The impact of the medieval crusades: lessons for the Church of Uganda

Abstract

This research study has been relating the dynamics and impact of the historical event of the Medieval Crusades to the present realities of the Church of Uganda, since this knowledge has not yet been made relevant to an African Church context. Therefore, the study has examined the Medieval Crusades concerning their cause, the participants’ motivation, the underlying theology and their impact. This was done through the analysis of medieval primary sources and then discussion of the findings in the mirror of respective secondary literature. In a last step these findings were related to the present reality of the Church of Uganda and eleven lessons for the Church were drawn. It was found that the cause and motivation were a highly intertwined mixture of different religious, political and financial motives, whereby the religious aspect played the biggest role. The main motive in the religious aspect was the search for personal salvation. It was found that the Crusades impacted the Medieval Western European Society in different ways, whereby the economical and religious aspect played the biggest role. The lessons that were drawn for the Church of Uganda were ten in number and mainly focused on the dangers of religiously justified questionable actions and the risks of intertwining religion with other aspects like politics and finance.