A Return to Muscular Christianity

American  Thinker 

In his new book, The Two Swords of Christ: Five Centuries of War Between Islam and the Warrior Monks of Christendom, Raymond Ibrahim sets the record straight about Christian military orders led by great captains of faith and ferocity that understood the need for what he calls “muscular Christianity.”

The Templars and Hospitallers

The title of the book alludes to history’s dominant Christian military orders: The Knights of the Temple and the Hospital, together representing the “Two Swords.”

In reinvigorating the accounts of these two orders, Ibrahim points to a larger theme also represented in the book’s title -- namely, that Christians “are to fight two sorts of evils with two sorts of swords -- a spiritual sword against spiritual enemies, and a physical sword against physical enemies.”

The notion of that Christians should be prepared for both spiritual and physical conflict comes from Luke’s Gospel where Christ instructs His disciples to sell their garments and buy a sword, and upon bringing Him two swords, He tells them, “It is enough.”

From this foundational context, Two Swords launches into a dramatic and captivating arc of history from the genesis of the two military orders through the improbable victories and harrowing defeats that framed their existence and eventual dissolution.

The journey starts in 1119 with the humble beginnings of nine Christian warriors led by a veteran of the First Crusade, Hugh of Payns, who decided to form “a brotherhood of guardians” to serve as a protective detail for Christian pilgrims traveling to and from Jerusalem.

This small band of veterans viewed their solemn enterprise as their own personal Christian ministry, so to speak. Ironically, the warrior monks were given the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount as their lodge and operational headquarters, giving rise to the names “The Knights of the Temple,” or “Templars.”

A decade later, a forward-thinking and highly influential monk named Bernard of Clairvaux energetically championed the Templars’ cause.

Bernard saw the need for a new kind of soldier, one that “should be a man of God -- half lay, half religious, mighty in war and fervent in prayer.” His efforts led to formal recognition of the Templars as a religious order by the Catholic Church and its rapid growth to the tune of thousands of knights and training centers throughout Europe.

Producing similar men who lived the warrior monk ethos was the order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John.

As the name suggests, this order was founded as a Christian hospital in Jerusalem with the objective of caring for sick and injured Christian pilgrims, eventually opening their doors to the sick and poor in general. While the Hospitallers became a fierce military order on par with the Templars, they maintained their mission of caregiving throughout the order’s entire history.

Notably, Ibrahim brings to life the little-known fact that the Hospitallers transformed into preeminent naval tacticians after being forced to flee Acre and relocate to the island of Rhodes. In many ways, they were like modern Navy SEALs -- feared soldiers, highly skilled in warfare on both sea and land.

By the end of the book, this much about the two orders is quite clear: The Knights of the Temple and the Hospital were both “Christendom’s greatest warriors,” and “they were also among its more sincere and pious.”

The Big Picture of The Two Swords of Christ 

Constructed as a series of short chapters, Two Swords has the pace and feel of a dramatic Netflix series.

Ibrahim brings this ancient world into vivid clarity while still telling a cohesive history of the two orders and centuries of clashes with Islamic empires fixated on conquering the West.

To that end, Two Swords features Ibrahim’s strength as a narrator and storyteller who seamlessly weaves in direct quotations and observations collected from eyewitness accounts or writings produced around the time of the events.

By pinning the stories to first-hand accounts written by both Christian and Muslim chroniclers, the book is grounded in the sobering reality that in the face of jihadists bent on Islamic hegemony, there will always be a need for Christians who embrace the pursuit “of those two ancient virtues -- piety and [righteous] militancy.”

This is especially true at a time when woke historians and politicians have spun the myth that Islamic violence is mainly the byproduct of Muslim anger at past Western colonialism.

In the end analysis, Two Swords, along with Ibrahim’s other works, eviscerates this secular revisionist and anti-Western historical rubbish, illustrating that jihad is doctrinal and that the words, deeds, and objectives of its adherents predictably form a pattern that dates back to the 7th century.

In that way, Ibrahim is much like Bernard of Clairvaux -- vigorously urging Christians to recognize the historical patterns of Islamic violence and awaken the warrior ethos that lies dangerously dormant on the pillow of 21st-century prosperity.