Children’s Crusade

CR101 Radio - Podcast Network · Apr 22, 2026 · 8m

In “Children’s Crusade” (Chalcedon Report No. 152), Rushdoony argues that the belief in the natural innocence and saving power of children is a recurring humanistic heresy with catastrophic consequences. He traces this idea from medieval theology to the Children’s Crusade of 1212, where faith in childlike purity led nearly 100,000 children into death, slavery, disease, and disillusionment. The same doctrine, he contends, reappeared in the student movements of the 1960s, which proclaimed youth as morally superior and society as the source of evil. These modern crusaders, convinced of their own…