Girl Scouts exposed: Lessons in lesbianism

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Communists, radical feminists cited as role models for troops

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Posted: May 17, 2009
7:57 pm Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling

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WorldNetDaily

When many parents think of Girl Scouts, they imagine young girls in uniform selling Thin Mints and Tagalong cookies – not learning about stone labyrinths, world peace, global warming, yoga, avatars, smudging incense, Zen gardens and feminist, communist and lesbian role models.

But that’s exactly what many of 2.7 million Girl Scouts will learn about with a new curriculum called “Journeys” released last year.

Patti Garibay spent nearly two decades in Girl Scouts – six years as a girl member and 13 years as a volunteer. She was also a recruiter, camp coordinator and area delegate winning outstanding leader and volunteer in both councils in which she served. In Garibay’s words, she “bled green.”

But in 1993 when Girl Scouts USA decided to make God optional in its program at the national convention in Minneapolis, an idea known as “Proposal 3: Flexibility in Spiritual Wording,” Garibay chose to leave the organization.

“I had always used Girl Scouts as part of my life’s ministry, modeling my faith while serving girls,” she told WND. “However as this change became policy, mandates were made against Christmas caroling, praying at meetings and singing hymns. I had a true moral dilemma and felt that I could not uphold the GSUSA’s rules and remain a Christian never denying my Lord.”

In the Girl Scout curriculum, the organization’s promise now includes an asterisk with the following disclaimer:

Girl Scouts of the USA makes no attempt to define or interpret the word “God” in the Girl Scout Promise. It looks to individual members to establish for themselves the nature of their spiritual beliefs. When making the Girl Scout Promise, individuals may substitute wording appropriate to their own spiritual beliefs for the word “God.”

Garibay said it appears that Girl Scouts has taken a stance toward religion – the religion of the New Age – despite its proclaimed secular scouting program. WND asked Girl Scouts USA spokeswoman Michelle Tompkins if the organization is shifting its focus toward a New Age agenda.

Read how America is being sold unwittingly on embracing moral decline in “The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom”

“No, Girl Scouts isn’t headed into a New Age direction,” she said. “We’re just looking for new ways to get through to girls.”

WND reviewed the following books in the Girl Scouts’ new “Journeys” curriculum:

‘Amaze: The Twists and Turns of Getting Along’

In “Amaze: The Twists and Turns of Getting Along,” girls from the sixth to the eighth grade will read a quote from Buddha and be encouraged to explore mazes and stone or dirt labyrinths – symbols rooted in pagan mythology and popular within the New Age movement as meditation tools.

They will be briefly introduced to Polish poet Anna Swir, known for her feminist and erotic poems, and Jane Addams, an ardent feminist and pacifist who received a Nobel Peace Prize.

The text features a quote from Harriet Woods, former president of the National Women’s Political Caucus – a bipartisan group that endorses pro-abortion female candidates who run for public office.

To cope with bullying, girls as young as 11 are encouraged to “take a peace break,” make a Zen garden, take martial arts, do yoga and visit a website to learn the sun salutation poses.

The book features a strong emphasis on feminism and world peace, concluding with the following message:

Life is a maze. Navigate its twists and turns and you’ll find true friendships, meaningful relationships, and lots of confidence to boot. So, go ahead, enter the maze. The goal is peace – for you, your world, and the planet, too.

Garibay said, “Placing an asterisk by the word ‘God’ in the Girl Scout promise in an effort to be tolerant, yet promoting Eastern mysticism through Zen gardens and Buddha writings hardly seems tolerant to those who believe in Christianity.”

‘Girltopia’

In the next age group, for teens in the ninth and tenth grades, girls are taught about wage disparities between the sexes, and a lack of assets and senior management positions held by women.

“Girltopia” poses the questions, “When women don’t earn enough, what happens to their children?” and “How could everyone help create a Girltopia?”

 

Asked what the purpose of including a message of inequality served in the Girl Scout curriculum, Tompkins explained:

It’s to show girls what’s going on in the country and have them be part of the dialogue. A lot of girls just aren’t aware of what’s going on. I think that specific topic might be new this year, but in the broader scheme of things, it’s not that new. I’m sure it’s something that came up in the 1920s as well. Girls Scouting has been around since before women had the right to vote, so I’m sure these discussions were always part of this.

