The Crusader’s Dilemma
<500 Words Examining the Necessity of Christian Expansion
This might ruffle some feathers if anyone cares anything about what I write—which is doubtful, so it may be quiet. It’s a short one today. Summer offerings may look like this, this year: thoughts, ruminations and shorter essays. This one will likely be a running series on Expansion Theology and will likely include a few essays on Evangelism and Dominionism.
The Crusader’s Dilemma
<500 Words Examining the Necessity of Christian Expansion
by Daniel L. Bacon
Were the Crusades Necessary?
Father’s Day discussion with my dad last night: we talked about whether the Crusades were necessary and the inconsistency with which we answer that question. But we must go back further to see the double-mindedness.
Was Roman Expansion Necessary?
When asked, theologians tend to lean toward Roman Expansion as being the will of God. If they had not done so, we cannot imagine a world in which Christian Expansion should take hold so quickly. We ask the above question as if it is a theological question rather than an institutional one. If isolated in time and theology then Christian Expansion in the Middle Ages seems like a forgone conclusion, but a third question arrives with the switch from theological to institutional inquiry.
Whatever our hypothetical answer to the question we end up saying that Roman Expansion occurred and what was good or evil was used by God to set up Christian Expansion (that is the expanse of the gospel).
When we return to the Crusades we are asking an entirely different question.
Was Islamic Expansion Unnecessary?
We cannot out of one side of our mouths say that Roman and Christian Expansion were necessary while negating Islamic Expansion which was just as violent toward Christians as the Romans had been and just as violent as Christian Expansion had been toward unbelievers. We are forced, then, to ask what would have happened if Islamic Expansion had not been stymied. Or the various Nationalist, Fascist Expansions ranging from Napolean and Hitler and a smattering of others which seems to be more relevant these days.
These are the days of reckoning for the institutional church for interfering with various expansions. Their ideologies are now Christianized, and we have much more difficulty denying them than if they had ravaged the world a thousand years ago and our own faith returned to true persecution as the good book says is wont to happen.
The world will expand and contract as it will like a set of labouring, diseased lungs—diseased because of the institutions who claim to belong there and wreak havoc on the body of the world. The Christian has no place in such expansions—they do not expand—Christ does not expand. The Kingdom is not of this world in the sense that it does not infect the lungs like all other kingdoms. Christ does not require land, horses or men to fight nor women to keep the home fires burning as is usually their place in such mindsets. Christ requires obedience in love which never looks like repaying evil for evil.
Good reflection. Excellent conclusion