Christians atone for the Crusades: for the last three years, western Christians have been retracing the steps of the first Crusaders - with a message of peace and repentance.

What began as the dream of a young American carpenter has grown to encompass over 1,100 people from more than 25 countries in a bold bid to heal the wounds of history.

In the late 1980s the carpenter, who had worked in the Middle East for some years, realized that the 900th anniversary of the First Crusade (1096-99) was just a few years away. `Isn't it time someone apologized for this?' he wondered.

The idea eventually made its way to Lynn Green, a leading evangelical Christian. At first Green thought his schedule was too full for this interesting, but potentially dangerous, idea. Some months later, while taking a swim during a conference in South America, the idea came back to him. `I thought about it and planned it in my imagination for about two hours and it dawned on me that this idea was God-ordained, and I needed to do something about it,' he says.

The Reconciliation Walk (RW) was launched in November 1995 in Clermont-Ferrand, France 900 years to the day after Pope Urban II summoned Christendom to war and unleashed rape, pillage and slaughter. Since then, a grassroots movement of western Christians, primarily from Western Europe and North America, has been retracing the route of the First Crusade, apologizing to Muslims, Jews and eastern Christians for the atrocities committed against their ancestors. It will culminate in Jerusalem on 15 July 1999, the 900th anniversary of the Crusaders' sacking of the city, with a public apology.

Those who take part can do so in two different ways. The `mileage teams' do the physical walking--from Cologne, Germany, to Jerusalem. Like the original Crusaders, they have been doing this in stages, spread out over three years--but not stopping to loot and murder along the way.

The excess time is used by the `message teams', who travel to the country which the Reconciliation Walk has reached at the time. They participate in two days of orientation and then go out into the area, often in response to invitations from local religious or political leaders. They embody the message of apology which lies at the heart of the Reconciliation Walk.

John Kittrell of Dallas, Texas, went to Lebanon as part of a message team last September. He handed the Arabic version of the walk's message of apology to a man on the streets of the Hamra district of Beirut.

`He placed the palm of his right hand on the message page, then put his hand over his heart,' says Kittrell. `He said something in Arabic that I couldn't understand, and then he placed his hand on his forehead and then pointed it toward heaven. I took this to mean that he was taking the message into his heart and mind, and to God. I felt myself start choking up with tears at his incredible acceptance of my apology. It so obviously meant more to him than I will ever be able to understand, and I am thankful to God for the opportunity to have experienced that.'

The RW message of apology reads in part, `The Crusaders lifted the banner of the cross above your people. By this act they corrupted its true meaning of reconciliation, forgiveness and selfless love.... We deeply regret the atrocities committed in the name of Christ by our predecessors.'

Like the Crusaders who came before them, RW participants are both rich and poor, young and old. They include everyone from doctors and lawyers to factory workers and `just plain mum'.

For many the experience has shattered media-fed stereotypes of Middle Easterners as fanatical religious terrorists, bent on the destruction of everyone who is different from them. They discovered, of course, people very like themselves, who want to make a good life for their families, work in ordinary jobs and who have children pulling them hither and thither for football matches and school projects.

Unlike many--but not all--parts of the West, where people like to think history belongs in the past, in the Middle East it is a living, breathing entity whose repercussions are felt daily. Muslims, Jews and eastern Christians have not forgotten what happened 900 years ago: media and leaders in the region referred to the Gulf War as the `Eighth Crusade'.

For me personally, the Reconciliation Walk has come to embody my desire to see the seeds of reconciliation, peace and trust sown in this troubled region. The most powerful outcome of the RW does not lie in the public apologies, attended by media and political dignatories, but in its effect on the lives and outlook of all involved. This humble act of repentance, and genuine desire for a new relationship, is radically altering the worldview of both European and American participants and Middle Easterners.

If you would like to participate in the final stages of the Reconciliation Walk, contact Reconciliation Walk, PO Box 61, Harpenden, Herts AL5 4JJ, UK. Or e-mail reconciliation @compuserve.com or visit www.reconcillationwalk.org