Apparently they are, according to the chaplain to the Bishop of Blackburn, according to this report http://www.secondspring.co.uk/course/termtwo.htm in The Church of England Newspaper.

'Canon Gray says: “Behind modern fanatical Islamic terrorism lie many spiritual and religious passions and narratives also found in the Christian tradition.

“Blind Samson, his hairy growth returning, commits an act of suicidal terrorism as he destroys the pillars of the pagan temple. The people of Israel sing their song of triumph — which we echo in the Easter Vigil — as the bodies of the Egyptians float in the Red Sea.” Canon Gray, a former team vicar in the Lichfield diocese, goes on: “We cannot simply ignore the violent passion of Jesus cleansing the temple with whips. We are never told of the collateral damage possibly resulting from his actions. In the Christians tradition we rejoice over the passionate commitment and bloody deaths of numerous martyrs.” The one-time curate in Scarborough adds: “We need to consider deeply the fact that the same religious passion and spiritual single-mindedness lies at the heart of a London bomber and a Christian crusader.'

I think he is more than a little confused about exactly what a suicide bomber is doing, compared to, say, a prisoner of war, like Sampson, escapees being pursued by a military force, like the Israelites, or someone laying about with a whip made of cords, like Christ!

But does he have a point, or is this a good example of why the Anglican Communion around the globe is in trouble?

A good example of why the Anglican Communion around the globe is in trouble.

He is either being extremely lateral or is horribly confused.

"I think he is more than a little confused about exactly what a suicide bomber is doing, compared to, say, a prisoner of war, like Sampson, escapees being pursued by a military force, like the Israelites, or someone laying about with a whip made of cords, like Christ!"

...Israelite escapees saved by God's intervention and naturally joyous. Further, the Martyrs were not suicide bombers. They were slaughtered for preaching Christian belief. His final example is the crusades where the Middle East (the cradle of Christianity)was captured by the sword and the armies marched onward taking North Africa, Asia Minor, Turkey and most of Spain. As they were normal wars not suicide bombings or terrorist attacks they were more comparable with World War II when one side with a belief system refused to be overthrown by another side with a different belief system.

His comparisons make no sense.

In some ways I have to agree with the title.

To the extent that the Crusaders departed from the fundamental concept of 'loving your enemies' and ran headlong down the track of a massive bloodbath and brutality they were clearly outside the Will of God.
"Stop" your enemies, don't Stop and STOMP them. "Reasonable force"

In terms of Romans 13, it is abundantly clear, that God establishes authorities. The Authorities Paul refers to were the Roman. They were established by war.

The Crusades were a mixed bag. Mixed motives, Mixed objectives, and many MANY mixed up people. (e.g. the Childrens crusade)

But given the expansion of the Islamic Empire, and threat to Christendom I feel it was indeed an Act of God, in the wider providential sense which stirred up the first Crusade.

The implementation and motivation was very questionable. In many cases, Princes were lured with the promise of territory and treasure, and in other cases it was a more spiritual basis.

But to link the action of the Crusades to the various events and personalities in the Old Testament and then to the one violent act of Jesus which was specifically to fullfill a prophecy is to totally misunderstand the Biblical picture.

Jesus could have taken violent action ANY time...... "Do you not know that I can call upon legions of Angels".

The more important goal should be to gain a true picture of both the Islamic and Christian views of war.

For the Muslim, as for Mohammed, violence is a means of extending 'Dar Ul Islam' "land of Islam" but for the Christian it NEVER can be.

The kingdom of God is inside, within us, "my kingdom is not of this world, if it was, my followers would fight to defend me" ... is key here.

This does not exclude the need for a Christian Emperor to raise an army and fight an enemy, but that has NOTHING to do with establishing the Kingdom of God.

David you have raised many issues in analysing the pros and cons of the crusades and I agree on many points. However, even if your conclusion that the crusades cannot be lumped together with Sampson and Jesus is correct and they were just another war potentially characterisable as a brutal bloodbath can you please explain how that makes Crusaders like London bombers? Enthusiastically killing as many innocent civilians as possible, even if it means getting yourself killed, when there is no war is surely a different kettle of fish from a bloodbath during a war.

