Anger

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.

Page 14 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Shunned (2018)

  We sat in silence for several minutes, only my staccato inhalations interrupting the hush. Ross had the hollow look of someone at loose ends. Like a cowboy in a saloon, he swigged his last drops of whiskey and stood up. “It’s not too late,” he said. “Todd has suggested that he and Jerry come by soon for a shepherding call. I think it’s a great idea.” “No, that’s not a great idea.” My equilibrium returned. I stood up and leaned in on both arms, looking Ross straight in the eye. “It’s intrusive. It’s unwelcome.” Turning around, I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water, my bare feet slapping against the cool linoleum. Though I was riven with disgust, my level of belligerence was a surprise even to me. “I won’t do it, Ross!” I shouted over my shoulder. “But I already told Todd it was a go.” He followed me into the kitchen. “Then by all means, enjoy your meeting with him.” I turned from the sink, gulping my water. “I won’t be there.” “What’s the matter with you?” His voice was gaining strength. “You’ve become so blatantly disrespectful. Todd is just trying to help, and we both need help.” “I don’t recall asking for Todd’s help.” “What is that supposed to mean?” “It means I don’t appreciate people going behind my back. If Todd is such a good friend, if he’s so worried about me, then why didn’t he come straight to me?” “I’m the spiritual head of the family. It’s appropriate for him to come to me first. You know that.” “Bullshit.” Weary of self-censorship, I thought swearing seemed an emphatic way to express my disdain. “That system doesn’t work for me anymore.” “What system?” Ross asked, his voice suddenly thin. There were tears in his eyes. We had stumbled onto a land mine. Sudden moves were risky. An implacable resolve came over me. “Headship, for one. It’s so dated and patriarchal. To think another person is responsible for me and my spiritual well-being is ridiculous. Don’t you see that, Ross?” He blanched. Behind his eyes, I could just make out an unwanted realization breaking through the surface of his mind. “Theocratic hierarchy, for another. And I don’t like putting on a happy face as we go door-to-door, condemning other people and their religions. The whole thing is veiled in kindness— just like Todd’s offer—but it’s divisive.” The more I said, the more we realized the latitude and longitude of my drift. “I feel so out of place,” I said. I blinked a tear. My eyelids were too heavy to hold up. “That settles it,” Ross said. “I’m more convinced then ever. We have to meet with Todd and Jerry.” “I don’t have to do anything.” Stumbling down the hall to our room, I slammed the door behind me and fell into bed. I heard the rattle of car keys, followed shortly by the sound of the front door creaking open.

• From Shunned (2018)

  “What are they?” “First, did my example or anything I said make it easier for you or encourage you to get divorced?” “Not in the least,” I said, surprised. “Please don’t worry about that. I see our situations as completely different. My divorce was inevitable.” She didn’t say anything. “Lory, are you still there?” “Second, do you think if our family were closer, you might not have gotten so weird?” Her bluntness was stunning. “You think I’m weird ?” “Well, yeah,” she said. “You’ve become a self-centered, worldly person, and that’s weird.” “There’s no need to insult me.” I knew this was to be our last conversation for a very long time. I was pushing back the tears. “I just don’t get it,” she said. “I’ve got news for you, Lory.” My breathing had deepened. “It’s not necessary for you to ‘get it.’ I’m tired of wishing and waiting for you, or anyone else in this family, to ‘get it.’ So goodbye.” And I startled myself by slamming the phone in its cradle. How’s that for weird? I sat there, panting, still trying hard to keep my tears at bay, for several minutes. Lory’s brusque choice of words had allowed me to avoid answering her: Was our family dynamic at the root of my rebellion? It was a question that would surface many times in the months to come. Certainly, self-denial and perfectionism had been cultivated throughout my upbringing and made me bristle now. My mother (and her parents before her) had always been unquestioning and hyper-vigilant in applying the Society’s teachings. And despite the acrimony it caused in my parents’ marriage, I was grateful that Dad was not a Witness when I was very young, because it exposed me to independent thinking and the humanness of “worldly” people. Even when they argued about evolution or Christmas or after-school sports, I never doubted my father’s love for my mother, which would now show up in his loyalty to her and the religion. I was calm again. I rose from the chair, grabbed the work files I had brought in as a decoy, and returned to my desk. There was only one thing left to do: carry on. Chapter 18 [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. —Mae West M assive waves of energy were freed up now that I was no longer hiding my life from my family. Like a spring held tightly in the hand, then released, I bounced through life loose and free. It was the middle of summer—time to party. I crammed the months with activity. I missed my family, of course, and in quiet moments I felt forlorn, but more than anything I was giddy in the absence of their pestering. I believed the worst of the experience was behind me; the full scale of my loss hadn’t hit yet. Little did I know how many heart-wrenching moments lay ahead.