Live from the Roasterie: Today's Holy War Reading (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)
Start with:
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry: Against Crusade Apologias: "Now predictably (all too predictably) comes the predictable conservative riposte...
...defending the Crusades and the Inquisition. This example, on the Crusades, by First Things, is their most liked/shared article on their Facebook page by far. I mean, look, I get it. That’s the environment I grew up in. I read young adult novels about the noble Leper King Baldwin and entertained the nostalgia about the Crusader Dream. And yes, fair enough, the Crusades were envisioned as wars of self-defense to reopen Christianity’s holy sites to pilgrims. That’s true. But also, all historical accounts agree that when the Crusaders took Jerusalem, they massacred almost everyone in the city, Christian, Jew and Muslim. Is that something you want to defend, really?
The Crusades (and not just the Fourth) were also a determinant factor in the disunity of the West and East of Christendom. The best that can be said about the Crusades is that some of the intentions were pure. But, of course, pure intentions are never enough: Christian prudence should tell us that embarking on a war with pure intentions will rarely lead to a pure outcome. So I guess the brief for the defense is pretty much: “Their intentions were good, but original sin intervened--how could they, as Christians, have anticipated that?”...
David Bentley Hart does a good job of... skewering the Whiggish narrative... but also... recognizing how the rhetoric that supported the Crusades was a striking departure from Tradition. If Catholics really must do the one, they ought to at least do the other as well. In the end, what makes Christianity different from Islam isn’t bodycount, it’s how many times we say Kyrie eleison...
Continue with: Quran: Prologue: I:1-7:
In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds,
the most Gracious, Most Merciful,
Master of the Day of Judgement.
Thee do we worship, and Thine aid we seek.
Show us the straight way,
the way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray...
