The Everyday Crusade

This book explores how the religious nationalist ideology of American Religious Exceptionalism (ARE) contributes to the American public's self-promoting, exclusionary, and sometimes illiberal attitudes.

From an internationally renowned expert, here is an accessible and utterly fascinating one-volume history of the Crusades, thrillingly told through the experiences of its many players—knights and sultans, kings and poets, Christians and Muslims. Jonathan Phillips traces the origins, expansion, decline, and conclusion of the Crusades and comments on their contemporary echoes—from the mysteries of the Templars to the grim reality of al-Qaeda. Holy Warriors puts the past in a new perspective and brilliantly sheds light on the origins of today’s wars. Starting with Pope Urban II’s emotive, groundbreaking speech in November 1095, in which he called for the recovery of Jerusalem from Islam by the First Crusade, Phillips traces the centuries-long conflict between two of the world’s great faiths. Using songs, sermons, narratives, and letters of the period, he reveals how the success of the First Crusade inspired generations of kings to campaign for their own vainglory and set down a marker for the knights of Europe, men who increasingly blurred the boundaries between chivalry and crusading. In the Muslim world, early attempts to call a jihad fell upon deaf ears until the charisma of the Sultan Saladin brought the struggle to a climax. Yet the story that emerges has other dimensions—as never before, Phillips incorporates the holy wars within the story of medieval Christendom and Islam and shines new light on many truces, alliances, and diplomatic efforts that have been forgotten over the centuries. Holy Warriors also discusses how the term “crusade” survived into the modern era and how its redefinition through romantic literature and the drive for colonial empires during the nineteenth century gave it an energy and a resonance that persisted down to the alliance between Franco and the Church during the Spanish Civil War and right up to George W. Bush’s pious “war on terror.” Elegantly written, compulsively readable, and full of stunning new portraits of unforgettable real-life figures—from Richard the Lionhearted to Melisende, the formidable crusader queen of Jerusalem—Holy Warriors is a must-read for anyone interested in medieval Europe, as well as for those seeking to understand the history of religious conflict.

Since 2006, journalists, activists, and academics have produced a steady stream of books and articles warning of the dangers of Christian nationalism, which they define as “an ideology that idealizes and advocates for a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture” that “includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism.” According to sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, 51.9 percent of Americans fully or partially embrace this toxic ideology. These critics, Mark David Hall argues, greatly exaggerate the dangers of Christian nationalism. It does not, as they claim, pose an existential threat to American democracy or the Christian church in the United States. Who’s Afraid of Christian Nationalism offers a more reasonable definition, measure, and critique of this ideology. In doing so, it shines important light on a debate characterized by unfounded claims, rhetorical excesses, and fearmongering.

"Since his debut in Detective Comics #27, Batman has been many things: a two-fisted detective; a planet-hopping gadabout; a campy Pop Art sensation; a pointy-eared master spy; and a grim ninja of the urban night. Yet, despite these endless transformations, he remains one of our most revered cultural icons. [In this book, Weldon provides a] look at the cultural history of Batman and his fandom"--Amazon.com.

Power. Fear. Violence. These three idols of Christian nationalism are corrupting American Christianity. Andrew Whitehead is a leading scholar on Christian nationalism in America and speaks widely on its effects within Christian communities. In this book, he shares his journey and reveals how Christian nationalism threatens the spiritual lives of American Christians and the church. Whitehead shows how Christians harm their neighbors when they embrace the idols of power, fear, and violence. He uses two key examples--racism and xenophobia--to demonstrate that these idols violate core Christian beliefs. Through stories, he illuminates expressions of Christianity that confront Christian nationalism and offer a faithful path forward. American Idolatry encourages further conversation about what Christian nationalism threatens, how to face it, and why it is vitally important to do so. It will help identify Christian nationalism and build a framework that makes sense of the relationship between faith and the current political and cultural context.

Interviewing former Sandinista officials, scouring Nicaragua's national archives, and studying facts on the ground, Luciano Baracco identifies the origins of Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution in terms of the failure of nineteenth-century liberal regimes to complete the task of constructing Nicaragua as a culturally and historically distinct, sovereign, national entity.

Robert: Left on the steps of a church as a baby, Robert was often hungry but never stole food like the other orphans in town. Introverted and extraordinarily intelligent, he knew all the Latin prayers and hymns by heart by the time he was five years old. Georgette: Her own mother died in childbirth, leaving Georgette with a father who, seventeen at the time, had neither experience nor aptitude as a nurturing parent, and a brother known in town as Le Fuer - The Spitfire - for his terrible temper. Perhaps to replace something missing from their own lives, both Robert and Georgette are drawn to the news of a crusader, twelve or thirteen, no older than themselves, travelling down through France with thousands of followers - all, unbelievably, children too. Of those thousands, this is the incredible story of two. A story of hardship, loss and love.

Though conditioned by the specific circumstances of eleventh-century Europe, the launching of the crusdaes presupposed a long historical evolution of the idea of Christian knighthood and holy war. Carl Erdmann developed this argument first in 1935 in a book that is still recognized as basic to an understanding of how the crusades came about. This first edition in English includes notes supplementing those of the German text, a foreword discussing subsequent scholarship, and an amplified bibliography. Paying special attention to the symbolism of banners as well as to literary evidence, the author traces the changes that moved the Western church away from its initial aversion to armed combat and toward acceptance and encouragement of the kind of holy war that the crusades would represent: a war whose specific cause was religion. Erdmann's analysis stresses the role of church reformers and Gregory VII, without neglecting the "popular" idea of crusade that would assure an astonishingly enthusiastic response to Urban II's appeal in 1095. His book provides an unrivaled account of he interaction of the church with war and warriors during the early Middle Ages. Carl Erdmann (1898-1945) taught at the University of Berlin and was associated with the Monumenta Germania historica. Marshall Baldwin was Professor Emeritus of History at New York University at his death in 1975. Walter Goffart is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.