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  When Luther objected, the Italian repeatedly asked: “Do you want to stage a tournament?” 36 Cajetan, however, had carefully planned the meetings to avoid an undignified verbal slanging match; he intended to speak to Luther in a “fatherly” way, admonish him for his errors, set him on the right path, and avoid a trial in Rome. Yet Luther was fresh from trouncing his former teachers Trutfetter and Usingen at Heidelberg and the paternal approach was bound to enrage him, not least because he had arrived at his own sense of identity by falling out with his father. Indeed, time and again when writing about the meeting, Luther expressed his annoyance with the cardinal, who kept calling him his “dear son.” Moreover, Cajetan, a Dominican so enthusiastic a follower of Aquinas that he had adopted his first name, Thomas, symbolized the scholasticism that Luther now detested. Consequently, while the cardinal tried to avoid debate by setting out clearly where Luther’s theses departed from Church doctrine, Luther refused to be instructed unless he could be shown where he was wrong—a somewhat different thing. Not surprisingly, the first meeting failed. Despite his well-meaning intentions, Cajetan ended up shouting Luther down and laughing with his Italian supporters at the German monk’s arguments. What Luther did next is extraordinary. He appeared at the second meeting the next day not on his own but accompanied by four imperial counselors, the newly arrived Staupitz, and a group of witnesses. He also brought a notary. Luther opened the interview by reading out a document stating that he would submit to the “judgment and the lawful conclusion of the Holy Church and of all who are better informed than I,” but denying that he had said anything contrary to Holy Scripture, the Church Fathers, or papal decrees. He then refused to say anything more but instead “promised to answer in writing.” Then, at the third meeting the following day, he produced a long written document setting out his position on the issues discussed together with supporting citations from Scripture, concluding, “As long as these Scripture passages stand, I cannot do otherwise, for I know that one must obey God rather than men….I do not want to be compelled to affirm something contrary to my conscience.” Luther had thus turned what Cajetan had intended to be a private admonition into a public, ritualized battle, where positions were formally set out in writing rather than evolving through discussion. He had done exactly what Serralonga had warned him against: He was staging a tournament.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  A bevy of American and European princes, politicians, and presidents attended Sadat’s funeral. No Arab leaders came, however, and there were no crowds lining the streets. On the night of Sadat’s death, the streets of Cairo were eerily quiet. The Egyptian people did not weep for Sadat, nor did they mass, grief-stricken, around his coffin as the Iranians would later mob the corpse of Khomeini. Once again, the modern West and the more traditional societies of the Middle East were poles apart and could not share each other’s vision of events. As we have seen, there were a significant number of Egyptians who thought that Sadat’s rule had more in common with the jahiliyyah than with Islam. In 1980, on the Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest days in the Muslim year, the student members of the jamaat al-islamiyyah, who had been forbidden to hold their summer camp in Cairo, occupied the Saladin Mosque, denounced Camp David, and condemned Sadat as a “Tartar,” one of the Mongol rulers of the thirteenth century who had supposedly converted to Islam but were Muslim only in name. 40 Other members of the suppressed jamaat had joined the network of secret cells, dedicated to violent jihad against the regime. Khaled Islambouli, who had studied at the University of Minya, was a member of this Jihad organization. Sadat was aware of this dissent and was determined to avoid the fate of his friend the shah. In 1978, while revolution mounted in Iran, he had issued what he called the Law of Shame. Any deviation in thought, word, or deed from the established order was to be punished with loss of civil rights and confiscation of passports and property. Citizens were forbidden to join any organization, take part in any broadcast, or publish anything critical of the regime that was deemed to threaten “national unity or social peace.” Even a casual private remark, made in the privacy of one’s own family, was not to go unpunished. 41 In the last months of Sadat’s life, the regime became even more oppressive. On September 3, 1981, Sadat rounded up 1536 of his known critics; they included cabinet ministers, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, preachers, and members of the Islamist groups. One of the Islamists thus imprisoned was Muhammad Islambouli, the brother of Sadat’s assassin. 42 We can gain some insight into the motivation of Sadat’s killers in a treatise written by Abd al-Salam Faraj, the spiritual guide of Islambouli’s Jihad organization. Al-Faridah al-Ghaybah (“The Neglected Duty”) was published after the assassination in December 1981. It was not an apologia and was not originally intended for the general public.