I was in third year of high-school when American Evangelist, Billy Graham, came to Australia to hold some evangelistic rallies. A schoolmate and I took the train into Melbourne and we walked to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. It was a standing-room only crowd of over 70,000 people and an event that made a big impression on this teenager. However there was something about the Billy Graham meetings in Australia that would grate on us today. They were called: Crusades; the Billy Graham Crusades of Sydney and Melbourne.
Today any such mass meetings organised by Christians would definitely not be named ‘Crusades’. In a multi-cultural society we’re sensitive about the fact that the Crusades of the Middle Ages were not the best times for Christianity. Conversion at the point of the sword is hardly in keeping with the teachings of Jesus Christ. I guess that we could argue that the Crusades of the Middle-Ages (and the enforced conversions at the point of a sword by the Conquistadors in South America) were such a blot in our history books because religion got frightfully intertwined with politics. But that doesn’t solve the problem that the word ‘Crusade’ has some very negative connotations – especially for our multi-cultural society in which Christians find themselves living next door to the Muslims that the Crusades attempted to wipe out.
But there is a deeper issue isn’t there? There are those military themes in the Bible. What are we to do with those? Let me take you back 1959 when I attended that Billy Graham meeting in Melbourne. I recall that in those days we would sing a hymn, like Onward Christian Soldiers, with great enthusiasm. In some circles that was a favourite Christian song. But we rarely sing it anymore in church. Some churches have dropped it altogether from their repertoire of songs. Others of us may still sing it occasionally but we cringe at the sentiments it expresses: Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war. Really…?
The problem is that if we censor Christian hymns, like ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus, you soldiers of the cross’, then we will also need to cut some pages out of the Bible and discard them. What, for example, are we to do with Paul’s letter to the Ephesians? In chapter 6 the apostle urges the followers of Jesus Christ to put on the ‘full armour of God’. He then goes on to talk about swords and shields, helmets and fighting boots. His language is unapologetically military in nature. At the end of his life Paul tells us that he has fought the good fight of faith.
So would Paul the apostle have fought in the crusades? I can’t even begin to imagine it. Would the author of this letter to the Ephesians have joined the Conquistadors to convert the Incas at the point of the sword? I think not. In fact I’m sure Paul would have had huge problems with the idea that those were the Christian things to do. Paul made quite clear that Christians have a different battle to fight. He is actually quite specific about it. He spells out in Ephesians 6 that our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our battle is a spiritual battle against the spiritual forces of evil in this dark world and in the heavenly realms.
We need to take seriously these military themes of the Bible… and retain them in our songs. But at the same time we need to be very clear what we are fighting against and what the enemy looks like. Andrew Kuyvenhoven puts it well: “We are not fighting against black or brown or white people but against pride and racism. Our struggle is not primarily against this or that government or leader but against graft and the abuse of power. We don’t battle the ignorant but the darkness that hides the truth…. We fight the folly of waste, the chilling grip of poverty, the abuse of money, the corruption in high and low places.” (Twilight) That’s the battle we’re fighting in and Paul says that God gives us as Christians the spiritual resources to win those battles against the evils of this present darkness in the spiritual realm.
So… onwards Christian soldiers…!
John Westendorp