The text praises Renaissance author Sir Thomas More for his book “Utopia,” Mary Cavendish for her book “A New World: The Blazing World” about a utopian kingdom and 24-year Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood and feminist author Sheri S. Tepper for her novel, “The Gate to Women’s Country.”

“Girltopia” encourages girls to “let songs inspire you,” and as some examples, it provides lyrics to songs such as “Independent Women, part 1″ by Destiny’s Child; “Hammer and a Nail” by the Indigo Girls – an “out” lesbian rock band; and “Imagine” by John Lennon. The curriculum also asks girls to create an avatar “to represent the ideal you in Girltopia” and features “Wild Geese,” a short poem by lesbian poet Mary Oliver.

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“This book was so depressing that I don’t know what I would have done as a teen reading it,” Garibay said. “The sense of hopelessness abounds in ‘Girltopia.’ The positivity, the enthusiasm and the vigor of youth is completely destroyed by data found to further the Girl Scout USA’s feminist agenda. It plants seeds of despair and hopelessness in today’s girls.”

“Girltopia” also features a section on ethics and asks, “What are your ethical standards based on?” Girls must check all of the following answers that apply:

Whatever does the most good and least harm

Whatever treats everyone as fairly and equally as possible

Whatever is best for most people in the community

Whatever is consistent with your character

“Although not everyone shares the same sense of personal ethics, most people in the world have many ethical principles in common,” it states. 

“The hollow toll of moral relativism is throughout these books,” Garibay said. “The girls are left up to their own ‘feelings’ in making decisions. This is not age appropriate for girls, nor is it what girls want to be forced to do. They want to know right from wrong.”

‘Your Voice Your World: The Power of Advocacy’

 

When teens reach their junior and senior years in high school, they begin a Girl Scouts curriculum called “Your Voice Your World: The Power of Advocacy.” It encourages young women to begin “raising their voices as advocates” and follow the examples of other young people who are speaking out on causes such as global warming, universal health care, racism and child poverty.

One question asks, “What policies is our city putting in place to combat global warming?”

Teens are then asked to generate a list of causes they are passionate about. One example suggests girls “propose new environmental protection laws for waterways in your state.”

The text encourages Girl Scouts to take their ideas and list steps necessary to accomplish goals on advocacy charts. It provides the following suggestion for a cause:

I worry about all the waste in using plastic bags and how their use in my community contributes to global warming. One example is the supermarket – do we really need to be using all those plastic bags?

Girls are encouraged to read the bottom of each page to discover a “Voice for Good,” or female advocates who are meant to be role models. Of more than 50 women listed, only three are women who are known for their faith: Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Mother Teresa. Their religions are only briefly mentioned, if at all.

Many of the female role models mentioned are feminists, lesbians, existentialists, communists and Marxists. Examples include:

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: labor leader, activist, feminist, founding member of ACLU and chairwoman of the American Communist Party

Luisa Moreno: labor leader, social activist, member of the Communist Party, married to delegate of the Socialist Party of America

Simone de Beauvoir: existentialist, French author of feminist books including “The Second Sex,” key player in France’s women’s liberation movement

Rigoberta Menchu: Guatemalan activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner who joined Marxist guerrilla movement

Emily Greene Balch: writer, feminist, recipient of Nobel Peace Prize, pacifist who campaigned against U.S. involvement in World War I, former editor of The Nation

Billie Jean King: retired tennis champion, sued for palimony by lesbian girlfriend while she was still married, first prominent professional athlete to come out as homosexual

Ethel Mary Smyth: English composer, lesbian, leader of the women’s suffrage movement, member of Women’s Social and Political Union

Jeanette Rankin: first woman elected to the House of Representatives, R-Montana, pacifist who voted against U.S. entry into World War I and World War II, founding vice-president of American Civil Liberties Union and founding member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Carrie Chapman Catt: feminist politician, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, founded the League of Women Voters, anti-war activist