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  They knew that Americans were proud of their secular polity, which deliberately separated religion from the state; they had learned that many Westerners thought it praiseworthy and necessary to focus exclusively on the zahir. The result, as far as they could see, was the empty, hedonistic nightlife of North Tehran. Iranians were aware that many Americans were religious, but their faith seemed to make no sense. The “inside” and “outside” of Jimmy Carter were not “the same.” They could not understand how the President could continue to support a ruler who by 1978 had started to murder his own people. “We didn’t expect Carter to defend the shah, for he is a religious man who has raised the slogan of defending human rights,” Ayatollah Husain Montazeri told an interviewer after the Revolution. “How can Carter, the devout Christian, defend the shah?” 61 When Carter visited the shah on New Year’s Eve, during the sacred month of Muharram, to boost his regime, he could not, if he had tried, have cast himself more perfectly as the villain. During the next turbulent year, the United States came to seem the ultimate cause of Iran’s spiritual, economic, and political problems. Street graffiti identified Carter with Yazid, and the shah with Shimr, the general dispatched by Yazid to massacre Husain and his little army. In one series of street drawings, Khomeini was depicted as Moses, the shah as Pharaoh, while Carter was the idol adored by the Pharaoh/shah. 62 America, it was thought, had corrupted the shah and Khomeini, now increasingly bathed in a Shii light, came to stand as an Islamic alternative to the present unholy dictatorship. At the end of Muharram 1978, the shah yet again cast himself as the enemy of the Shiah. On January 8, the semiofficial newspaper Ettelaat published a slanderous article about Khomeini, calling him “an adventurer, without faith, and tied to the centers of colonialism.” He had led a dissolute life, the article averred, had been a British spy, and was even now in the pay of the British, who wanted to undermine the White Revolution. 63 This scurrilous and preposterous attack was a fatal mistake on the part of the shah. The next day four thousand students turned out onto the streets of Qum: they demanded a return to the 1906 constitution, freedom of speech, the release of political prisoners, the reopening of the Fayziyyah Madrasah, and that Khomeini be permitted to return to Iran. What they got was a massacre.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The potential converts to fundamentalism lived along the southern rim, starting in Virginia Beach, where Pat Robertson had established his Christian Broadcasting Network and the immensely popular “700 Club.” Next came Lynchburg, Virginia, where Jerry Falwell had begun his television ministry in 1956; in Charlotte, North Carolina, was the ministry of the exuberant Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and the “Bible-Belt” ended in southern California, an area with a long tradition of political and religious conservatism. 99 The second factor that led many traditionalists to become fundamentalists was the rapid expansion of state power in the United States after the Second World War. Americans had been mistrustful of centralized government since the Revolution, and had often used religion to voice their distaste for the secularist establishment. Fundamentalists were particularly outraged by the Supreme Court decisions banning obligatory worship in public schools on the grounds that this violated the “wall of separation” that Jefferson had decreed should divide religion and politics. Secularist judges had come to the conclusion that it was unconstitutional for the state to sponsor a program of prayer in its schools, even if this did not involve funds derived from taxes, and even if the worship was voluntary and nondenominational. Rulings to this effect were passed in 1948, 1952, and 1962. In 1963, the Supreme Court also banned Bible readings in public schools, quoting the religion clause of the First Amendment. During the 1970 S , the Court passed a series of judgments declaring that any law would be struck down (1) if it intended to promote the cause of religion, (2) if its consequence, regardless of its intention, was the advancement of religion, and finally (3) if it entangled government in religious affairs. 100 The Court was responding to the increasing pluralism of American culture; it declared that it had nothing against religion, but insisted that it be confined to the private domain. These rulings were secularizing but could not be compared to the aggressive attempts of either Nasser or the shah to marginalize religious faith. Nevertheless, fundamentalists and evangelical Christians alike were outraged by what they regarded as a Godless crusade. They did not believe that religion could be legitimately cordoned off and limited in this way, because Christianity’s demands were total and should be sovereign. They were offended that the Court was willing to extend the principle of the “free exercise” of faith (demanded by the First Amendment) to religions that were not even Christian, and incensed by the judges’ principled determination to put all faiths on the same level. This seemed tantamount to saying that their religion was false. The ruling that religion be confined to private life seemed even more outrageous to fundamentalists, when it was combined with what seemed an excessive and unprecedented intrusion of the Court into the private sphere.

