#GruntGod ch.10 (Francis and Pilgrimage)
The tenth installment of a revolutionary exploration of faith and service.
Every week I've been cutting good material out of a chapter to keep it moving for the readers who just want the story. This week you get the material I cut — the exegesis, the history, the scholarship — one post a day at 0800, building toward the same argument the chapter makes: pilgrimage was never supposed to be a straight line to a war, and calling a veteran-saint "broken" is bad scholarship dressed up as biography.
Here's what's coming
Monday, 2.10.1 — "What Circling Has to Do With Following" Hebrew has a word for "feast" that literally means "to circle." Joshua's army doesn't storm Jericho — it circles it, six times, in one chapter. Same root shows up in the Arabic word for the pilgrimage to Mecca. Turns out the Bible's model of holy movement was never a straight line to a destination, and that's a direct rebuke to the crusader logic the chapter takes apart.
Tuesday, 2.10.2 — "How 'Taking Up the Cross' Got Weaponized" Before 1095 the symbol of Christian pilgrimage was a scallop shell. Then Pope Urban II added one sentence to a sermon — die on the way and your sins are forgiven — and "pilgrim" became "crusader" almost overnight. This is the full history of how a phrase Jesus used for discipleship got hijacked for an army, and why you can't out-argue a symbol, only outlast it.
Wednesday, 2.10.3 — "The Stations of the Cross Are an Exile's Invention" Nobody planned the Stations of the Cross. The Franciscans built them because they got kicked out of Jerusalem for fifty years and couldn't do the real pilgrimage anymore. What started as a wartime improvisation ended up in more churches than the Crusades ever conquered territory — worth sitting with if you've ever had to build faithfulness without the mission you didn't get to finish.
Thursday, 2.10.4 — "Why John Needed Jesus to Carry His Own Cross" Three Gospels agree a bystander carried Jesus' cross. John changes the story. This is the redaction-critical case for why John couldn't let that stand — and it's the actual scholarship behind the line in the book: the guy giving the order already carried the ruck himself.
Friday, 2.10.5 — "Calling Francis 'Broken' Is Lazy Scholarship" A respected academic biography can't describe Francis's failed crusading attempts without reaching for words like "broken," "erratic," "troubled." Same instinct, different century, as the flinch a lot of veterans get at the church potluck when someone hears where they deployed. This one names the pattern and makes the case for hagiography over diagnosis.
Chapter 9 of the #GruntGod Season Pass will include:
📝 A revised chapter exploring Francis and pilgrimage.
🎨 An original digital icon of Francis the Pilgrim—part of the GruntGod Icon Series
🎧 A high-quality, ad-free MP3 download of the podcast episode, featuring exclusive insights from [Jay Magness?].
Support Grunt Works
Your purchase helps support our mission to build a better theology for those who serve;
📚 Buy e/books via Bookshop
🎧 Buy audiobooks via Libro
💰 Donate directly via Venmo