Frances Perkins: teacher and U.S. secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945, first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet, helped write New Deal legislation including minimum-wage laws, allegedly had lesbian relationship with Mary Harriman Rumsey

Rachel Carson: marine biologist and nature writer, author of “Silent Spring” (1962), spurring a nationwide ban on DDT, inspiration from book led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, reported to have had lesbian relationship with Dorothy Freeman

Barbara Jordan: member of House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979, first black woman to deliver keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 1976, supported Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 requiring banks to lend to poor and minority communities. The Houston Chronicle reported Jordan had lesbian partner of more than 20 years named Nancy Earl

Martina Navratilova: former World No. 1 women’s tennis champion from Czechoslovakia who fled communism, came out openly as a lesbian and admitted to having crushes on other female tennis players, spoke before the National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, was 2000 recipient of National Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign

Shirley Chisholm: member of the House of Representatives from 1969 to 1983, feminist, first black woman elected to Congress, first major-party black candidate for president of the United States, founding member of the National Organization of Women, helped pass Title IX, homosexual advocate

Pauli Murray: feminist, lawyer, writer, poet, teacher, ordained priest, author of the 1950 book “States’ Laws on Race and Color,” founder of the Women’s Rights Law Reporter, co-founder of the National Organization for Women.

Betty Friedan: feminist writer on Girl Scouts’ board of directors, best remembered for 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique,” primary founder and first president of the National Organization for Women, founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, strong opponent of abortion laws, founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, or NARAL, active in Marxist circles, spoke in favor of homosexual “rights”

Dolores Huerta: co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chávez, directed the UFW’s national grape boycott, serves on boards of People for the American Way and Feminist Majority Foundation, spoke in favor of “gay” and lesbian rights, marched in GLBT parades, served as Human Rights Campaign board member

Bette Midler: singer, actress, self-proclaimed advocate for “gay liberation movement”

Other “Voices for Good” include Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – a former Brownie and Girl Scout – and TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

WND asked Tompkins why Girl Scouts USA has chosen to focus on lesbians, radical feminists and controversial figures as role models instead of other significant female pioneers.

“There was a council of people who worked on the ‘Journeys.’ They tried to figure out who would be profiled,” she said. “It came out from lots of discussions. I think the change the world message has been part of Girl Scouts since the beginning. It’s not a radical agenda at all.”

She continued, “I think the concept of change is incredibly radical, but it’s about making the world better and being conscious and respecting authority. There was a wide cross-section of women mentioned in the ‘Journeys’ that came about from the discussions.”

Readers will find very few men in the book, with the exception of a brief mention of Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations.

“Men are not seen favorably but, rather a force to diminish and avoid,” Garibay said. “It alarmed me that women of faith were only mentioned in these few cases despite their many contributions. Not one pro-life woman was mentioned, nor was a missionary or conservative public figure.”

Tompkins said she doesn’t know why there are only three women of faith mentioned, but she said, “Girl Scouts isn’t a religious organization, so that could be part of it.”

She continued, “I would imagine we keep everything open when it comes to faith. I know no doors are ever shut with us. It’s sort of like the way that God can never be taken out of the Girl Scout promise and law – in writing.”

“Your Voice Your World” finishes by encouraging teens who are bitten by the “advocacy bug” to pursue some of the following careers:

ambassador, congressperson, artist, filmmaker, labor union organizer, fund raiser/grant writer, lawyer, lobbyist, mediator, professor, public affairs officer, researcher, religious leader, senator, web master, blogger, journalist …

Tompkins told WND a new “Journeys” book will be arriving this month called “It’s Your Planet, Love It.” She said the text has a strong environmental focus.

Other controversy

As WND columnist Jane Chastain reported, at the 51st Girl Scout National Council Session and Convention last year, the organization did away with its traditional flag ceremony and the playing of the National Anthem. Flags of all nations were brought in to the tune of “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire.

The Girl Scouts also made headlines in recent years after it refused to adopt what it called “a discrimination policy” against homosexual leaders.