• From Shunned (2018)

  They asked me to call them with an update when I return.” “So you went to the elders for what reason?” asked Ove. “If not to repent, then why?” It was a fair question. “It seemed like the right thing to do.” I said. “I realize I could have written a few letters and been done with this, but I wanted to be honorable about it.” The mention of the word “honorable” seemed to provoke them. “You may not have regrets now, but you will,” Lory said. “Trust me. One day, your foolishness will hit you like a ton of bricks, and you will feel terrible.” “Perhaps.” I didn’t think that was likely, but I knew I could always return to the congregation if she was right. Everyone was quiet for a moment. I felt like a recalcitrant child, standing for the required scolding, waiting to be sent to my room. But I was a grown woman making rightful decisions about my life. “Why would you do this?” Mom asked. “Was your life really so bad here? Is your life really so much better now?” “Yes and yes,” I said. “This last year has been a roller coaster. But something inside me that wasn’t there before has come to life. I’m so glad I moved. I was suffocating here in an unhappy marriage, boring routines, an unfulfilling spiritual life.” “And how does an adulterous relationship support your unfolding spiritual fulfillment?” Ove asked. Rage fomented inside me; I was so angry to have my journey belittled, reduced to nothing more than a sexual excursion. They could not fathom how any thinking person could find spiritual truths outside the Witness organization. I had always been so zealous, such a good girl. It was easier for them to conclude that hormones, rather than the deeper stirrings of the soul, were at play. But I tamped down my anger, just wanting to get through this conversation. Let them take their shots as me. This will soon be over, and I can go home. I felt myself becoming emotionally cool and rigid. “In the world I inhabit, no adultery has been committed,” I said, not caring how belligerent this sounded. “I’m free to do as I please.” “All things are lawful,” Ove said, quoting Scripture. “But not all things are advantageous.” “With an attitude like that,” Mom said, “you’re just asking to be disfellowshipped.” I said nothing. “If that happens, we won’t be able to help you,” Mom said, urgent now. “We won’t be able to talk to you.” “Not if —when.” Lory looked at her. “When she gets disfellowshipped, we won’t be able to help her.” “It will kill us,” Mom said, looking down. There was a jagged desperation in her voice. She tucked her hands under her knees and started to rock forward and back. “It will absolutely kill us, but we’ll do it. It’s for your own good.” Dad nodded in agreement as she spoke, looking aggrieved, his eyes dark and beady.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In front of Luther, on a bench, was a pile of the Basle editions of his books, bound specially for the occasion. The secretary of the bishop of Trier asked Luther whether the books were his, and whether he would recant. At this, Hieronymus Schurff, the professor of law at Wittenberg acting for Luther, shouted, “Let the titles of the books be read!” The extraordinary list of titles, which together constituted such a printing sensation, were then read aloud to the estates of the German nation and the emperor, reminding those assembled of the issues at stake. It demonstrated as nothing else could the depth and range of Luther’s attack on the papacy and the established Church. 38 Luther was expected to answer the questions with a simple yes or no, and the procedure was not designed to allow him to make a speech. He took his time to reply, and his voice, so onlookers said, was barely audible in the large room. Yes, the books were indeed his and he would never deny them, but he could not say immediately whether he would defend them or recant, “because this is a question of faith and the salvation of souls, and because it concerns the divine Word, which we are all bound to reverence, for there is nothing greater in heaven or on earth.” He went on that it would therefore “be rash and at the same time dangerous for me to put forth anything without proper consideration,” and so he requested an adjournment. 39 This must have been a huge anticlimax for those gathered in the crowded hall. It was also an inspired tactic, because it defused the tension and slowed matters down, giving Luther a second opportunity to speak. Luther never reacted well to being silenced. 