Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  The Gloss on the words “How hard is for those who have riches” etc. (Mark x. 23), has the following comment: “It is one thing to have money, another to love it. Many possess it without loving it; many love it without possessing it.” Thus, while some men own wealth and love it; others congratulate themselves on neither owning nor loving it, for this is the safer course. Such men can say with the Apostle, “the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.” Hence it is evident that habitual poverty, in conjunction with actual poverty, is preferable to habitual poverty alone. This same remark may be made with reference to the words in Matt. xix. 23, “How hard it is for a rich man enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Gloss here observes, “It is safest neither to possess nor to love riches.” “Has not God chosen the poor in this world?” asks St. James (ii. 5). “Those who are poor, in temporal possessions” is the interpretation of these word given by the Gloss. Hence it is those who are actually poor who are chosen by God. The Gloss on the words, “every one of you who does not renounce everything that he possesses,” observes that “there is a difference between renouncing everything and leaving everything. All who make lawful use of their material possessions renounce them, in so far as their aspirations tend towards such things as are eternal. But those who leave all things act with greater perfection, for they set aside what is temporal in order to seek only what is eternal.” Hence abandonment of all things by actual poverty is a point of evangelical perfection; renunciation of all things by habitual poverty is necessary for salvation. St. Jerome, in his epistle against Vigilantius, says: “The Lord speaks to him who desires to be perfect and, with the Apostle, leaves father, ship and net. The one you praise is in the second or third rank; for he desires only to give the income of his possessions to the poor. We accept such a one, although we know that the first degree of virtue is preferable to the second or third degree.” From these words, it is plain that they who give all that they possess to the poor, are to be preferred before such as give alms only of their income. St. Jerome, again, says, in his epistle to the Monk Rusticus: “If you have possessions, sell them and give to the poor. If you do not have them, you are free from a great burden. Therefore, being stripped of all things, you follow Christ in His poverty. This is a hard and painful undertaking; but it is rewarded with a glorious recompense.” For the sake of brevity, we omit many other passages from St. Jerome, all of whic must be understood as referring to actual poverty.

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  He is the one who will serve no master other than himself and who will set others free to do the same. In many ways, the pagan Aeschylus possessed greater spiritual insight into the character and motivation of Prometheus than Shelley, who knew the Bible well, though he did not accept it as God’s Word. In his tragedy Prometheus Bound —which Shelley would rework and “re-mythologize” as Prometheus Unbound — Aeschylus presents Prometheus as a flawed hero, one who is as proud and irascible as he is brave and altruistic. Rather than being humbled by his punishment, he boasts that he alone can bear the pain and sorrow, scorning all who would offer him comfort or solace. {N3} But what of the Christian? How is he to look upon Prometheus? As Christ or Satan, savior or rebel? I would suggest that Christians should see in Prometheus a grand mythic type, a model writ large, of both our divine nobility and our base depravity. There is in all of us a capacity for self-sacrifice that is truly Christlike. But there lies as well in our heart a lust to disobey, to overthrow, to seize for ourselves that which belongs to our Creator alone. It is good that we should reach for the prize that lies just out of reach: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. ” (1 Corinthians 9:24, NIV). But let us not overreach as Prometheus did, seeking a thing that shines brightly but that will bring us death in the end (see Genesis 3:6). {N4} A pplications Start by explaining to students that after the French Revolution, many Romantic poets and critics re-read Milton’s Paradise Lost and decided that the real hero was not Jehovah or Jesus or Adam, but Satan.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Every seven years the fields were to lie fallow (probably in rotation) and their untilled harvests were to belong to all alike, like the berries that grow along our country roadside or in our forests. Of course the poor were benefited most by such liberty to picnic. When the grain, the grapes, and the olives were harvested, the poor had the right to glean, and the owner was forbidden to be too careful in harvesting the corners or to go over the vines and trees a second time. A hungry man passing through the fields was always free to eat of grain or fruit. These provisions doubtless were based on ancient customs, which in turn were remnants of primitive communism in land, a lingering recognition that the entire community has rights in the land which limit those of the individual owner. This right of the hungry man to help himself was not like the coin flung to a beggar in pity. It was the claim to joint-ownership. It was his right. There is a fundamental moral distinction between the two things. The laborer was to be paid at sundown. That recognizes the importance of prompt payment of wages, for which modern labor legislation has had to contend. The principle for which the Eight-hour Movement and the Early-closing Movement now agitate was embodied in the Sabbath law. The Decalogue emphatically throws the protection of that law over those whose labor-force was most in danger of being exploited, the slaves, the immigrant stranger, and the beasts of burden. It was quite within the bounds of human