Discipleship Education

‘Crusade’ – the very word has a stirring sound to it, recalling the noble deeds of medieval knights in armor to rescue the Holy Land from Islam, with gallant crusaders giving their treasure and their lives in a host of campaigns across the Near East.  This ideal was recalled in sad misinterpretation by three American presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt in his drive to reverse the Great Depression, Eisenhower in entitling his wartime memoirs ‘Crusade in Europe,’ and George W. Bush in his call for an American response to the attacks of 9/11.

The glamor of the medieval crusades is true, but so also is the bloody sack of Christian Constantinople by the western crusading armies, contemporary pogroms in Europe, the slaughter of countless innocent denizens of the Holy Land, the extermination of all non-papal Christianity in western Europe, the bloody invasion of peaceful Baltic lands, and even greedy eyes cast upon newly discovered Mexico.

How does the Muslim world today react to constant encroachments from the West? Some of the faithful see the alternatives as spinelessly succumbing to the Western way of life or fighting with the ferocity of the first generations of Mohammed’s disciples, striving in effect to reverse the Crusades.

All this and more is the subject of a course to be given on zoom at St. Christopher’s on Sundays at 9:00 a.m. from April 25 to May 16. Contact the church office for zoom information.