40 His fury at being muzzled was still evident afterward, when he wrote to Cranach (slightly twisting the truth) that he had expected a proper hearing and at least one, perhaps fifty doctors of theology, all ready to refute his views. But instead all that was said was: “Are these your books? Yes. Do you want to renounce them or not? No. Then go away!” 41 Luther got his adjournment and was ordered to return the next day. According to the account of events written by his supporters, they admonished him to “act manfully, and not to fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  For him the question Luther had to answer was: How can you know that your interpretation of Scripture is right? Interpretation can never be clear, and this is why we have to trust the tradition of the Church, he argued. Cochlaeus reported that tears streamed from Luther’s eyes as the humanist exhorted him not to close the door on the Church, and not to corrupt the young Melanchthon. On this issue, as on many others, Cochlaeus was not entirely wrong. Luther himself knew that he suffered from the sins of anger and pride. But for Luther, authority of interpretation was not an issue, because Scripture was unambiguous. It was a position he had first developed in his debate with Cajetan. Scripture must be invoked against the papists and decisions of the Church councils, and Scripture clearly showed that the Pope was the Antichrist. This did not mean that it did not require people learned in Hebrew and Greek to understand it; that was why the education of the clergy was so important. But then, Luther believed, after immersion in the Scripture and careful reflection, the meaning of God’s Word would be plain. It would not be long, however, before people on his own side began to read the self-evident truths of Scripture differently from the reformer. And it would be easy for his opponents to conclude that what Luther proclaimed to be the clear Word of God was just his interpretation. By denying that he had any authority, and attributing everything to the Word, Luther seemed to put his own authoritarianism beyond debate. Luther’s supporters were furious at Cochlaeus for attempting to trick Luther into giving up his safe conduct. Cochlaeus, who by his own account had begun as a Luther sympathizer, was excoriated by the “enraged” Lutherans who, he complained (writing in the third person), “published songs, or to speak more truly, accusations and slanders, which they sent out into other cities so quickly that these songs arrived in Nuremberg and Wittenberg before Cochlaeus had returned to Frankfurt.” His name had become a byword for treachery. 63 Mocked as a “snail’s brood,” he was expelled forever from the learned circles to which he had once so proudly belonged, and forced to make his peace with the hated Eck. His passionate admiration rapidly turning to vituperation, Cochlaeus became obsessed with Luther and spent the rest of his life attacking the reformer’s writings. 64 Luther soon decided not to respond, because “this way he will get much angrier, for if I were to answer him, he would only get proud.” 65 But Cochlaeus’s relentless observations of Luther were not devoid of insight.

• From Shunned (2018)

  A lie of convenience.” “Convenience?’ Mom said, and her eyes opened wide. “There’s nothing convenient about this.” She was angry now, or afraid, or both. “Least of all for me,” I said. “This isn’t just about you,” Lory said, her voice and eyes laden with disgust. “This affects all of us.” “I’m well aware of that,” I said, bracing myself up against the roiling of emotion that was brewing around that table. “What else did the elders say?” Dad asked, and I was surprised to see that he, too, was engaging, trying to understand. “They didn’t want to do anything until I’d been here to see you all. They’re hoping I’ll have a change of heart while I’m here in your company. They asked me to call them with an update when I return.” “So you went to the elders for what reason?” asked Ove. “If not to repent, then why?” It was a fair question. “It seemed like the right thing to do.” I said. “I realize I could have written a few letters and been done with this, but I wanted to be honorable about it.” The mention of the word “honorable” seemed to provoke them. “You may not have regrets now, but you will,” Lory said. “Trust me. One day, your foolishness will hit you like a ton of bricks, and you will feel terrible.” “Perhaps.” I didn’t think that was likely, but I knew I could always return to the congregation if she was right. Everyone was quiet for a moment. I felt like a recalcitrant child, standing for the required scolding, waiting to be sent to my room. But I was a grown woman making rightful decisions about my life. “Why would you do this?” Mom asked. “Was your life really so bad here? Is your life really so much better now?” “Yes and yes,” I said. “This last year has been a roller coaster. But something inside me that wasn’t there before has come to life. I’m so glad I moved. I was suffocating here in an unhappy marriage, boring routines, an unfulfilling spiritual life.” “And how does an adulterous relationship support your unfolding spiritual fulfillment?” Ove asked. Rage fomented inside me; I was so angry to have my journey belittled, reduced to nothing more than a sexual excursion. They could not fathom how any thinking person could find spiritual truths outside the Witness organization. I had always been so zealous, such a good girl. It was easier for them to conclude that hormones, rather than the deeper stirrings of the soul, were at play.