Embedded Files
( - previous issue - )
Apologia Report 14:42 (1,000)
November 11, 2009
Subject: Defending the Crusades? Rodney Stark's latest
In this issue:
CHURCH HISTORY - noted sociologist Rodney Stark becomes an apologist for the Crusades
HINDUISM - painting historian Wendy Doniger as anti-Hindu, pro-Muslim
OCCULTISM, AFRICAN - local media surveys ritual killing problem
------
This issue of Apologia Report marks the 1,000th apologetics research bulletin that I've been involved in publishing since first beginning to write them in 1985. Thank God for all the help I've had leading up to this day. In celebration, we want to announce that Apologia wll soon provide AR subscribers with free access to an online searchable full-text database of all back issues and a lot more. Details to follow. - RP
------
CHURCH HISTORY
God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades, by Rodney Stark [1] -- an important new look at a long-time favorite whipping boy of
anti-Christian critics. Ray Olson's "starred" review reads: "A cogent and feisty apologist for Christian history, Stark here synthesizes recent research discoveries about the Crusades and answers the introduction's titular question, 'Greedy Barbarians in Armor?' with a resounding 'No!' Crusaders were self-sacrificing, not greedy, becoming immediately poorer from selling land and possessions to go on crusade, and they seldom got rich anew, even from the Fourth Crusade sacking of Constantinople, which, by the way, wasn't as costly in lives and destruction as many other attackers' victories, Muslim as well as Western. Indeed, how could crusaders prosper when their culture, which mounted and funded the Crusades, was decisively more advanced than Islam, especially technologically? The crusaders were morally more advanced, too; unlike Muslims, they often refrained from killing and enslaving everyone left in captured towns (as was then the universal norm in wartime) and successfully curbed anti-Jewish impulses (the worst anti-Jewish incidents were effects of the nonmilitary, 'people's' crusades in the Rhineland, not the Levant). Perhaps only Western loss of money and morals ended the Crusades, as the aggrandizing monarchs on the rise during 200 years of crusading came to refuse more than lip service to late-thirteenth-century and subsequent popes' attempts to rally Christendom again. An excitingly readable distillation of the new, revisionist Crusades historiography." Booklist, Oct 1 '09, p19. [3]
Publishers Weekly (Aug 10 '09, n.p.) adds: "It always seems
counterintuitive to moderns that warfare and religion can be
consistent. Ideally, followers of the prince of peace are to avoid the sword and shield. Clearly, this has not always been the case.
Frequently in the crosshairs of critics are the Christian wars against Muslims known as the Crusades, commonly viewed as the birth of European imperialism and the forced spread of Christianity. But what if we've had it all wrong? What if the Crusades were a justifiable response to a strong and determined foe? Stark, a prominent sociologist and author of 27 books on history and religion, has penned a compelling argument that these bloody encounters had less to do with spreading Christianity than with responding to an ever more dangerous enemy - the emerging Islamic empire. There is much to be learned here. Filled with fascinating historical glimpses of monks and Templars,
priests and pilgrims, kings and contemplatives, Stark pulls it all
together and challenges us to reconsider our view of the Crusades." [5]
---
HINDUISM
The Hindu Press International news wire ran the story "A Critical
Review of The Hindus: An Alternative History" (Sep 30 '09) which
begins: "Wendy Doniger, a historian at the University of Chicago
Divinity School, has outraged Hindus in the past. In a 2002 article,
the BBC stated 'Professor Wendy Doniger is known for being rude, crude and very lewd in the hallowed portals of Sanskrit Academics. All her special works have revolved around the subject of sex in Sanskrit texts.'
"To counter the many inaccurate and, sometimes, offensive claims she made in her latest book The Hindus: An Alternative History [2], M. Lal Goel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of West Florida, wrote a detailed review." [4] The HPI feature (Sep 8 '09) linked to Goel's article. <www.tinyurl.com/yfm9yzz>
In this essay, "Hinduism Studies and Dhimmitude in the American Academy," Goel explains that he only "focuses on Doniger's discussion of Islamic incursions into India." Even so, his introduction comes across as strongly criticical but weakly reasoned.