nature for the frugal farmer to send them to work, while he sent himself to rest; hence they are especially enumerated. The earliest form of the Sabbath law is the most purely humane in its wording: “that thine ox and thine ass, and the son of thy handmaid, and the sojourner may be refreshed.” In a non-capitalistic community loans would usually be asked only to relieve need and therefore no advantage was to be taken of a neighbor’s necessities by making his distress profitable. Interest was forbidden, so that debt could not breed more hopeless debt. This also counteracted the tendency to inequality in mobile capital. If an Israelite through debt or misfortune became slave to another, he was not a pariah, but was still to be treated as a member of the family, with a right to share in the family feasts. His servitude was not to become perpetual and when its term was over, he was to be loaded with gifts that he might have a start in shifting for himself. A fugitive slave was to be protected. Israel had no “Fugitive Slave Law.” There is no record of any slave riots or of any burning slave question in its history. Thus the Law, like the preaching of the prophets, manifests a striking sympathy for the poorer classes and an unflagging respect for their equal humanity.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  St. Augustine (Gennadius) likewise says in his book De eccles. Dogmaibus: “Though it be a good thing to distribute our riches by degrees among the poor, it is, a better to give all away at once with the intention of following our Lord, in order that free from anxiety, we may share His poverty.” St. Ambrose, in like manner, says in his book, De Offic.: “Riches will not give us the slightest assistance in attaining to a life of blessedness. This is clearly pointed out by our Lord’s words, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.” And again, he says that “poverty, hunger, pain, and suchlike evils that are borne as evils, are not merely no obstacle to blessedness, but they are clearly pronounced to be aids towards attaining to it.” Now these words cannot be understood as referring to habitual poverty, whereby a man is merely detached from riches; for, riches have never been held by any to be obstacles to happiness. They must, therefore, be understood to refer to actual poverty, whereby all possessions are given up. St. Gregory says (in the eighth homily of the second part on Ezech.), “ When a man consecrates to God one thing, but not another, he offers a sacrifice. But, when he gives to God his whole life, with all that he has and all that he loves, he offers a holocaust, which is the most acceptable form of sacrifice.” Hence it is the most perfect work to abandon all that we have for the love of God. St. Gregory likewise says (prolog. Moral.), “While I was still constrained to serve the world in appearance, many temporal anxieties rose up around me and claimed all my attention. At length, escaping from them, I sought the gate of the monastery and, forsaking the things of this world, which I then regarded as vanities, I escaped from them, as a mariner from a shipwreck.” Hence we see that it is dangerous to possess material goods; for they occupy the mind to a perilous degree. It is better, therefore, to relinquish the possession of earthly things by actual poverty, that so, the mind may be freed from solicitude concerning them. St. Chrysostom asks in his book Quod neno laeditur nisi a se ipso, “What harm did material poverty do to the Apostles? Did they not live in hunger and thirst and nakedness? and were they not, on this account, more renowned and glorious? and did not their poverty increase their trust in God? “ Hence we see that actual poverty, which consists in privation of all things, forms part of Apostolical perfection.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Thus on the one hypothesis the Law created the prophets; on the other hypothesis the prophets created the Law. In either case the relation is very close and causal. For any thorough discussion of the social ideals embodied in the Law it would be necessary to decide between these two hypotheses. For our purpose it is sufficient to point out that the Law and the prophets are a deposit of the same strong current of historical life, related to each other as cause and effect. The Law, of course, recognized such fundamental customs and institutions of primitive Oriental civilization as slavery, polygamy, and blood-revenge. In so far as it gives formal sanction to these institutions, it drops below the conceptions of human rights to which we have now attained. But its general drift and purpose, its regard for the rights of the poor, and its tenderness even for their finer feelings of self-respect are so noble and humane that one cannot study the social features of the Hebrew Law without a thrill of sympathy and admiration. By swift moral intuition, by the instinct of human fellow-feeling under the impulse of religious faith, regulations were conceived there which anticipated and outran the rudimentary protective legislation of our day. We shall glance at a few points only. The land belonged to Jehovah, the national god. That is only another way of saying that it belonged to the community. It was not individual property, but clan and family property. There were various provisions to protect the right of the family to its ancestral holding and to prevent any permanent alienation. If land was sold under stress of need, it could be purchased back under favorable terms. In an agricultural community and before the introduction of machinery in farming the land is by far the most important means of production. It is one of the highest problems of statesmanship how to plant and root the people evenly and wisely in the land. If the land is owned by the men who till it, there is social health and strength. If it is owned by wealthy proprietors and tilled by landless agricultural laborers, a curse is on the people. All the provisions of the Hebrew Law were meant to counteract the separation of the people from the land. It sought to prevent the growth of great estates and a landed aristocracy on the one side, and the growth of a landless proletariat on the other side.