In a 2000 National Review Online editorial titled “The Cookie Crumbles,” author Kathryn Jean Lopez cites the 1997 book “On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on Their Scouting Experience.” She said it is “filled with coming-of-age stories sparked by gay encounters in the Girl Scouts.”

“On My Honor” includes an essay titled “All I Really Need to Know About Being a Lesbian I Learned at Girl Scout Camp.” Lopez reported that “staffers writing in the book claim that roughly one in three of the Girls Scouts’ paid professional staff is lesbian.”

According to news reports, Planned Parenthood has also had some involvement with Girl Scouts in recent years.

In Waco, Texas in 2004, a Girl Scout council cosponsored a sex education program with Planned Parenthood and honored PP Executive Director Pam Smallwood.

On NBC’s Today Show in 2004, Kathy Cloninger, CEO of Girls Scouts USA, admitted that it “partners with Planned Parenthood across the country to bring information based sex education programs to girls.”

In response to the interview, American Life League’s STOPP International surveyed 350 councils to ask if they had any involvement with Planned Parenthood. While 80 percent refused to answer, 17 councils reportedly admitted to associating with Planned Parenthood, and 49 said they don’t.

Garibay told WND Girl Scouts USA is not the same program most women remember.

“Originally scouting was about citizenship, service and life skills,” she said. “The founder, Juliette Lowe, wanted girls to do their duty to God and their country. She encouraged girls to activate, not meditate. Now the Girl Scouts want to move into self-discovery and lobbyist training.”

An alternative to Girl Scouts

Garibay said she had enough after she heard about sexuality camps for Girl Scouts.

“I realized it was no longer my mom’s Girl Scouts,” she said. “We thought we would have a little alternate scouting group for our daughters here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Word got out, and we started getting calls from across the nation from people asking to be a part of it.”

Garibay founded a group called American Heritage Girls in 1995, and she has encouraging news for families who do not want to participate in the Girl Scouts’ new direction:

“Do not despair. There are still some scouting organizations holding onto traditional values,” she said.

Now the organization has 8,000 members and is growing rapidly – by more than 20 percent in the last year. American Heritage Girls has also started a Trailblazer program that allows girls who are not in troop areas to be members and work on establishing their own troops. American Heritage Girls has expanded internationally, with troops in Japan, Germany and Italy.

American Heritage Girls’ mission is to build women of integrity through dedication to service, spiritual growth, servant leadership, goal setting through merit badge and advancement opportunities and teamwork through its outdoor program.

Parents won’t find an emphasis on New Age spirituality, radical feminism, homosexual role models and combatting global warming at American Heritage Girls. Garibay said she has a higher goal for her troops.

Instead, she said, “Girls in AHG learn about their God-given gifts, their identity in Christ and the importance of seeking His will for their life.”

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Previous stories:

Girl Scouts-Planned Parenthood link probed

Girl Scouts council drops Planned Parenthood

And Some Say Teaching 5 Year Olds About A Gay Lifestyle Is Great?

The problem with teaching young kids about sex, including a gay lifestyle, which is also being proposed here in the USA by States, cities, and Los Federales, is that they are too young to understand. Hilarity in this British school did not ensue

Pupils as young as five were left ‘confused and worried’ after a school assembly to explain homosexuality.
Teachers played a recording of Elton John’s Your Song before explaining that the singer is homosexual and what the term means.
The children were then shown images of same-sex couples.
Parents said the experience left some pupils afraid to cuddle each other in the playground in case other children thought they were gay.

They’re kids. They really do not need to be taught this. Matter of fact, they do not need to know about sex. Let them be kids. Classes on the birds and the bees (or, has that been updated to pimps and whores?) should not even begin till at least the 7th or 8th grade.

The parents were not consulted, and were called homophobes when they complained. So much for open and free discussion, a practice which the Left says it is all for, but rarely practices.

Headmaster Nigel Utton said the 30-minute assembly contained only a small section on homosexuality which was appropriate for the age of the children.
They’re 5. What could possibly be age appropriate? They’re 5. They are interested in naps, cookies, using paint, and making messes.

Kent education officer Lynne Miller said: ‘This was an assembly about bullying and parents have praised the school for its handling of such a sensitive matter.

