SECULAR RELIGIONISTS ENCOURAGE MANY MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE CRUSADES AS A FORM OF RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AGAINST CHRISTIANS    

"I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level preschool day care or large state university."      
The Humanist, January/February 1983, "A Religion for a New Age."      
     
Secular Humanist religionists have held almost complete control of the history that has been taught in our schools. When one religion teaches about another religion, we can expect a slanted viewpoint. When one of the religions is based on Secularism's rational-lie-zed speculation, we can expect mean bigotry. Religion based on intellectual rational-lie-zed speculation is dangerous.      
     
Former president Bill Clinton claimed that the actions of the Muslims could be blamed on the Crusades, claiming unprovoked aggression and colonialism. That, is as far from the truth as most of the other things that this famous Liberal tells us. The truth is that the Crusades had nothing to do with colonialism or unprovoked aggression.      
     
You can get the entire history in a book, A Concise History of the Crusades, written by historian Thomas F. Madden. This is a book that many rejoiced to see because it sets the record straight.      
     
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT      
     
Pseudo-history presents the Crusades as being cooked up by a wicked pope or by evil knights. It was not. After more than 400 years of Muslim attacks on Christians, the crusades were acts of self-defense. Much like the lack of reaction from the United States to the attacks preceding 911, the Church ignored the great Muslim Jihad until it had taken over two-thirds of the world. We thought that America was crazy to wait for decades while the Muslims repeatedly attacked. The Christians of the Crusades waited for centuries.      
     
The Crusades were a defense, an ongoing reaction to Muslim attacks. They were defensive, not offensive as the New Agers and Secular Humanistic religionists would have us believe.      
     
It may not be totally accurate to say that the means of Muslim conversion has always been by the sword, that you join the Muslims or die.  In practice, though, this has largely been the case.  This goes back to Mohammed. Note: all Muslims don't follow this teaching, but many do. For the terrorists, this is their mission, and they will not be held back from it.    

The actual teaching of the Koran is that Muslims are to rule the world.  This world-wide domination is to be executed by force.  Those who resist are to be killed.  Non-Muslims, under Muslim rule, are second-class citizens and subject to restrictions and special taxes.  Of course, many would convert to avoid the oppression.    

By the 8th century,      
Muslims had taken North Africa, which, prior to that time, had been Christian.      
     
Muslims had defeated Spain, which had previously been Christian.      
     
By the 11th century,      
Muslims had conquered Turkey, which had been Christian prior to the killing.      
     
The Emperor asked Western Christians to help the Eastern Christians to defend themselves against the Muslims, and that was the beginning of the Crusades.      
     
By the 15th century,      
The Muslims were taking over Western Europe, and Europeans were fighting for their very existence. The later Crusades were not helping Eastern Christians to defend themselves. These Crusades were self-defense, the defense of Western Europe against a brutal enemy that was driven by a religion without Jesus Christ and without mercy.      
     
The stories about the Crusaders being evil people who went out to steal in a distant country are just not true. Modern scholarship shows that the there was little plunder to get in the Crusades with very few exceptions. The Crusades were wars of self-defense. They were not waged as wars for plunder as the New Agers and Secular Humanist religionists accuse.      
     
At a certain point, the aggressive Muslims captured Constantinople and much of Europe. The goal of Islam was to conquer the entire world, just as this is the goal of the present Jihad.      
     
Had God not intervened with a run of freak rainstorms, Suleiman and the Muslims would indeed have wiped out Christianity, but God has always kept a remnant.      
     
Religion that is based on intellectual rational-lie-zed speculation is dangerous, regardless of whether that religion is New Age Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Secularist. Christianity without Jesus Christ is a terrible thing as can be seen in the New Age religions. There were New Age religions before the term, New Age, came into use. There is nothing new about New Age. Religion without Jesus is not a good thing. Jesus never leads anyone to try to force anyone else to have the same faith, but Jesus often leads His followers to testify of their faith and to tell others the good news that they can be saved. There would be no point to coercion. God is looking only for those who will freely come to Him.      
     
It may be true that there were abuses by Christians in the crusades. There are always abuses by human beings simply because they are human beings, so we can be certain that this period of history had its abuses. Abuses can always be traced to intellectual rational-lie-zed speculation, and intellectual rational-lie-zed speculation is often religious. Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries and every foul thing.      
     
It is true that the Church had left the revelation that came through Christ. And the Catholic Church had even lost the knowledge of salvation by grace and through the faith of Jesus Christ for all but a few faithful (God always has had a people who follow His Light). Political power had become important and what started as a God-ordered and Spiritual Body of Christ had degenerated into a worldly system. Not surprisingly, this worldly system was bound up by many forms and rituals that were meaningless to God. The Church of that day had largely changed its structure to a man-made government. The gifts of the Spirit were no longer active, and the Church was operating largely on the level of intellectual rational-lie-zed speculation.      
     
Even in the light of this back-sliding, it must be noted that the historians have distorted their representations of the Crusades and of the Catholic Church.      
     
The New Agers and Secularist religionists have done much work to adapt the history of the Crusades to support their purposes. Big Brother in the book, 1984, knew that whoever controlled history could control the future, so he had people busily changing history. This same process of re-writing history has been carried on by the New Agers and the Secularist religion for many decades.      
     
The New Agers and Secular Humanists have almost always portrayed the Crusades as unprovoked holy wars against Islam. That is NOT true. For anyone who takes time to actually study source documents of history, they will find that this is not the case at all.      
     
The members of the New Age and the Secularists use the crusades as an opportunity to accuse the followers of Christ of being self-righteous and intolerant. This is an improper use of the schools and the educational process to create a false impression.      
     
The members of the New Age and the Secular Humanist Religion both use the pseudo-history related to the Crusades to try to say that Western civilization is flawed because it is based in Christianity. Their purpose is to promote their religion, New Age and Secular Humanism. Tax dollars should not be used for promotion of the hateful religion of New Age/Secular Humanism.