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  St, Bernard writes to the Archbishop of Sens: “Blessed is he who keeps for himself nothing of what he possesses. Blessed is he who has not a den like the wolves, nor a nest like the birds, nor a purse like Judas, nor a house, but who, like Mary, finds no room even in an inn, and thus imitates Him who had not whereon to lay His head.” Entire destitution of all earthly possessions, therefore, pertains to Christian perfection. In I quaest. II. cap. Si quis, we read: “He who strips himself of everything, or who, possessing nothing, desires nothing, is more perfect than he who out of his abundance gives something to the Church.” These words are another proof that actual poverty is a point of Christian perfection. They who devote themselves to the contemplation of divine things ought to be more disengaged from temporal anxiety than they who apply themselves to the study of philosophy. But philosophers, in order to be able to give their whole attention to study, used to relinquish all their worldly possessions. St. Jerome says to the priest Paulinus (de instil. monach.), “Socrates, the Theban, a very wealthy man, when he went to study philosophy at Athens, cut away a large quantity of gold, judging that he could not, at the same time, possess both virtue and riches.” It is far more praiseworthy then to relinquish all worldly goods, for the sake of divine contemplation. The interlinear Gloss on the words, “ if you would be perfect,” etc. (Matt. xix) says: “Behold the life of contemplation taught by the Gospel.” A great reward is only given for great merit. Now a great reward, i.e. judicial power, is due to actual poverty. This appears from the words of our Lord (Matt. xix.), “You who have left all things” etc. The Gloss commenting on this text says, “They who have left all things and have followed the Lord shall be judges; but they who have lawfully retained and used their goods, shall be judged.” Therefore, the higher merit is due to actual poverty. St. Paul (1 Cor. vii.), in counselling virginity, gives as the reason of his counsel that they may be without solicitude. The renunciation of riches frees a man from solicitude. For riches engender many anxieties in their possessors. Hence our Lord (Luke x.) speaks of them as “thorns” which, by their care, choke the Word of God in the hearts of the hearers. Therefore, even as virginity, so poverty belongs to evangelical perfection. 2. We shall prove, in conclusion that the perfection which consists in the entire sacrifice of private property does not necessitate the possession of common property.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Kenite shelters Sisera in her tent and then drives a tent peg into his skull. There is no apology for the violence of the action. The survival of the people is at stake, and Judith is a heroine. That a woman performs this great deed accords with the theology of the book of Judges, where God effects his deliverance through improbable means to show that it is not an achievement of human power. The book of Judith is blatantly nationalistic. It is preserved only in Greek, Latin, and other translations, but the idiom suggests that it was composed in Hebrew. No trace of it has been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The spirit of the book is very similar to that of 1 Maccabees, which also celebrates militant Jewish resistance to foreign oppressors. It is widely supposed that Judith, too, is Maccabean literature, written toward the end of the second century B.C.E., when the heirs of the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, ruled in Jerusalem. First Maccabees was also written in Hebrew but preserved only in Greek and other translations. It was not included in the Dead Sea Scrolls, probably because the Dead Sea sect was not sympathetic to the Maccabees, who were less than scrupulous in their observance of the Law. It is somewhat ironic that these two books, which celebrate militant Jewish nationalism, did not find a place in the canon of Jewish Scriptures, but were included in the Greek Bible and remain canonical in the Roman Catholic Church. FOR FURTHER READING General A. Brenner, A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna (The Feminist Companion to the Bible 7; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). A collection of feminist articles on these stories. A. Lacocque, The Feminine Unconventional: Four Subversive Figures in

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Azzam did not make up this theory out of whole cloth. He followed al-Shafii, the eighth-century scholar who had ruled that when the Dar al-Islam was invaded by a foreign power, jihad could become fard ayn, the responsibility of every fit Muslim who lived near the frontier. Modern transport now made it possible for all Muslims to reach the border of Afghanistan, so jihad, Azzam reasoned, was “compulsory upon each and every Muslim on earth.” Once they had liberated Afghanistan, the Arab-Afghans should go on to recover all the other lands wrested from the ummah by non-Muslims—Palestine, Lebanon, Bokhara, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, the Philippines, Burma, South Yemen, Tashkent, and Spain.10 In his lectures and writings, Azzam depicted the Afghans somewhat idealistically as untouched by the brutal mechanization of modern jahiliyyah; they represented pristine humanity. Fighting the Soviet Goliath, they reminded him of David when he was but a shepherd boy. His tales of the Afghans and Arabs who died as martyrs in this war inspired Muslim audiences worldwide. But Azzam’s martyrs were not suicide bombers or terrorists of any kind. They did not cause their own deaths or kill civilians: they were regular soldiers killed in battle by Soviet