SERMONS 

Genghis Khan as a Religious Liberal?

My title may be a challenge—a lot to swallow. Genghis Khan as a religious liberal? How can that be? All of us have been raised on an impression of Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes as thorough-going savages laying siege to everything in their path.

Then last spring I read a new book on Genghis Khan—Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. It is a revisionist look at the first leader of the Mongol hordes that overran so much of the world. Weatherford is an anthropology professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, whose extensive research into the spread of commerce led him to a five-year intensive exploration through the Mongol homeland and an entirely new picture of Genghis Khan’s modernism.

Much of Weatherford’s book is devoted to building an understanding of how Genghis Khan brought modernity to previously isolated tribal outposts. But a major factor in aiding the growth of the Mongol empire was the way in which Genghis Khan incorporated people of different religious persuasion into his empire. Through a process that included a respect for religious differences and the eminently practical ways in which he brought Christian wives into the Mongol embrace and by adoption of those who accepted their new rule, the Mongols spread the sense of familial connection.

The Mongols revolutionized warfare, and then brought still more revolution as they expanded their empire through the introduction of expanded commerce and innovative governance, communication, and invention.

Long before good King Sigismund—you know, he was the only Unitarian king in all of history, and was famous for his edict of religious freedom in the old Kingdom of Hungary—Genghis Khan actually spread the cause of religious freedom across much of the world in the 13th century.

He spread his empire through lands of Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists. Though the Mongols were animists, he was respectful of differences of religious views and practices. And like any good UU today, he loved and encouraged religious discourse.

Sure, the Mongols could be brutal, but those were brutal times. And as Weatherford tells the story, the Mongols brought startlingly enlightened governance as they built their empire. From Siberia to India, from Vietnam to Hungary, from Korea to the Balkans, they connected numerous warring kingdoms into what could be called a new world order. And at every stage in their advances, Genghis Khan declared religious freedom.

By 1260, the Mongol Empire included Moscow and Kiev in the northwest, stretching almost to Vienna, Baghdad in the southwest, and Zhongdu, later to be called Beijing, and the South China Sea in the east.

I hesitate to suggest that President Bush could learn a thing or two from Genghis Khan; he would, I’m sure, choose the wrong thing to learn, and would execute his learning incompetently. (You perhaps know that the conservative British magazine The Economist, long a Bush supporter, ended up endorsing John Kerry in the recent election; stating their choice as between “the incoherent and the incompetent.” They chose incoherence over incompetence, while the majority of American voters chose unyielding incompetence over incoherence.)

Genghis Khan was an animist, worshipping the Eternal Blue Sky, yet he embraced religious freedom as a principle, for Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and others. He brought Christian wives into the family and adopted as family members those he conquered. He was brutal in warfare, but merciful toward those who yielded to his power. And while the so-called civilized peoples of the time killed Mongol prisoners as public sport and fed them to dogs, the Mongols did not torture, mutilate, or maim. War of that time was a form of combat in terror, but the public torture and gruesome mutilation that was commonplace in those times was rejected by the Mongols.

Genghis Khan placed the power of law above his own power, created public schools, granted diplomatic immunity, abolished torture, and introduced free trade. He ordered the introduction of a writing system, and developed a postal system, using fast riders. His descendants continued his practices and added to his innovations in science, technology, and governance. His grandson Khubilai Khan expanded the Mongol Empire, introduced universal currency and sought to establish a universal basic education that everyone might become literate. The Mongols also refined and combined calendars, creating the most accurate yet, along with sponsoring the most extensive maps.

He declared the rule of law as supreme over any individual, and made it clear that the Great Law applied as strictly to rulers as to anyone else. This was a difficult concept to sell, and his descendants abandoned the notion about 50 years after his death. While the Mongols brought conquest and destruction as they spread their empire, still, as Weatherford states, “In nearly every country touched by the Mongols, the initial destruction and shock of conquest by an unknown and barbaric tribe yielded quickly to an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and improved civilization.”

The Mongol tactics were extraordinarily clever, as they expanded their empire. They were always outnumbered by defending armies, but through deception and flexibility in movement, they always overcame. They would scatter, seeming to retreat, and draw their opponents out. They would stop while advancing on a defending army, just far enough away that their own arrows would reach the enemy lines, while the enemy’s less powerful arrows would fall short.

This may come as a surprise to those who think the Mongols were nothing more than conquering warriors. The Mongols also loved competitions of all kinds, including debates. In 1253, a Franciscan monk, William of Rubruck, visited the Mongol court, seeking to “spread the word of God.” Mongke Khan, a successor to Genghis Khan, entered into religious discourse with the monk. Now you need to remember that there were Mongol Christians at the time, because the Mongols had taken Christian wives along the way. The Mongol Christians associated God with light. Indeed the Golden Light was sacred in Mongol mythology, so this represented something of a blending perhaps of Mongol animism and Christianity. They also associated Jesus with healing and triumph of life over death.

