Western European Christianity was unified by that mindset. Murder was sanctioned and sacralized. "To rescue 'captive Jerusalem' was to rescue a kidnapped Jesus" (253) who was being blasphemed by non-believers. Theological and religious outsiders were victimized; communities were exterminated. In Trier, Germany, crusaders attacked the Jews, destroyed the Torah scrolls, and forced baptisms upon unwilling and terrified people. As the Crusaders marched toward Jerusalem, they repeated the Trier incident in numerous Jewish communities. Europe's first large-scale pogroms against Jews occurred during the Crusades. Christians were also targeted; both Greek Catholics and the eastern Christians of Constantinople were tortured and killed on account of a different reading of the Nicene Creed and theological interpretation of the Holy Spirit (241). Similar destruction befell the Muslims in Palestine.
The history of the Crusades is a tale of bloodshed and death. It is the knowledge of this history that rang alarm bells of fear and suspicion among Europeans and Muslims when President George W. Bush employed the word. And it is with knowledge of this history that I make the following statement: that the decision to use the word "Crusade" in the title of the organization 'Campus Crusade for Christ International' was an act of gross insensitivity, a decision highlighting great disregard for or ignorance of both history and non-Christians. Further, the use of the word crusade blackens what many see as caring motives behind the group's proselytism. As a Christian, I have great difficulty looking on the evangelism of Campus Crusade for Christ International and thinking pleasant and delighted thoughts. Instead, I see the word "crusade" and fear that the original crusading motive may come again to fruition - not in bloody war, but in cultural and religious annihilation.
Crusading for Christ is, in essence, finding fault and error in other religious expressions. The project of evangelizing is to save the unsaved, to win souls for Christ -- to convert individuals to Christianity. This necessarily finds other forms of religious expression to be, at best, disingenuous, incorrect, and improper ways to behave in relation to God. At worst, proselytism sees members of other faith traditions as on not only the wrong path, but on a path that can only lead directly to hell. Thus, the call is to Crusade for Christ to save individual lives and souls from what is believed to be a disastrous end. The business of saving souls, however, is also the business of finding all other cultures and religions categorically wrong and illegitimate. It is a program whose logical end would be the annihilation of all non-Christian cultures; the cultural and religious genocide of those considered to be "outsiders.” Under modern proselytism, lives are not lost, but priceless ways of life are. Just as the Crusaders of the first millennium found non-Christians unfit for life due to their lack of belief in the Crucified, second millennium Crusaders find non-Christians categorically wrong in their ways of living. Proselytism does not seek to end lives, but to end ways of living that are deemed incorrect, or "on the wrong path."
Is this the image that a Christian organization would want? Is the historical irresponsibility of using the word "Crusade" to be condoned with a simple brushing aside of gravity of the matter? In a world divided by misunderstanding and suspicion, is it wise for Christians to be ignorant of the history of their faith and the history of the followers of Christ? No, no, and no. Because of such ignorance on the part of my co-religionists, I am embarrassed to identify myself as a Christian. It is for such boldness and blatant disregard for those with whom we share both the world and God Almighty that I am outraged. This is not what Jesus of Nazareth could have envisioned. In no place in the canonical Gospels are we called to Crusade - bloody or ideological. In no place does Jesus call us to remove from human beings their cultural and religious identities - to erase their sense of being because we think it to be wrong.
"Crusade" must be seen for what it is. When President Bush used the word, he invoked memories of horrific destruction and extermination in the name of the Cross. Campus Crusade for Christ International does the same in its self-identification. Is this what Jesus would have wanted of His followers?
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