troops. Azzam was in fact adamantly opposed to terrorism, and on this point he would eventually part company with Bin Laden and the Egyptian radical Ayman al-Zawahiri. Azzam insistently maintained the orthodox view that killing noncombatants or fellow Muslims like Sadat violated fundamental Islamic teaching. In fact, he believed that a martyr could be a “witness” to divine truth even if he died peacefully in bed.11 Azzam’s classical jihadism was condemned by some scholars, but it had strong appeal for young Sunnis who were embarrassed by the success of the Shii revolution in Iran. Yet not all the volunteers were devout; some were not even observant, although in Peshawar many would be influenced by such hard-line Islamists as Zawahiri, who had suffered arrest, torture, and imprisonment in Egypt for alleged involvement in the Sadat assassination. And so Afghanistan became a new Islamist hub. Young militants from East Asia and North Africa were sent to the front to increase their commitment, and the government of Saudi Arabia actually encouraged its own young to volunteer.12

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  It is instructive that the Deuteronomists, who pioneered the idea of scriptural orthodoxy, introduced startlingly new legislation, which – had it been implemented – would have transformed the ancient faith of Israel.40 To ensure purity of worship, they tried to centralize the cult,41 create a secular judiciary independent of the temple, and strip the king of his sacral powers, making him subject to the torah like everybody else. The Deuteronomists actually changed the wording of earlier law codes, sagas and liturgical texts to make them endorse their proposals. In some ways, Deuteronomy, with its secular sphere, centralized state and constitutional monarchy, reads like a modern document. It was even more passionate about social justice than Amos and its theology more rational than the old cultic mythology of Judah:42 you could not see God and he did not live in a humanly constructed building.43 Israelites did not own their land because Yahweh dwelt on Zion, but because the people observed his commandments. The reformers did not use their scripture to conserve tradition, as is often done today, but to introduce radical change. They also rewrote the history of Israel, adding fresh material that adapted the JE epic to the seventh century, paying special attention to Moses, who had liberated the Israelites from Egypt, at a time when Josiah hoped to become independent of Pharaoh. The climax of the Exodus story was no longer a theophany on Sinai, but the gift of the sefer torah and the tablets that Yahweh gave to Moses were now inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The Deuteronomists extended the Exodus story to include Joshua’s conquest of the northern highlands – a blueprint for Josiah’s reconquering of the northern territories.44 They also wrote a history of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the books of Samuel and Kings, arguing that the Davidic monarchs were the only legitimate rulers of the whole of Israel. Their story culminated in the reign of Josiah, a new Moses and a greater king than David.45

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  The foundation of all perfection was laid by Christ and by the Apostles. We do not, however read that when they left all that they had, they possessed property in common. On the contrary, we are told that they had no house wherein to dwell. Hence common property is not an essential of perfect poverty. St. Augustine tells us (3 De doctrina Christ.) that in the primitive church, the Jews who converted to Christianity, “being constantly in close contact with spiritual things, were so receptive of the influence of the Holy Spirit that they sold all that they had, and laid the price at the feet of the Apostles, to be distributed among the poor.” He further observes that “this fact is not narrated of any Gentile church; for they who had for gods idols made by hands were not so open to the Holy Spirit.” Hence we see that St. Augustine considers the perfection of the early Jewish church to have been superior to that of the Gentile churches. For, while the Gentile converts sold all that they had to give to the poor, the Jews sold their possessions so absolutely as to reserve to themselves no common property whatsoever. Hence poverty, without common property, is more perfect than that which retains property in common. St. Jerome, writing to Hellodorus, on the death of Nepotiau, says in derision, “Men are richer as monks than they were as seculars. With the poverty of Christ, they possess wealth that they had not when they were subject to the devil; and the Church mourns over the riches of those, whom the world despised as beggars.” These words may often be verified in religious orders that maintain common property. They can never be true of such religious as possess nothing. Hence it is more meritorious for religious to have nothing than to possess property. St. Jerome, again, writes to Lucinus Beticus: “As long as we are engaged in things of the world, and our mind is occupied about our possessions and revenues, we cannot think freely of God.” Hence it is better for religious to be without property and revenues, than to possess them. St. Gregory (3 Dialog.) says, speaking of Isaac a servant of God, “When, as frequently happened, his disciples pressed him to accept for the use of the monastery the things that were offered to him, Isaac, vigilant in his care for poverty, was wont to make use of these strong words: ‘The monk who seeks possessions on earth, is no monk.’ For he feared to lose his poverty as a miser fears to be robbed of his gold.” This example proves that it is safest for religious not to possess common property. The monks of Egypt, of whom we read in the lives of the Fathers, deemed those religious to be the most perfect, who lived in the desert, possessing nothing. Hence common property is not an essential of evangelical poverty.