Anyone else think this could backfire? Kids can be, let’s face it, cruel. And they often do not know why they are cruel. All this “education” about homosexuals and bullying will simply give them another avenue to use their cruelty. But, for the moment, they are confused and scared to be kids. The human touch is important, and now they are afraid to hold hands, touch each other (and I do not mean sexually), and hug.

Welcome to life in Liberal Land, kiddies!

Fear of the truth

http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/2009/04/26/fear-of-the-truth/

 

Leftism thrives on ignorance. The least well-informed members of society — minorities and the poor — are their voter base. But the Leftist elite are not stupid. They know that the policies they preach sound good but will in the end be destructive to society. Hatred of the status quo is their motivation and their policies regularly deliver destructive and impoverishing results, mostly in the form of high taxes and a myriad of rules and regulations that stop people and businesses from doing perfectly reasonable things that they want to do. “By their fruit ye shall know them”.

But there is one place where maintaining the ignorance that is needed to get Democrat votes is hard: Universities and colleges. The kids there tend to have open minds and are well able to assimilate the full facts about what Leftist policies will result in. So what the kids are told has to be heavily censored — and heavily censored it is. The faculty give very incomplete facts in what they teach and the small cadre of far-Left students also do their best to demonize conservatives. Between the Leftist students and the faculty it is almost impossible to get a conservative speaker onto campus. Even very occasional readers of Tongue Tied should recall many instances where far-Left students have violently prevented conservative speakers from giving talks on various campuses (e.g. here).

If students got to know even the simplest of historical facts their Leftist indoctrination could be seriously disrupted. What if students got to know that the full name of Adolf Hitler’s political party was: “The National Socialist German Workers’ Party”? That would be very dangerous knowledge indeed. Who has ever heard of a socialist workers’ party that was anything but Leftist? Many students might rightly begin to doubt one of the central elements of their indoctrination: That Hitler was “Right-wing”. Even the fact that Hitler led a political party would be news to many, I think. So you can see that the Left have much to fear from people gaining a knowledge of the whole truth.

The strategy of censorship is contemptible enough in the universities but it even extends to Congress itself. With the Democrats in charge there now, great efforts are made to see that speeches against Global Warmism are not made or not heard. Warmism is a huge opportunity to shackle the country with a myriad of new and impoverishing rules and regulations so the Democrat leadership just love Warmism and don’t want people to know the full facts about climate.

And they showed that vividly very recently. Last Friday there was a Congressional hearing on global warming scheduled for the House Energy and Commerce committee. The Democrats had invited a “special guest” to appear so the GOP did the same. The Donk guest was Al Gore and the GOP invited Britain’s Lord Monckton, an extremely knowledgeable man about climate, right down to the tiniest scientific details. He would of course have wiped the floor with Big Al. He would be able to follow up each and every one of Gore’s misrepresentations with the actual scientific facts. So what did the Donks do? They refused to let Monckton appear. They were afraid of the facts that he would put before them. The truth is poison to them.

Fuller details of the censorship here. I have also put up a remedial lesson in 1930s German political history here.

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

Raymond Ibrahim: The History Channel’s Distortions of the Crusades

(Isto é o tipo de “informação” que é dado aos nossos jovens um pouco por todo o mundo ocidental. De repente, tudo o que é mau no ocidente é devido ao cristianismo, mas os muçulmanos, curiosamente, não têm culpas nenhumas no cartório. Será de admirar que depois de passar 20 anos a vêr lixo como este, os jovens não saibam o mínimo sobre o cristianismo e sobre a história?)

I recently taped and am watching a documentary, “The Crusades: Crescent and the Cross,” on the History Channel. While it is more or less historically accurate—names, dates, figures—it suffers from two weaknesses, weaknesses that often take center stage whenever Islam is discussed in the West: 1) biases and apologetics on behalf of Islam, coupled with outright distortions concerning Christians and Christianity; and 2) anachronisms, by projecting the motives and worldview of modern man onto the motives and worldview of pre-modern man, both Muslims and Christians.

