24. The Crusades and the Inquisition - For the General Audience (1 of 2)

The Christian Statement

Volume V addressed the Crusades and Inquisition in the specific context of the Jewish conversation. Here they are addressed for the general unbeliever who uses them as reasons to dismiss Christianity entirely.

The Crusades (1096-1291) were military campaigns launched by the medieval Western church to recover the Holy Land from Muslim control. They produced extraordinary violence, including the massacre of Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley, the sack of Constantinople (a Christian city) in the Fourth Crusade, and the brutal conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. They were conducted in the name of Christ and bore His cross on their shields.

The Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834) was an ecclesiastical tribunal established to maintain Catholic orthodoxy, which used torture and execution as instruments of religious enforcement. It operated with the approval and cooperation of the church hierarchy.

These cannot be minimized or contextualized away. They were institutional sins of the church. They produced real and specific suffering for real and specific people.

The disciple who engages this history does not do so with contempt for the people who lived inside it. The Crusader who took the cross and marched toward Jerusalem was, in most cases, a person who genuinely believed they were doing what God required. The inquisitor who administered the tribunal believed he was protecting souls from eternal danger. Their theological formation was catastrophically wrong in precisely the ways that matter most. But they were not monsters of a different kind - they were human beings formed by institutions that had fused the cross with the sword, the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of men. We grieve what was done. We grieve more deeply what was believed that made it possible - the displacement of the Sermon on the Mount by the logic of power. Grief is the right response. Contempt for the people is not. We share the same tradition, the same cracked vessel, the same vulnerability to the same error. And they were conducted against the explicit teaching of the One whose name they invoked - who said "love your enemies" and "put your sword back in its place" and:

"Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples - if you have love for one another."
-- John 13:35 (NET)

⚠ Stumbling Block: The Crusades and Inquisition are used as permanent reasons to dismiss Christianity: "Look what Christians do when they get power. I want nothing to do with a religion that produces that."

✔ The Better Way: The honest response has three parts. First: you are right. What was done in those campaigns was wrong. It violated the explicit teaching of Jesus and cannot be defended on Christian grounds. The institutional church failed catastrophically. Second: the church is not Jesus. It is an institution made of human beings who are capable of catastrophic failure even when they believe they are being faithful - exactly as the history of every other human institution demonstrates. Third: the question of whether the institutional church failed is completely separate from the question of whether Jesus is who He claimed to be. The Crusader's sword does not settle the question of the resurrection. The Inquisition's torture chamber does not address the evidence for the empty tomb. The institution's failures are devastating. They do not touch the historical claims about Jesus.

SECTION 24a The Contemporary Crusade - Christian Nationalism and the Cross on the Shield The Christian Statement

The person who uses the Crusades as a reason to dismiss Christianity in 2026 is usually not thinking about 1099. They are thinking about the last several years. They are thinking about the crosses and Jesus flags carried into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. They are thinking about the explicit claim, made by a significant and visible portion of the American church, that a specific political movement is the vehicle of God's purposes for the nation - that the flag and the cross belong together, that restoring America is a holy project, that opposition to that political movement is opposition to God.

That is the Crusades. Current edition.

And it is a more difficult stumbling block than the medieval version precisely because it is not over. The person who uses the Crusades as an objection is making a historical argument the disciple can contextualize. The person who watched the crosses and Christian flags on the Capitol steps is making a contemporary argument about what Christianity looks like when it acquires political ambition. That argument cannot be contextualized. It is happening now.

The disciple must be able to engage this honestly, without political defensiveness, and without pretending the objection is not legitimate.

What Christian Nationalism Actually Claims

Christian nationalism, in its various contemporary forms, makes a specific set of claims that must be distinguished from ordinary Christian political engagement:

It claims that America is or was a Christian nation in a theological sense - not merely that Christianity influenced the founders, which is historically defensible, but that the nation has a covenant relationship with God analogous to Israel's, whose restoration is a religious obligation.

It claims that a specific political movement or party is the vehicle of God's purposes - that supporting or opposing it has spiritual rather than merely political significance.

It claims that the cultural and demographic restoration of a particular version of America is essentially the same project as the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

It uses Christian vocabulary, Christian symbols, and Christian identity as the markers of national belonging - with the implication that those outside the cultural-religious coalition are outside God's favor for the nation.

None of these claims are supported by the New Testament. Each of them represents a specific theological error with a specific biblical refutation.

⚠ Stumbling Block: "I watched Christians carrying crosses and Jesus flags into the Capitol to overturn an election. I watched pastors declare that God had chosen a specific candidate and that opposing him was opposing God. I watched the church become a political movement. If that is what Christianity is, I want nothing to do with it."

✔ The Better Way: The honest response has the same three parts as the response to the Crusades - because it is the same error in contemporary form. First: the concern is legitimate. What was on display was a conflation of the cross with a political project that Jesus specifically and repeatedly refused. Second: the church engaging politically is not the error. Christians have always brought their values into the public square - Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, the Civil Rights movement all demonstrate that Christian political engagement can be faithful and necessary. The error is the specific conflation - the claim that God's kingdom and a national political project are the same thing. Third: Jesus was offered exactly this, and He declined it every time.

The Four Times Jesus Refused the Political Kingdom

This is not an inference. It is the explicit record of the Gospels.

After the feeding of the five thousand, the crowd wanted to make Jesus king by force - the original political messianic moment, the crowd finally doing what everyone had been waiting for.

"Jesus, knowing that they were going to come and seize him to make him king, withdrew again up the mountainside alone."
-- John 6:15 (NET)

He did not negotiate the terms. He withdrew.

At His trial before Pilate, when asked directly if He was the king of the Jews, He said:

"My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
-- John 18:36 (NET)