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THEOPHYLACT. Or to the reason above given the Lord added the testimony of Scripture, Now that the dead are raised, Moses also shewed at the bush, (Exod. 3:6.) as the Lord saith, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. As if he said, If the patriarchs have once returned to nothing so as not to live with God in the hope of a resurrection, He would not have said, I am, but, I was, for we are accustomed to speak of things dead and gone thus, I was the Lord or Master of such a thing; but now that He said, I am, He shews that He is the God and Lord of the living. This is what follows, But he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. For though they have departed from life, yet live they with Him in the hope of a resurrection. BEDE. Or He says this, that after having proved that the souls abide alter death, (which the Sadducees denied,) He might next introduce the resurrection also of the bodies, which together with the souls have done good or evil. But that is a true life which the just live unto God, even though they are dead in the body. Now to prove the truth of the resurrection, He might have brought much more obvious examples from the Prophets, but the Sadducees received only the five books of Moses, rejecting the oracles of the Prophets. CHRYSOSTOM. (de Anna, Serm. 4.) As the saints claim as their own the common Lord of the world, not as derogating from His dominion, but testifying their affection after the manner of lovers, who do not brook to love with many, but desire to express a certain peculiar and especial attachment; so likewise does God call Himself especially the God of these, not thereby narrowing but enlarging His dominion; for it is not so much the multitude of His subjects that manifests His power, as the virtue of His servants. Therefore He does not so delight in the name of the God of heaven and earth, as in that of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now among men servants are thus denominated by their masters; for we say, ‘The steward of such a man,’ but on the contrary God is called the God of Abraham. THEOPHYLACT. But when the Sadducees were silenced, the Scribes commend Jesus, for they were opposed to them, saying to Him, Master, thou hast well said. BEDE. And since they had been defeated in argument, they ask Him no further questions, but seize Him, and deliver Him up to the Roman power. From which we may learn, that the poison of envy may indeed be subdued, but it is a hard thing to keep it at rest. 20:41–4441. And he said unto them, How say they that Christ is David’s son?

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  The or der we are being asked to adm ire here is not an order of expr es sed or emb odied meaning s. What makes the coll ecti on of entities that make up the world an order is not prima rily that they realize an in terr elat ed whole of possibi litie s-alt hough something of that li ngers on, as we see, in the pr inciple of plenitude. 27 The p rincipa l thing that makes the entitie s in the world in to an order is that their natures mesh. The purpos es sought by each, of the causa l functions which each one exercises, inte rlock with the others so as to coher e into a harmonious whole. Each in serving itself serves the entire or der. This new vision is pr esented by me ans of anothe r trad itio nal image : Look round our World; behold the chain of Love Combining all below and all above. 28 The chain of love figures prominen tly in Ficino 's Platonism , which had a wid e influen ce through the Renaissa nce and up to the period we're now looki ng at, thro ugh the Cambrid ge Platonists, and then Shaftes bury . In the very next line, Pope refers to "plas tic Nature", a key term of the Cambrid ge schoo l, as it was of the Romantics later. But for Ficino, the chain function ed within the context of a neo-Pla tonic theory of emana tio n: the higher loves the lower which ema nates .f rom it, and the lower loves the higher, of which it is in a sens e an eman ation or expr essio n. Plato 's doctrine of love in the Symposium is essential to this theo ry. But the chain of lov e for Pope is ra ther that interconnect ion of mutual service which the thing s in this world of har monious functio ns render to each other. There was, of course, a trad itiona l "or ganicism" in the old views of order: the different thing s in the unive rse depend on each other and suppo rt each other.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  When the Bible became the property of the common man in the age of the Reformation, the total absence of a feudal nobility in the divinely instituted social life of Israel struck the people as an astonishing fact. It contributed greatly to emancipate them from their feudal reverence and added force to the democratic movements of that revolutionary age. The impression of primitive democracy made by the Bible is expressed in the old saying on which John Ball preached to the English peasants in Wat Tyler’s rebellion:— “When Adam dalf and Eve span, Where was thanne a gentilman?” The great Alexandrian Jew Philo expressed the same impression about the Law: “If there is any one in the world who is a praiser of equality, that man is Moses.” It was the decay of the primitive democracy, and the growth of luxury, tyranny, extortion, of court life and a feudal nobility, which Samuel wisely feared when the people demanded a king. The ownership of the land is the fundamental economic fact in all communities. Unequal distribution of the land and an hereditary aristocracy have always been inseparable facts. Approximately equal distribution of the land is the necessary basis for political and social democracy. Like all primitive peoples, Israel set out with a large measure of communism in land. It was used in severalty, but owned by the clan. At the conquest it was distributed to the tribes and there were ancient customs to prevent its alienation from the tribe. The principle was