Can Violence be Holy?

    One of the biggest themes we covered in the last week was the blood that covers every corner of the city of Jerusalem. The crusades throughout the 11th century resulted from angered Western European christians, upset that a majority of their ancient land had been taken over by Muslim rule. During our conversation, we started to get into the more ethical, deeper side of these historic issues: can a holy city still be holy while it's been the heart of so much death and destruction? This conversation immediately sparked my interest. Within the first few pages of our reading Anderson goes into brutal detail about the killings and conquering of different cities. “The streets literally ran with blood. “Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen.”” (Anderson, 604-605). Armstrong paints a horrifying picture for us using eye witness accounts and details that truly, I could’ve gone without knowing. This to me really stuck out. It’s very easy for us to read about massacres, genocides, and murders without being effected or at least being able to continue. But when an author makes a point of explaining a scene, the event becomes so much more real. These were not just small spots in history, they were people’s lives. 

    I thought about other obvious events that stick out in religious history such as the use of the Bible as justification for slavery or the holocaust. We hear much more about these things, and more detail, but even so, we carry on like it didn’t happen within our churches as Christians. The reality of the situation is people lost their lives and it was from people wanting power. 

    
    On Tuesday when we had class outside, we brought up the question I stated earlier. After thinking through it this week, I’ve gone back and forth with my opinion. On one hand, I think that any kind of death and brutal murder of innocent people cannot be holy. But one of our classmates brought up the fact that these acts were done in honor of the religion, thus making it holy. I’ve come to my own conclusion that I can’t consider any war to be holy, but that I can’t claim Jerusalem isn’t holy itself. The blood and violence was just an event, and people still to this day put a lot of their foundation from their religion into Jerusalem. Holiness is different for everyone, and I don’t think I can decide an entire city’s standing within a religion based off of just my own opinion. In reality, I think combining ethics, war, and religion will have conversations that will never reach a conclusion, but that’s what makes those conversations so interesting.