Take the first 10 minute segment, dealing with Pope Urban II’s call to the Crusades, including the famous Council of Clermont (1095) where Urban made his case. Urban is repeatedly portrayed as a sly politician wholly indifferent to Christianity and faith, simply interested in aggrandizing his power and authority.

Incidentally, we are never told how Islam “spread”—that Jerusalem (not to mention practically the entire Muslim world today) was ruthlessly conquered—even by the enthusiastic narrator who speaks with somber awe whenever touching upon Muslim prowess. Instead, the narrator informs us that the encroachment of the Turks upon Byzantium was “the perfect opportunity [for Urban] to enhance his political power.” And of course, the “historians” interviewed all agree.

The “British-Pakistani” Muslim historian, Tariq Ali, is repeatedly quoted as something of the final authority on the Crusades in this documentary. Sitting there pompously, he nonchalantly informs us that, if the popes were anything, they were “scheming, manipulating, intriguing” persons, always out to exploit.

So what if it is a historical fact, especially after the battle of Manzikert (1071, a little more than two decades before Urban’s call to the crusades), that the Muslim armies were conquering more Christian land and increasingly terrorizing and persecuting Christians? Or that the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim had recently desecrated and destroyed a number of important churches—such as the Church of St. Mark in Egypt and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—and decreed several, even more oppressive than usual, decrees against Christians and Jews? It is in this backdrop that Pope Urban called for the Crusades:

From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks]…has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion (from the chronicles of Robert the Monk).

Despite the historically accurate nature of Urban’s less than subtle words, the narrator assures us that Urban’s speech was a “cunningly crafted piece of religious spin, spiced with exaggerated tales of Muslim atrocities against Christian pilgrims living in the Holy Land. It demonized the Turks.”

After all, “we”—the educated, modern, transcendent viewers—know better than that. Surely the Muslims and Turks did not behave that way—despite all the textual/eye-witness testimony to the contrary? Surely Pope Urban was simply the Medieval counterpart of the modern “Islamophobe”?

Next, we get a dramatization, supposedly of Urban, who looks more like a homeless, disheveled, madman, rabidly gesticulating and pontificating about the “wicked race of Saracens.” In other words, the modern viewer is supposed to go away with the view that Pope Urban was a closed-mind, intolerant, jingoistic racist—concepts that may make sense in the 21st century, but had no meaning in the 11th.

Again, the narrator, in a puzzled voice, states that thousands of Christians flocked to Urban’s call—but then he quickly explains their motivation: “prestige and honor.” He then goes on to say “But there was another attraction”—and here I thought he was going to mention sincere, though of course, “misplaced,” religious conviction. Not at all; it was the “promise of great riches.”

And just to press the point, Tariq Ali, once again smugly assures us: “They wanted the money [of the Islamic world]. It was as simple as that.” Just in case the viewer doesn’t get the allusion that the crusaders were Western, evil, white imperialists out to seize the Muslims’ Medieval equivalent of oil—gold and treasure.

All of this is anachronistic. Insisting that the pope was out to exploit in order to aggrandize himself, or that the people were motivated by prestige, honor, and riches, and never once mentioning that maybe, just maybe now, both the pope and people were motivated by more sincere convictions (e.g., assisting fellow oppressed Christians) is highly problematic.

Medieval man was not modern man. While all men throughout all time have been prone to hypocrisy, greed, violence, etc., Medieval Christians, as opposed to their 21st century (secularized) counterparts, were, by default, much more guided by faith (whether this faith was misplaced or not is hardly the point).

“Secularism” was never an option; Christians firmly believed in heaven and hell, God and the devil. And these were motives. Thus, for a “history” program to discuss the Crusades without once alluding that the pope and the people may have actually believed that they were fighting for something more than “honor, prestige, and riches”—things that are intelligible within a secular, not religious, paradigm, hence the gross anachronism—is very misleading. One would have expected a channel devoted to “history” to be most on guard against projecting modern views and standards on people who lived a millennium ago.

One need not believe in God and religion; but one should still give them their due when discussing the Medieval world—just as one should give them their due when discussing the Medieval mentality of modern day jihadists.