recognized that every family should have a freehold in land. In this absence of social caste and this fair distribution of the means of production, the early times of Israel were much like the early times in our own country. America too set out with an absence of hereditary aristocracy and with a fair distribution of the land among the farming population. Both the Jewish and the American people were thereby equipped with a kind of ingrained, constitutional taste for democracy which dies hard. In time Israel drifted away from this primitive fairness and simplicity, just as we are drifting away from it. A new civilization arose, based on commerce and mobile wealth. Capital controlled the food supply. Great landed estates displaced the peasantry. The poor man, without the natural footing on the land, was often pushed over the precipice of want by any special emergency of war, famine, or sickness, and was sold into slavery for debt. The cities grew in size and importance. Rich men built stone houses and summer villas, and feasted daily on meat and wine, which the poor man tasted perchance thrice a year at the great feasts. Wealthy women robed their persons with the wealth wrung from the poor. As everywhere, this condition, when once created, tended to perpetuate itself and to guard against any reversal.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The Americans also gave the “Arab-Afghans” (as the foreign volunteers were called) every possible encouragement. Supported by funds from Arab entrepreneurs like Bin Laden, they were armed by the Americans and trained by Pakistani troops.5 In training camps around Peshawar, they fought alongside the Afghan guerrillas, but their contribution should not be exaggerated. Few actually took part in the fighting; many would engage solely in humanitarian work, never to leave Peshawar, and some would stay only a few weeks. There were rarely more than three thousand Arab fighters in the region at any one time. Some merely spent part of their summer vacation on “jihad tours,” which included a trip over the Khyber Pass, where they could be photographed on location. Known as “The Brigade of the Strangers,” the Arab-Afghans tended to keep to themselves; the Pakistanis and Afghans regarded them as somewhat bizarre. Leading Muslim ulema looked somewhat askance at Azzam, but his integrity was very appealing to the young Arab-Afghans, who were disillusioned by the corruption and hypocrisy of their leaders at home. They knew that Azzam had always practiced what he preached, throughout his life combining scholarship with political activism. He had joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of eighteen while studying Shariah in Syria, had fought in the Six-Day War, and as a student at the Azhar had supervised Brotherhood Youth. While he was a lecturer at Abd al-Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, one of his pupils was the young Bin Laden. “The life of the Muslim ummah,” Azzam declared, “is solely dependent on the ink of its scholars and the blood of its martyrs.”6 Scholarship was essential to deepen the ummah’s spirituality, but so was the self-sacrifice of its warriors, since no nation had ever achieved distinction without a strong military. “History does not write its lines, except in blood,” Azzam insisted. “Honor and respect cannot be established except on a foundation of cripples and corpses.” Empires, distinguished peoples, states, and societies cannot be established except with examples. Indeed, those who think that they can change reality or change societies without blood, sacrifices and invalids—without pure innocent souls—do not understand the essence of this din [Islam] and they do not know the method of the best of Messengers.7 Other Muslim leaders had praised the glory of martyrdom, but none had dwelled so graphically on its violent reality. A community that cannot defend itself, Azzam insisted, will inevitably be dominated by military power. His goal was to create a cadre of scholar-warriors, whose sacrifice would inspire the rest of the ummah.8 Jihad, he believed, was the Sixth Pillar, on a par with the shehadah, prayer, almsgiving, the Ramadan fast, and hajj. A Muslim who neglected jihad would have to answer to God on the Day of Judgment.9

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Before I met Paula, I was so deeply ensconced in the medical tradition that I would not have had charitable thoughts about a therapist who ended group sessions with the members holding hands and staring silently at a candle. Yet Paula’s suggestion felt so right to the members, and to me, that we began to end each meeting in that fashion. I came to treasure those closing moments and, if I happened to be sitting next to Paula, would give her hand a warm squeeze before I relinquished it. She generally led the meditation aloud, improvising, always with great dignity. I loved her meditations, and to the end of my life, I will hear her quietly instructing us: “Let go, let go of anger, let go of pain, let go of self-pity. Reach into your center, into your quiet, peaceful depths, and open yourself up to love, to forgiveness, to God.” Heady stuff for an uptight, free-thinking, medically trained empiricist! Sometimes I wondered whether Paula had any needs beyond the need to help others. Though I often asked her what the group could do for her, I never got an answer. Sometimes I wondered about her busy pace—she visited several sick patients every day. What drives her? I asked myself, and why does she present her problems only in the past tense? She offers us only her solutions, never her unsolved problems. But I never wondered too long. After all, Paula did have advanced metastatic cancer and had outlived even the most optimistic statistics. She was energetic, widely loved, widely loving, an inspiration to everyone forced to live with cancer. What more could one ask? This was the golden period of my travels with Paula. Perhaps I should have let things remain there. But one day I looked