You do realize that, apart from keeping most of Europe and stopping the rapid decline in its territory, Christendom didn't do well in the Crusades? The Middle East (the cradle of Christianity) may have bounced back and forth but it ended up mainly Muslim and Muslims ultimately maintained their conquests as far as Turkey. I believe that in the first Crusade Christians had great success in taking back territory but overall, apart from having their advance into Europe halted and failing to hang on to Spain, Muslims did quite well.

" UK You will Pay!

7/7 on it's Way!

Rain Rain go away!

Little Johnny wants to Play!

We love Osama

We hate Dalai Lama "

A Rhyme recited by a islamic boy in an islamic school in London.

Hi mjpb

I only draw the similarity in the sense that the Crusades included some rather bloodthirsty elements, which carried out senseless killings. To that degree they are similiar. But this is not a reflection on the intention of the Crusade, more just a sad aspect of its practical outworking.

I quite agree with pretty much every point you made.

What we all need to absorb, is the degree to which Islamic 'terrorism' is based on the traditions of Islam itself.
For a good reading of those specific battle traditions, check out the 'jihad' section of the hadith of Muslim (book 19)
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/019.smt.html
reading from chapter 35 on (scroll down) will give info on most of the major battles, spoils of war, murder of Kaab the Jew etc etc.

Keep up the thoughtful contributions :)

TIT_4_tat.. you have a way don't you :) keep it up also. You say much with little.

And the west is not on a crusade?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1867405,00.html

Hi kevin,

I am anti-Bush, anti-Iraq/Afghan wars. The stupid thing to do is to help muslims. Muslims kill muslims. Some westerners feel pity for them and try to help them. But, the outcome is jihad on those who helped. What a shame! We help them in earthqueakes, tsunamis. But, we get Bali blasts, 7/7 terrors in return. We should not only get out of Iraq & Afghanistan but also cut-off all relations with Islamic countries. As for oil, we have alternative resources. We got brains, they got oil. We should make use of brain-power and find alternative source for oil

"But does he have a point, or is this a good example of why the Anglican Communion around the globe is in trouble?"

GrahamY: I think it's just part of the general theme of why Anglicanism (and the other traditional Christian demoninations in general) is in trouble. It seems to me (as an outsider) that modern Anglicanism almost wants to commit suicide. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't be in favour of the Crusades or be making comparisons like those mentioned or not, but I wonder if they're even in favour of themselves. They seem as if what they want to do is go and slump in a corner and have a good sigh over a lukewarm cup of tea. This religion business is getting to be a bit too much for them.

I think he has a point. There is a thread of vengefulness, xenophobia and violence in Christianity’s scriptures and traditions, as there is a more prominent and more authentic thread of peace, love, compassion and forgiveness. Recognising the elements of darkness and complexity of our own religious tradition, and the need to interpret them correctly, is important as we deal with modern Christian fundamentalism and the secular word’s hostility to Christianity. It is particularly important as we try to understand Islam and its interaction with Western cultures, because Islam’s scriptures and traditions seem similarly to range from the sublime through the benign to the homicidal. They can be proof-texted by fundamentalists to support violence, and misrepresented by opponents as irredeemably violent – just like Christianity.

I also think he’s right, or almost right, to say that the same religious passion and spiritual single mindedness lies at the heart of a London bomber and a Christian crusader. At their worst, religions (or secular ideologies such as Marxism) can lay the foundations for terror and murder. They give people permission to hate, and an excuse for laying aside normal ethical scruples about harming others. They minimise self-doubt and self-criticism – for who would dare question God’s will, or the policies of the vanguard of the proletariat – and comfort perpetrators with the assurance that the acts they perform are inevitable or predestined or part of some grander design for good.

The early Jesus movement was a protest and reaction against these and other features of religious practice in 1st century eastern Mediterranean, and took several decades to morph into a distinct religion. Christianity has struggled with these internal tensions ever since.

The things we find most inspiring, meaningful and important, and which stir in us the most passion, are the things that can go most terribly wrong when they are corrupted. Religious feeling is definitely one of those things. This does not mean that religion is bad or that we should shun extremes of passion for cautious mediocrity, but we should be mindful of the risks and dangers religious expression can hold.

