God's Battalions
The Case for the Crusades
By Rodney Stark
(HarperOne, Hardcover, 9780061582615, 288pp.)
Publication Date: September 11, 2009
Categories: Christianity - History - General, Medieval, Military - General
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In God's Battalions, award-winning author Rodney Stark takes on the long-held view that the Crusades were the first round of European colonialism, conducted for land, loot, and converts by barbarian Christians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. To the contrary, Stark argues that the Crusades were the first military response to unwarranted Muslim terrorist aggression.
Stark reviews the history of the seven major Crusades from 1095 to 1291, demonstrating that the Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations, centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West, and sudden attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places. Although the Crusades were initiated by a plea from the pope, Stark argues that this had nothing to do with any elaborate design of the Christian world to convert all Muslims to Christianity by force of arms. Given current tensions in the Middle East and terrorist attacks around the world, Stark's views are a thought-provoking contribution to our understanding and are sure to spark debate.
Rodney Stark is the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University. His thirty books on the history and sociology of religion include The Rise of Christianity; Cities of God; For the Glory of God, which won the 2004 Award of Merit for History/Biography from Christianity Today; Discovering God, which won the 2008 Award of Merit for Theology/Ethics from Christianity Today; and The Victory of Reason.
GOD'S BATTALIONS launches a frontal assault on the comfortable myths that scholars have popularized about the crusades. The results are startling. His greatest achievement is to make us see the crusaders on their own terms.
-Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of Christianity
At last, a convincing, balanced book on the Crusades, far from the recent unsophisticated and ideological diatribes against them as "A Bad Thing." Rodney Stark demonstrates that the Crusades were neither unprovoked nor colonialist. Here is yet another rich and readable book from this thoughtful and distinguished author.
-Jeffrey Burton Russell, author of A History of Heaven and Paradise Mislaid
An excitingly readable distillation of the new, revisionist Crusades historiography.
-Booklist (starred review)
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