around and observed how large the enterprise was getting—group leaders, secretarial help to transcribe summaries of intakes and meetings, teachers to meet with student observers. Such size needed capital, I decided, and began searching for research funding to keep the group afloat. Since I did not want to think of myself as being in the death profession, I had never charged any of the patients or even inquired about medical insurance. Nonetheless, I was devoting considerable energy and time to the group, and I had a moral obligation to Stanford University to help cover the salary it was paying me. I also felt that my clinical apprenticeship in leading groups of cancer patients was coming to an end; it was time to do something with this enterprise, to research it, to evaluate its effectiveness, to publish our results, to spread the word, to encourage similar programs elsewhere in the country. In short, it was time to promote it and to get promoted.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  For example, the quintessentially modern idea of the individual—and of one’s personal responsibility before one’s self and God rather than before any institution, whether church or state—was as unthinkable before Luther as is color in a world of black and white; and the similarly modern idea of “the people,” along with the democratic impulse that proceeds from it, was created—or at least given a voice—by Luther too. And the more recent ideas of pluralism, religious liberty, and self-government all entered history through the door that Luther opened to the future in which we now live. Luther is principally known for two iconic events that precipitated all else. The first, in 1517, was his posting of the Ninety-five Theses on the great wooden doors of the Wittenberg Castle Church, criticizing the then wildly popular practice of indulgence. The second was his unyielding courage at the imperial diet that was held in the city of Worms in 1521. It was there, before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and an impressive array of German nobles—and perhaps most important, before the pope’s representative, Thomas Cajetan—that Luther took his implacable stand and made the statement in which he immediately vaulted from the medieval cosmos into the modern. When he made it clear that he feared God’s judgment more than the judgment of the powerful figures in that room, he electrified the world. How dare anyone, much less a mere monk, imply there could be any difference between them? Since time immemorial, such men had spoken for God and for the state. But Luther defied them, humbly but boldly, in a watershed moment in world history. Those of us in the West have lived on the far side of it ever since. What followed ended up scrambling the landscape of Western culture so dramatically that it’s hardly recognizable from what it was before. Luther was the unwitting harbinger of a new world in which the well-established boundaries of what was acceptable were exploded, never to be restored. Suddenly the individual had not only the freedom and possibility of thinking for himself but the weighty responsibility before God of doing so.

• From Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

  Love your enemy, that you may be children of your father who is in heaven.” Throughout the work Thurman continued to hold his disinherited people to a magnificently (some would say unrealistically—but who defines the real within the mystery of “the inward center”?) high set of expectations. If it is true, as some accounts indicate, that Martin Luther King, Jr. often carried a copy of this text on his many journeys, then there are creative connections along the wall that may exceed even our greatest expectations. Of course, considering the generations-long relationships between the King and Thurman families, Martin likely had the message of these pages etched on his heart. It must have provided an important addition to his own resources when Black people constantly raised with him the question that was most directly articulated in the late 1960s by Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Touré), that stalwart of the freedom movement who called the nation’s attention to the bold and desperate cry for Black power. Not long before King’s assassination in 1968 Stokely asked with mock innocence, “Dr. King, why do we have to be more moral than white folks?” That question came out of a period when thousands of Black people were leaping away from the American wall and hurling angry, incendiary words and devices into the midst of the nation’s life. When I realized that the first paperback edition of this work appeared in 1969, as the Black fires were only beginning to cool down, I wondered whether a contemporary generation of young people might possibly find any space in their lives for the firmly loving disciplines of the spirit that Thurman (and his friend, Jesus) press forward in this gift of a book. Then, just as I moved toward closing my work on this Foreword, I came across another gift, one that seemed to open the possibilities of a connection between Howard Thurman and a new generation of his (and my) children. Again the gift I found was a book, Testimony, a moving and impressive collection of essays and poetry edited by Natasha Tarpley and published in 1994. It was written by a group of some forty young African-American writers, most of whom were likely just entering elementary school when Thurman left us in the spring of 1981.