“Despite the Knights Templars’ explosion in popularity, then as now, there were naysayers and scoffers who criticized the fledgling brotherhood for taking up arms, instead of behaving like ‘true Christians’ — that is, forsaking the world and leading purely contemplative lives praying, fasting, and mediating.
Others were more explicit. Safe in his monastery near Poitiers the Cistercian monk, Isaac of Etoile, could scoff; ‘There has sprung up a new monster, a certain new knighthood [Templars], whose Order… is set up to force unbelievers into the Christian faith by lances and cudgels, and may freely despoil those who are not Christians, and butcher them religiously; but if any of them fall in such ravaging, they are called ‘martyrs of Christ.’
One that wrote under the name ‘Hugh the Sinner,’ answered these false accusations;
‘We have heard that some of you have been alarmed by certain indiscreet persons, as if your profession — in which you dedicate your life to bearing weapons against the enemies of the faith and of the peace and for the defense of Christians — as if that profession was illicit, or harmful, a sin or an obstacle to greater progress.’
What is fascinating here is that this battle between the retreatists (James White, N. T. Wright) who will argue that the Crusades were an example of evil Christians holding a misplaced Christian faith as opposed to those of us who think the principles behind the Crusades were something that needs to be restored. We continue to have those in the Church who think it is sin to take the fight to the enemies of the Cross — even if only verbally. The retreatists refuse to countenance the idea that Christians must, sometimes literally, fight back against those who would bury the Christian faith. The retreatists, pietists, and quietists, think it is automatically a noble thing for Christians to be defeated and weakened. They have no room in their theology that it might be a Christ honoring thing to do to kill the enemy before they are able to follow through with their desire to kill Christians and the cause of Christ.
Of course, normatively, this defense of the cause of Christ against those who would seek to roll Christ off His throne would happen under the direction of a Christian prince, just as was the case during the Crusades.
There is something that is terribly wrong with a faith that refuses to defend itself against those who would snuff it out — even if the bearing of arms is necessary. Any faith that has lost its survival instinct is not a faith worth owning. Any faith that will not defend itself and/or others who share a like precious faith is an anti-Christ faith. Under the guise of piety Lucifer seeks to disarm the Christian faith. Christians should not flee from the virtue of manly self-defense and just war, but instead should flee the sin of a Anabaptist like pietism that finds a sense of holiness in being downtrodden by the infidel.
We end by noting a segment in “The Song of Roland,” a famous epic poem that comes to us from the Medieval age (circa 1040);
In “The Song of Roland” while watching Roland ‘slicing’ a Muslim ‘in two,’ an archbishop observed, “You act very well. A knight should have such valor, who bears arms astride a good horse. In battle he should be strong and fierce, or else he is not worth four pence. He ought rather to be a monk in one of those monasteries and pray all day long for our sins.”
The modern “conservative” church is filled with clergy and laymen who are not worth four pence because they cannot fathom that the Christian might ever have to fight… might ever have to literally defend the faith and the honor of the ascended King of Kings.
Christ Himself to the battle to the enemy. Should we do less?
“Under the guise of piety Lucifer seeks to disarm the Christian faith. Christians should not flee from the virtue of manly self-defense and just war, but instead should flee the sin of a Anabaptist like pietism that finds a sense of holiness in being downtrodden by the infidel.”
Dare I say that you may have a bit too “masculine” view of Christian faith? For Christian WOMEN, in all ages, aggressively fighting back against evil has never been really possible, humble submission to God’s will is the best that the devout members of weaker sex have been able to do.
Johnathan Livingstone perhaps the world’s most famous missionary, went through the jungles of Africa well armed and ready to pull the trigger.