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I am not familiar with Mr. Johnson, what else would he contend motivated the Crusades?

As a substitute for penance and source of indulgences (page 233): "In 1095, Urban II, propagating the first crusade, laid it down that a crusade to the Holy Land was a substitute for any other penance and entailed complete remission of sin....Throughout the twelfth century, crusading was the only source of indulgences..."

Migration (page 244): "What really created the crusade...sprang from the vast increase in western population in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the consequent land hunger...The idea that Europe was a Christian entity, which had acquired certain inherent rights over the rest of the world by virtue of its faith, and its duty to spread it, married perfectly with the need to find some outlet both for its addiction to violence and its surplus population."

Racial arrogance (page 45): "From the start, then, the crusades were marked by depredations and violence which were as much racial as religious in origin."

Ecclesiastical control (page 249): "It is, in fact, a misleading over-simplification to see the crusade simply as a confrontation between Christian Europe and the Moslem East. The central problem of the institutional church was always how to control the manifestations of religious enthusiasm, and divert them into orthodox and constructive channels. The problem was enormously intensified when large numbers of people were involved...A crusade was in essence nothing more than a mob of armed and fanatical Christians." (page 250): "Naturally, when antinomian mobs were liable to sweep away church institutions, established authority was anxious to get them out of Christendom--preferably in the East, whence few would return."

Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, A Touchstone Book/Simon & Schuster, 1976; first Touchstone edition 1995.

Note that none of what Johnson writes contradicts that the Crusades were in essence a just war. What Johnson does is, he spreads some key words to which a modern reader has a Pavlovian negative reaction, such as "indulgences" or "violence", or "mob of armed and fanatical Christians". He also silently takes for granted that the East was Muslim. I never thought of Johnson as a yellow historian before (I read his History of the American People and some polemical articles) but these quotes convince me otherwise.

Throughout the twelfth century, crusading was the only source of indulgences

Not true.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm
At first the pilgrims came simply to venerate the relics of the Apostles and martyrs; but in course of time their chief purpose was to gain the indulgences granted by the pope and attached especially to the Stations. Jerusalem, too, had long been the goal of these pious journeys, and the reports which the pilgrims gave of their treatment by the infidels finally brought about the Crusades. ... Similar concessions were frequently made on occasions, such as the dedication of churches, e.g., that of the old Temple Church in London, which was consecrated in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 10 February, 1185, by the Lord Heraclius, who to those yearly visiting it indulged sixty days of the penance enjoined them -- as the inscription over the main entrance attests.

http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Faith/0910-96/article9.html
As the first ten centuries of the Christian era passed, there were no indications of an indulgence being present, as we would practice the doctrine. But by the eleventh century, many examples can be cited.37 It appears that practice may have developed at the local level first, rather than with any papal policy. This hearkens to the Fourth Lateran Council, which criticized the practices of some local bishops. But with time, the Church and particularly the Popes recognized this as a legitimate practice, based upon the doctrines of the faith. Further, it marked a shift in the practice of what was the forerunner of indulgences. Previously, these were granted on an individualistic basis. Now, in the eleventh century and after, general grants, available to all, could be attained to remit temporal punishments by visiting churches, making pilgrimages and giving alms.
37 Lepicier, p. 281. Cf. Hagedorn, p.33.

One more point. In this book, Johnson, though a Catholic, buys into the anti-Catholicism which was common among moderate and liberal Catholics in the wake of Vatican II. So his book actually repeats the typical English Black Legend accusations against Catholic Spain. The section on the Protestant Reformation offers a somewhat vague Erasmian irenicism as the solution: if only both Catholics and Protestants had listened to Erasmus all would have been well--a kind of utopian, New Age Catholicism Lite that actually, in my view would have made things worse and was totally unrealistics (as all utopias are) to begin with. Johnson is a gifted writer and so he made it sound like the real answer, but anyone who is familiar with the era can see through it.

Again, none of this should take away from some truly great books by Johnson--his History of Art, Modern Times etc.