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Yet Sabat notes that stepping up once isn’t enough, and allyship is a journey that grows throughout a leader’s career. “Be open to criticism and feedback,” he adds. “If someone calls you out on the way you [respond to a situation], or if you said something problematic, be open to learning and growing.” Method 4: Advocate Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, says addressing imbalances requires those who have power and influence to extend their privilege. For instance, she says, “In every organization, there are many people—from senior leaders to first-time managers—who have the power to elevate women in the workplace.” One of those who advocated for Wojcicki was Bill Campbell, executive coach to a who’s-who of tech superstars. “I learned about an important invitation-only conference convening most of the top leaders in tech and media, yet my name was left off the guest list,” she said. “Many of the invitees were my peers [other tech CEOs], meaning that YouTube wouldn’t be represented while deals were cut and plans were made. I started to question whether I even belonged at the conference. But rather than let it go, I turned to Bill, someone I knew had a lot of influence. He immediately recognized I had a rightful place at the event, and within a day he worked his magic and I received my invitation.” When allies assume the role of advocates, they use their influence to bring peers from underrepresented groups into new circles. They hold their leadership peers accountable for including qualified colleagues of all genders, races and ethnicities, abilities, ages, body shapes and sizes, religions, and sexual orientations; and they actively mentor those from underrepresented groups and introduce them to people in their network. This means they aren’t just behind-the-scenes mentors, but public advocates for those they are mentoring. They find terrific satisfaction in identifying high-potential diverse talent, providing them stretch roles, and helping them overcome obstacles. They find this kind of mentoring behavior is good not only for the protégé, but for the leader and the organization. SUMMARYBecome an AllyThere has been a historic pattern of anxiety in particular groups within the workplace—those too often made to feel like “others.” Of particular concern are women, people of color, those on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, members of religious minorities, and those with disabilities.Many in these communities must hide their true identities. But when managers create cultures where people feel comfortable being themselves, dramatic performance gains can be unlocked as everyone is able to focus all their attention on work.Many leaders do not understand the level of implicit bias that occurs in our work cultures. Microaggressions are biases that reveal themselves in often subtle ways and leave people feeling uncomfortable or insulted.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  many of the younger men in the North who have written on theology have shown that the problems of society are a vital concern with them, and their fresh theological work consists largely in understanding the relation between social life and religion. I am thinking of William A. Brown, John W. Buckham, William H. P. Faunce, Thomas B. Hall, William DeWitt Hyde, Rufus Jones, Henry C. King, Shailer Mathews, Francis G. Peabody, Gerald B. Smith, George B. Stevens, and James B. Thomas, but I am sure this enumeration is very incomplete. Some of the best work is done in the class rooms, and has not yet come out in print. When we contrast the neglect of the social contents of Christianity in former generations, and the fertile intellectual work now being given to this part of theology, a strong probability is established that the social gospel is not a passing interest, but that it is bound to become one of the permanent and commanding ingredients of theology.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  GREGORY. (ubi sup.) But if by things new and old in this passage we understand the two Testaments, we deny Abraham to have been learned, who although he knew indeed some deeds of the Old Testament, yet had not read the words. Neither Moses may we compare to a learned householder, for although he composed the Old Testament, yet had he not the words of the New. But what is here said may be understood as meant not of those who had been, but of such as might hereafter be in the Church, who then bring forth things new and old when they speak the preachings of both Testaments, in their words and in their lives. HILARY. Speaking to His disciples, He calls them Scribes on account of their knowledge, because they understood the things that He brought forward, both new and old, that is from the Law and from the Gospels; both being of the same householder, and both treasures of the same owner. He compares them to Himself under the figure of a householder, because they had received doctrine of things both new and old out of His treasury of the Holy Spirit. JEROME. Or the Apostles are called Scribes instructed, as being the Saviour’s notaries who wrote His words and precepts on fleshly tables of the heart with the sacraments of the heavenly kingdom, and abounded in the wealth of a householder, bringing forth out of the stores of their doctrine things new and old; whatsoever they preached in the Gospels, that they proved by the words of the Law and the Prophets. Whence the Bride speaks in the Song of Songs; I have kept for thee my beloved the new with the old. (c. 7:13.) GREGORY. (ubi sup.) Otherwise; The things old are, that the human race for its sin should suffer in eternal punishment; the things new, that they should be converted and live in the kingdom. First, He brought forward a comparison of the kingdom to a treasure found and a pearl of price; and after that, narrated the punishment of hell in the burning of the wicked, and then concluded with Therefore every Scribe, &c. as if He had said, He is a learned preacher in the Church who knows to bring forth things new concerning the sweetness of the kingdom, and to speak things old concerning the terror of punishment; that at least punishment may deter those whom rewards do not excite. 13:53–5853. And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence. 54. And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? 55. Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? 56. And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?