Professor looks to past to help understand the present

Instead of "judging from the comfort of our own self-righteousness," Thomas Madden challenged his audience Tuesday night to view the past from its different -- but no less valid -- context.

By doing so, "history is not just interesting, but useful," he said.

This is especially true for better understanding knotty modern problems such as the Islamic State.

Madden, a Saint Louis University history professor, gave his address, "Crusaders on High Horses," in Rose Theatre at Southeast Missouri State University for the university's annual Crader Lecture.

Madden's two main topics were the medieval Crusades and Inquisition. He based the talk on a rhetorical gaffe by President Barack Obama during the National Day of Prayer Breakfast in February.

Obama referred to how religious extremists throughout history have twisted the meaning of their faiths by engaging in violence and hatred.

"Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history," Obama said. "And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. ... There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith."

When taken in historical context, however, Madden said many of what modern people see as sins were not viewed that way as they unfolded. They were commonly accepted norms supported by hundreds of years of doctrine, church leadership and culture.

"The Crusades and the Inquisition were in no way a perversion of medieval Christianity," he said.

And the myths about such events as the Crusades and Inquisition remain alive and well.

Madden said the Crusades were not meant to be about plunder or slaughter, and the Inquisition was supposed to save people instead of condemning them to death or torture. Yes, bad things happened and people died, but he said both events have become unrecognizable with time -- and a little help from Hollywood.

When the first Crusade launched in 1095, it was a response to four centuries of Islamic conquest in Christian lands. Participants were offered full indulgences, or forgiveness of sins, by the church in exchange for protecting embattled Christians in the East, Madden said.

In the case of the Inquisition, the church was attempting to shield so-called heretics from unfair trials by secular leaders who mostly were illiterate, he said.

Instead of being burned at the stake by the thousands, most accused heretics were acquitted or forgiven and returned to their communities. If they were considered beyond salvation, then they were turned over to secular authorities for punishment.

"The popular image today has little to do with the actual institution," Madden said.

Something similar can be said for Western perceptions of Islam and jihad.

By modern standards of the West, the practices of groups such as the Islamic State are considered barbaric but aren't necessarily religious distortions. From within, they are viewed as acts of religion and heroism.

"Violence and religion are not strangers," Madden said. "Indeed, they have been joined closely in both Western and non-Western culture."

One of the struggles faced by modern Middle Eastern countries is continuing the old ways or embracing Western ideals -- something Madden called an as yet unanswered question.

Although groups such as the Islamic State exist on the fringes, their actions are rooted more in the past.

"ISIS terrorists do not see their actions as a perversion of Islam, but as an Islamic golden age," Madden said.

The key is in understanding modern standards cannot be applied to the premodern past. And when religion is closely intertwined with government, solutions are not simple or immediate, he said.

ljones@semissourian.com

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