Robert Spencer is a polemicist though. If you want an objective history of the Crusades that is not blaming Christians, I would recommend Thomas F. Madden's A New Concise History of the Crusades.
Actually, the work of crusade historians is generally not at all anti-Christian, except if you read anti-Crusader polemicists like Runciman. The portrayal of the Crusades as unprovoked aggression is very common in pop culture, but nowhere to be found in the works of historians.
The portrayal of the Crusades as unprovoked aggression is very common in pop culture,
"Too many people have died in the name of Christ for anyone to heed the call" is a line I recall from some Crosby/Stills/Nash bit of shit.
It's a really common trope made popular by atheists who pathologically target Christianity. Your typically stupid and ignorant adolescent/"adult" throws his feces at what he dimly knows and is told to hate. Islam is foreign and the religion of brown people so it is automatically virtuous. His teachers tell him so. His parents are Presbyterians so Christianity sucks. That's about the depth of it.
Robert Spencer is a polemicist though. If you want an objective history of the Crusades that is not blaming Christians, I would recommend Thomas F. Madden's A New Concise History of the Crusades.
Actually, the work of crusade historians is generally not at all anti-Christian, except if you read anti-Crusader polemicists like Runciman. The portrayal of the Crusades as unprovoked aggression is very common in pop culture, but nowhere to be found in the works of historians.
"Too many people have died in the name of Christ for anyone to heed the call" is a line I recall from some Crosby/Stills/Nash bit of shit.
It's a really common trope made popular by atheists who pathologically target Christianity. Your typically stupid and ignorant adolescent/"adult" throws his feces at what he dimly knows and is told to hate. Islam is foreign and the religion of brown people so it is automatically virtuous. His teachers tell him so. His parents are Presbyterians so Christianity sucks. That's about the depth of it.