Rhian,

That is a very thoughtful and flattering interpretation seeking a truth in an article that was just wrong. You must have thoroughly enjoyed interpreting books and poems at high school. I was reminded of the high school thing a few years ago when the singer associated with the name Live was being interviewed. He was asked about the meaning of the lyrics in "Dolphin's Cry". The interviewer said that most people thought it was about wildlife conservation and dolphins suffering but other people thought it was just about appreciating nature and asked him what he had intended. He candidly commented that he was just thinking about people having sex on the beach but he is open to that interpretation. Your comments remind me of the interpretations of "Dolphin's Cry".

For the record, the Pope recently did a speech that brought out the point you are making. In that case it wasn't just an Anglican with no confidence in anything kicking his own religion thoughtlessly. It was clearly the message he intended. Religions can be complicated but love should be the focus. A startling number of denominations/interpretations of scriptures have arisen since Martin Luther decided that the Bible is self explanatory and doesn't need authoritative guidance from a Church. This points toward the complexity of this (as with any) religion including the possibility of justification of violence.

Mjpb,I don’t just make this stuff up.

Talking of the dark side of the Christian scriptures, I had in mind, for example, the annihilation of all humanity and life except Noah and his passengers in the flood, the suffering inflicted on Egyptian civilians to force Pharaoh then to release the Israelites, God’s periodic homicidal rages in the 40 years’ desert sojourn, the genocidal ethnic cleansing of the native inhabitants of Palestine by the invading Israelites, the anti-Jewish polemics in the gospels of Luke and John (and their use to justify two millennia of anti-Semitism), God permitting Job to be tormented for the sake of a bet, the application of the death penalty for the crime of disobeying one’s parents, the repudiation of non-Jewish wives and children by the returning Babylonian exiles (and that nice bit about smashing infants against rocks in psalm 137), and Jesus saying “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” I’ll supply references if requested.

On the relationship between idealism, religion and evil, read Roy Baumeister’s excellent book
“Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty” http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652 .

I can’t find the exact quote, but CS Lewis (hardly a moral relativist) said in Mere Christianity something like evil is not the opposite of good, or even the absence of good, but the perversion of the good.

Rhian, you're making a good point about the darkness in Christianity, but you seem to be making it without the context of the First and Second Testaments. I think you're also reading the Bible too literally. The Old Testament can be very confronting, but the New Testament is a counterpoint to it which totally transforms it.

The Bible can really only sensibly be read as an evolving understanding of God and his will. It would be a great surprise to me if the God of the New Testament could have sprung to life 2,000 years earlier in the context of the exile in Egypt. The intellectual and cultural equipment weren't available. So the God of the Old Testament has a lot in common with the gods around him. Over time he changes. A Christian can't be authentic, and operate on Old Testament mores, because they have been superseded. Christ preaches the God of love. BTW, I think you're taking the swords comments out of context. He didn't say, take the sword to each other - he was foretelling conflict.

That is the key to the argument for me. The Islamic version of God and religion hasn't evolved much, if at all. So a Muslim can be authentic and subscribe to a version of God that condones violence. The Crusades were an abberation in a way that suicide bombers are not.

Graham – I agree with much of what you say. I don’t take the bible literally, but was using these passages as examples of the kinds of texts that could be thrown at Christianity in much the same way that some posters in these forums select texts from the Koran to show that Islam is violent. I also agree that, in the “sword” quote, Jesus was foretelling conflict, not advocating it. But these texts have been used to justify engagement in conflict by Christians and sometimes justify violence in the name of Christianity, which was the point I was trying to make (not that they actually do prove that Christianity is, or should be, violent).

And while I don’t take the bible literally I do take it seriously –we can tend to gloss over these difficult passages, or dismiss them too readily as part of the dark “old” testament that is superseded by the loving and forgiving “new” testament. In fact there are huge continuities between the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament, and in some respects the new is starker and more judgemental than the old – the concepts of hell and eternal damnation, for example, are almost entirely absent from the Hebrew Scriptures.

There’s much to be said for the idea that Christianity has evolved in a way that Islam hasn’t, but Islam is as complex and multifaceted as Christianity, and it’s dangerous to over-generalise – witness Irfan’s consistently tolerant, humane and dignified contributions to OLO, and the shrill and vicious comments he often attracts.

The crusades are not consistent with my understanding of Christianity, either, but the sad fact is that history is full of appalling acts of cruelty committed by Christians and in the name of Christianity. Whether our record on this is better or worse than Islam seems to me impossible and pointless to calculate.

Baumeister is worth reading on how the highest ideals can sometimes lead to the worst behaviours.

... here's a link to a summary article on Baumeister's book

http://homepages.which.net/~radical.faith/reviews/baumeister1.htm

Don't have a problem with the idea that high ideals can lead people to do dreadful things, but I do have a problem with the proposition that there is some sort of equivalence between Islam and Christianity. While we're advertising off-site links you might want to look at my blog post on Pope Benedict's speech at Regensburg University http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/001639.html.

Rhian,

I believe that you misunderstood me and I am not doubting your scriptures.

I was just saying that you were reading in too much thought into the comments of that Anglican article writer. You were taking his clueless comments and relating them to an actual argument about the complexity of religion. I suspect that you are more intellectually gifted than he but you are assuming he is of a similar mind.

I reserve the right to disagree upon a careful analysis of your comments but did not intend to do so in that post and I certainly did not question your integrity. If I understand you correctly religions are complex and people can read in all manner of things. I agree with that proposition. Having said that I believe some interpretations have more validity.

Id be quite happy to allow Muslim terrorists the opportunity to push down buildings with their bare hands or flee to another country...

I wouldn't be chasing them though.
So if God decided to flood the airport that'd be ok with me.

Bet the cost of wine has gone up in that church.
And did Samson exist? is he any more true than popeye?
Muslim terrorists are just that very true very mad and very bad.

Rhian / GrahamY,

I read you argument and I have a counter one:

What Christianity is and isn's is decided by the pope of the time as he is considered to be divine. Christianity took violent and/ or non-violent terms regardless of Christ teachings.

As for Islam, the reference to violence in the Quran are in within a context of defence and not agression. There are 19 refernces in the Quran and they all carry the same meaning: fight those who fight you and shall not transgress which contrary to Yahweh in the OT for example. A clear proof that the context is understood & practised by muslim majorities is that Arab Christians and jews lived among Muslims over the last 14 centuries. The Palestinian and Egyptian churches were maintained by Muslims or Muslim dominated countries.

Peace,
T

Fellow-Human, no-one regards the Pope as divine, not even Catholics. Protestants and Orthodox don't even regard him as the boss. He's the head of the Catholic church, which doesn't mean that Catholics are duty bound to do everything he says either.

To analyse this properly you've got to look at the founder of each religion. Jesus eschewed violence and earthly power, Mohammed was a warrior who sought earthly power. That doesn't lead me to conclude that every act of violence committed by a Muslim is condoned by Islam, but it does lead me to the conclusion that Islam is inherently more violent than Christianity. But you can show "19 references in the Quran".

You won't find an instance in the gospels of Jesus saying be violent to those who are violent to you, you'll find exactly the opposite - do good to those who do evil to you.

GrahamY,

The references in Islam to allowing self, land and society defence is interpreted in today’s context of military and criminal justice system. Mohamed (pbuh) was a prophet king and if you need to compare his actions in your context, compare them to prophet kings of the Old Testament.

PS; Christianity was founded in the name of Jesus (pbuh) and the wisdom of his death and not by him. On the same token, Mohamed (pbuh) never claimed Islam to be a new religion but rather the purified religion of Abraham.

I am not going to comment on the authenticity of today’s gospels in circulation but I believe Jesus (pbuh) message was to emphasize the importance of love and forgiveness and move away from literalism which in essence is a noble message. But I don’t believe that Jesus imagined a society without laws to govern internal and external relations. It would be disassociated with humans and human nature.

PS: Apologies re the Pope divinity I meant holiness. The pope is the interpreter of Jesus teachings and hence many popes (Urban for example) have interpreted Jesus teachings for war purposes. Perhaps that explains the Muslims fear of the pope’s comments because the crusades took a ‘papal’ green light from a similar statement 10 centuries ago.

Back to on topic : I believe self inflicted fear and mass paranoia to pre-empting the ‘others aggression’ is a key factor to many atrocities including the crusades and terrorism. Literal interpretation of Islam and Christianity was just the catalyst.