Despite the common religion, as Weatherford notes, Rubruck did not respect the Mongol Christians’ views; all non-Catholics, he thought, were heretics. And he represented himself as bearing the word of God. Mongke Khan wondered how William of Rubruck knew the word of God; had he visited heaven?

After the discussion had continued for some time, Mongke Khan realized it wasn’t going anywhere, so he suggested a formal debate. He asked the assembled scholars to take time to write down their thoughts more clearly, and a starting date was determined for a series of debates. A panel of judges was chosen to oversee the debates, which included a Christian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist.

The ground rules for the debate stated that, “on pain of death, no one shall dare to speak words of contention.” Now think about that. Does that not represent a method, appropriate for the time, for the exercise of freedom, reason, and tolerance? Take some time to get your arguments together; let’s debate them, but let us not get hostile. As Weatherford wrote: “As these men gathered in all their robes and regalia in the tents on the dusty plains of Mongolia, they were doing something that no other set of scholars or theologians had ever done in history.”

The debate raged back and forth over a wide range of religious questions--good and evil, the nature of God, the souls of animals, reincarnation, and so forth. After each round everyone drank, and in the end, unable either to convert or kill each other, they were too drunk to continue.

How much more civilized was this, in contrast with the intolerance and savagery going on elsewhere between Christians and Muslims? Of course we know this didn’t last. The Mongol armies, never more than 100,000 men, subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans had in 400. Genghis lived almost to the age of 70, and his descendants carried on after him. But the grandsons battled among themselves, and over the next seven centuries the Mongol Empire collapsed. The last ruling descendant of Genghis Khan was Alim Khan, emir of Bukhara, who was deposed in Uzbekistan in 1920 by the Russian revolution.

In the twentieth century, Russia and China divided the homeland of Genghis Khan between them—and in time the Soviet persecutions in Mongolia destroyed a generation of scholars, and the Spirit Banner Genghis Khan had carried across Eurasia disappeared from where the Communist authorities had kept it. It has not been seen since.

Weatherford’s book is a fascinating account of Genghis Khan and his Mongol successors. The anthropologist had extensively researched the history of world commerce, following the trail of the Mongols through Russia, China, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, and Turkmenistan. Just when he thought he was nearly finished with his project, he found himself drawn into another five years of research, far more intensive than he had imagined.

Weatherford found himself in “the undisturbed, closed homeland of Genghis Khan; several hundred square miles of pristine forests, mountains, river valleys, and steppes.” This area, he said, is “a living monument to Genghis Khan,” preserved “like a lost island surrounded, yet protected, by the worst technological horrors of the twentieth century.”

Weatherford’s team went out repeatedly over a five-year period. “Temperatures varied by more than 150 degrees—from highs of over 100 degrees in tracts of land without shade to a low of minus 51 degrees, not counting the chill of the fierce wind, in Khorkhonag steppe in January 2001."

Among his discoveries: “From riding nearly fifty miles in one day on a horse, I learned that the fifteen feet of silk tied tightly around the midriff actually kept the organs in place and prevented nausea. I also learned the importance of having dried yogurt in my pocket on such long treks, when there was no time to stop and cook a meal, as well as the practicality of the thick Mongol robe, called a deel, when riding on wooden saddles. An encounter with a wolf near the sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun became a blessing in the eyes of our companions rather than a threat, and countless episodes of getting lost or of breaking down brought new lessons about directions, navigation, and the patience of waiting until someone came along. Repeatedly, I learned how intimately the Mongols know their own world and how consistently and completely I could trust in their astute judgment, physical ability, and genuine helpfulness.”

Though many of Genghis Khan’s innovations did not long survive his own lifetime, and eventually the Mongol empire collapsed, Genghis Khan came to provide inspiration to modern Asians. The Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, while imprisoned in 1931 while his wife was incarcerated in another prison, wrote almost daily letters to his 13-year-old daughter Indira, explaining history. He described Genghis Khan as “without doubt, the greatest military genius and leader in history.” He said, “Alexander and Caesar seem petty before him.”

Weatherford asserts that Genghis Khan “shaped the modern world of commerce, communication, and large secular states more than any other individual. He was the thoroughly modern man in his mobilized and professional warfare and in his commitment to global commerce and the rule of international secular law. What began as a war of extinction between the nomad and the farmer ended as a Mongol amalgamation of cultures. His vision matured as he aged and as he experienced different ways of life. He worked to create something new and better for his people. The Mongol armies destroyed the uniqueness of the civilizations around them by shattering the protective walls that isolated one civilization from another and by knotting the cultures together.”

You might suggest that in some ways the American experiment has some of these elements, seeking to knot cultures together, as people from “other civilizations” come to the U.S. and become Americans. We seek not to obliterate the uniqueness of the civilizations, but rather to incorporate this bringing together of different cultures to build a richer embracing culture. At least that is what we wish for. And if we can imagine Genghis Khan as a forebear of our Unitarian Universalist vision, we trust that our vision too will mature with age, even as Genghis Khan himself matured.