"People committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ” President Obama

During an address at Thursday morning’s National Prayer Breakfast, President Barack Obama spoke about radical Islam and seemed to equate it with Christianity. "And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” he said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.” Obama at Prayer Breakfast Speech | People Committed Terrible Deeds in Name of Christ During Crusades - YouTube

Yes, Christians, like people of other religion, have fallen short of the standards of the Bible and of Jesus Christ their Savior. But is the President accurate？ He paints only part of the picture. Here are some thoughts by Thomas F. Madden, an associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University. He is an authority on the Crusades and Islam.  In his article The Real History Of The Crusades he writes:

"Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity – and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion – has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt – once the most heavily Christian areas in the world – quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense."

Watch this on YouTube: Thomas F Madden, Ph D ~ The Crusades Then and Now

In Inventing the Crusades Madden writes,"All the crusades met the criteria of just wars. They came about in reaction to attacks against Christians or their Church. The first Crusade was called in 1095 in response to the recent Turkish conquest of Christian Asia Minor, as well as the much earlier Arab conquest of the Christian-held Holy Land. The second was called in response to the Muslim conquest of Edessa in 1144. The third was called in response to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem and most other Christian lands in the Levant in 1187." Also refer to Crusaders and Historians by Thomas F. Madden

Here also are some thoughts on the Spanish Inquisition by Thomas Madden.

 Jesus Christ our Savior said, "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32 We need to see history accurately. President Obama's words don't present the full picture. But the truth is that Christians also have sinned. And we will sin in the future too. But we are to be ones quick to admit our sin in humility. And also we have One who died for us sinners. Christ Himself. This fact of history has touched our lives and so causes us to even love our enemies and relate to all in humility.