The "Pro-Islamic and anti-Hindu mindset known as dhimmitude ... is prevalent in sections of the American academy. The case in point is the recent book by Dr. Wendy Doniger, The Hindus....
"Doniger's 779-page tome is laced with personal editorials, folksy
turn of the phrase and funky wordplays. She has a large repertoire of Hindu mythological stories. She often narrates the most damning story—Vedic, Puranic, folk, oral, vernacular—to demean, damage and disparage Hinduism.
"After building a caricature, she laments that fundamentalist
Hindus (how many and how powerful are they?) are destroying the
pluralistic, tolerant Hindu tradition. Why save such a vile, violent
religion, as painted by the eminent professor? There is a
contradiction here.
"Doniger's book is at odds with the increasing acceptance in the
United States of key Hindu spiritual concepts. Lisa Miller reports
[see AR 14:35] that 'we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our
selves, each other, and eternity.' She cites the following poll data:
67 percent believe that many religions, not only Christianity can lead to eternal life; 30 percent of American call themselves 'spiritual, not religious;' 24 percent say they believe in reincarnation; and more than a third choose cremation rather than burial.'"
Goel's first-page footnote also complains that Doniger "has written some 30 books, several dealing negatively with Hinduism," but inconveniently neglects to note which among them are the offending titles.
---
OCCULTISM, AFRICAN
How wide-spread is ritual killing in Africa? This is the best example we've seen of the African press reporting on the horrific problem. In "Human body parts don't create wealth: Is any ritual murderer listening?" (no byline), Uganda's Monitor newspaper (Sep 20 '09) provides a brief survey that takes in much of the continent.
"Witchcraft hasn't disappeared from African culture just as it
refuses to go in the West. For centuries, human body parts have been used as ingredients for magical concoctions and charms. To obtain body parts, performers of these dark arts kill people in order to harvest specific organs for use in the occult. ...
"Cases ... where people disappear mysteriously, only for their
bodies to be discovered several days later minus various body parts are so many in the [African] continent today that they are treated as routine crimes in some countries. ...
"Investigations by the media and police revealed there was a high demand [among witchcraft practitioners] for human skin in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa ...
"Nigeria has the highest number of occult killings in the continent. ...
"Cases of children being abducted and ritually slaughtered are so
many in southwest Nigeria that they sparked a spate of murderous
protests and mob lynching early last year that left more than 20
suspected kidnappers dead.
"The [still unsolved] murder in London of a Nigerian kid, which
British police named 'Boy Adam' for lack of positive identification,
in September 2001, brought to international attention to Nigeria's
ritual killings. Forensic examinations on Adam's torso, found floating in River Thames, revealed that he was a native of Yoruba Plateau in Nigeria and the state of the cadaver indicated a style of ritual killing practised in West and Southern Africa. ...
"However, all these murders take a backseat compared to the
killings of albinos in Tanzania. Believed to have magical powers to attract wealth in a short time, albino body parts are a hot commodity for sorcery and witchcraft in that country." The author explains this at length.
In conclusion, the article notes that "The stature of ritual
murders and witchcraft in the past was reinforced by the rise of
leaders like Jean-Bidel Bokassa and Idi Amin who, from their public utterances and evidence discovered in their homes after their ouster, had an affinity for human body parts.
"Although the reason for ritual killing is squarely blamed on
witchcraft, ignorance, poverty, greed for money and power, the quest to overcome diseases like HIV/Aids also contributes to the escalation of this barbarism." <www.tinyurl.com/lagdjg>
-------
Sources, Monographs:
1 - God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades, by Rodney Stark
(HarperOne, 2009, hardcover, 288 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/ygame8d>
2 - The Hindus: An Alternative History, by Wendy Doniger (Penguin, 2009, hardcover, 800 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/c35ush>
----
( - next issue - )
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse