American Daily, OH
Aug 5 2004

The Crusade
By Bruce Walker (01/27/2003)

President Bush was sharply criticized for initially describing
America’s war against evil as a crusade. Moslem nations, pundits
warned, would take offense at comparing this war to campaigns by
medieval Christians against Moslem military conquerors of the Holy
Lands. But of course President Bush used precisely the right term.

Christians, ever mindful of our own sins, often accept more guilt
than we should. The accusation that the crusaders killed exclusively
Jews in Jerusalem in 1099 has now been disproved by archeology. The
number killed has also been reduced from 70,000 Jews to 3,000 Moslems
and Jews. This is smaller than the massacre of Christians by Moslems
in Acre in 1291, and much less than 1.5 Million Armenians killed by
Moslems in the last century.

The `Golden Age’ of Moorish Spain was a myth: Berber conquest was
horrific for the people of Spain, and Moorish Spain was more often a
land of turmoil than tranquility. Christians were deported en masse
in 1126 to Morocco, and Jews were massacred in Grenada in 1066.

Christophobic Hollywood presents lurid films about the Salem Witch
Trials, ignoring key facts: (1) only twenty people out of the greater
number accused were actually hung as witches; (2) five years after
the trials, the Massachusetts general court offered public repentance
for these actions and deploring the action of the judges, (3) one
judge publicly confessed his sin from the pulpit; (4) the jurors who
convicted the alleged witches signed a statement of regret; and (5)
indemnity was offered to the family members of those who had been
executed.

Christophobes also ignore Christians at the end of the Seventeenth
Century began to oppose slavery. As a result, slavery was abolished
on English soil in 1772. Slavery existed all over the world and among
every religion and race until it was abolished throughout the British
Empire. African nations – Gambia, the Congo, and Dahomey – sent
official delegations to London to protest the British decision to
outlaw slavery.

`Intolerant’ Christians had earlier passed mankind’s first laws
banning cruelty to animals in 1641. Christians like Wilberforce and
Bergh were the world’s leaders in successful campaigns to prevent
cruelty to children, stop domestic violence, and promote equality for
women.

Christians know all too well that people pretending to embrace Jesus
have often failed to act like Christians. But the notion begun by
Marxists, supported by pagan nihilists in jaded Europe, and now
shouted loudly in Moslem countries – that Christians and Jews are the
author of all misery – is completely false. Serious devotion to the
moral and spiritual tradition of Jews and Christians is all that
separates mankind from Hell on Earth.

What is missing from the wretched realms of Iraq, Syria and Iran?
Christians free to preach the Gospel without fear of harm, and – at
least as importantly – without fear of harm to their flock. When Ann
Coulter wrote her `horrible’ column over a year ago, saying that we
should conquer the vicious lands of Islam and convert them all to
Christianity, she was right. The term `convert’ however, needs to be
understood in its true sense.

People are converted to Christianity when they are peacefully
approached and welcomed into the fellowship of Christians.
Missionaries, radical Moslems warn, are the most dangerous forces of
all. Why? Because they come with medicine, food and books. Christians
convert people with love, and Moslems convert people with terror.

Why did the most brutally efficient empire in human history, the
Roman Empire, become Christian? Because the meekness and kindness of
Christians attracted women in a way that no religion which viewed
sons as cannon fodder ever could. Because the spiritual truth of
Christianity inspired wise men in a way that the stale intellectual
systems of Greek philosophy could not. Because Christianity presented
a place to kneel and seek forgiveness for those soldiers who had
spent twenty years murdering and oppressing other peoples.

We need a new crusade. We need armies in Iraq, Syria, Sudan and
Libya, not because the people there should be converted by force to
any faith. We need armies because Christians who try to bring the
Gospel to the desperate peoples of those lands are being brutally
murdered along with their flock by those who cannot accept a God of
Love. Political freedom and market economies are good, but the
treasure that makes all other treasures real is not found in politics
or economics.

In 1940, when Churchill and FDR stood on the decks of HMS Prince of
Wales to announce that Hitler would not conquer the world, they sang
`Onward Christian Soldiers.’ When men huddled around campfires
steeling themselves to face an awful war to end slavery, they sang
`…as He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free.’ We
are in a war, and it is a holy war, but it is a righteous war. It is,
in fact, a crusade.

Bruce Walker has been a dyed in the wool conservative since, as a
sixth grader, he campaigned door to door for Barry Goldwater. Bruce
has had almost two hundred published articles have appeared several
professional and political periodicals.