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Yes, we all knew about the double bind. It didn’t even need to be said aloud. “It’s only a matter of time before one or both of you steps outside the bounds of marriage,” Jerry continued. “If you persist in doing this, you open yourself and Ross up to a lot of heartache.” Angry tears rolled down my cheeks. I was being cast as the villain. Ross was looking down. We were separate units now, expected to answer separate questions. Why wasn’t anyone interrogating him? “There has already been a lot of heartache. You can’t imagine how unhappy I’ve been—we’ve been,” I said. It was not a loud, biting unhappiness, but a subtle knowing that I was no longer in the right place, no longer willing to overlook some obvious truths for a life and a marriage that were “good enough,” characterized by the slow burn of resignation that makes you numb to joy and pleasure. Jerry’s shoulders slumped. “This is very sad,” he said, shaking his head. “I sensed you two were struggling, but I only get involved if people ask. If you’d come to me sooner, maybe I could have helped you.” “This will disappoint a lot of people,” Vince said, looking owlish with his wire rims and puffy frown. Perhaps he was thinking of his wife, Sarah, a good friend of mine, and Lucy. “So many have looked up to you, and not just in our congregation, but throughout the city.” “I’ve disappointed very few people in my short life, Vince,” I said. “I’ve wasted so much time. Guess what? There could be advantages to disappointing others. It’s not always a bad thing. These people you speak of don’t have to live in my skin day after day.” There was a growing edge in my voice. “They’ll think whatever they think about me, feel whatever they will feel. But then they’ll go on with their day. Meanwhile, I’m the one who suffers. Trust me, gentlemen, I’ve thought about this six ways to Sunday, for weeks and months, and am very clear that this is the right path for me.” I was implacable, and both men saw my calm determination. Vince reached into his briefcase, pulled out his Bible, and flipped its pages to a specific verse. “Linda,” he said in a stern monotone, “this conversation reminds me of Paul’s prophecy in 2 Timothy, chapter 3 .” Then he read directly from the Bible: “But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Then something visceral happened and I sat back down. I leaned toward Ross, tilted my head, and whispered, “I’m so angry, I can’t even see straight. I’m going to leave.” I refused to look him in the eye, but I knew he’d stopped chewing, frozen in place. “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble getting a ride home,” I continued. “Don’t worry. I’m going quietly. When people notice I’m gone, you can tell them whatever you please. Don’t forget to bring our cheesecake platter home.” Without waiting for an answer, I slipped through the back screen door, past the living room, and out the front door. I’d never done anything like that before. I felt exhilarated, enlivened by actions true to my emotions. As soon as I reached my car, the tears began, quick and clean, a mix of righteous indignation and relief. I cried all the way home. Chapter 5 [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —Anaïs Nin M y first stop inside our front door was the liquor cabinet, where I looked for a way to dull my senses. Weeping over the barware, I mixed myself a tall Seagram’s and 7UP. I tried to imagine the conversation Todd and Ross had had about me earlier that day. I pictured them standing in the Kingdom Hall parking lot, Ross’s forthcoming, naive mind not seeing that this was more than idle chitchat, unaware of Todd’s agenda. How would the questioning have started? Linda sure is spending a lot of time in LA. Or Linda seems distracted. Is everything okay on the home front? At whom was I most angry: Ross or Todd? I resented Todd’s prying. Ross was an easy target, always saying just a little too much. I, on the other hand, was consistently the picture of discretion, careful and deliberate about what I revealed. Todd knew this, and Ross had taken the bait. About an hour later, Ross walked through the front door, pausing when he saw me. I must have been quite a sight, wearing a matted terry bathrobe, face puffy from tears, fixing my second drink. “I’ll have what you’re having.” He walked past the kitchen bar, shoulders slumped. “Fix it yourself,” I said, taking a seat at the dining room table. “Your arms aren’t broken, and we already know your mouth is working fine.” The whiskey had seeped into my anger and liquefied it. “Linda, I don’t understand why you’re so worked up.” “You go running your mouth, and I have to draw pictures for you?” “Calm down,” he said. “I will not calm down.” I slammed my hand on the table. “That is the second time you’ve said that to me today. Don’t you get it? You betrayed my confidence.” “How do you figure?” asked Ross, pouring himself a shot of whiskey.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The next targets of the Wittenberg reformers were Marianism—veneration of the Virgin—and the Mass. On December 3 and 4, a group of evangelicals prevented priests in the parish church from saying the Marian office. Invading the parish church, they drove the priests from the altars, took their Mass books, and threw stones at them.48 The town council’s report to the Elector claimed that they carried knives and weapons, and concluded that several citizens had been about to stage a riot. In the Franciscan monastery, students smashed a wooden altar and posted threatening letters on the monastery door. Some suggested that next Maundy Thursday they should get the “bath maids”—that is, prostitutes—to wash down the idolatrous altars with strong lye. It would be better, they had allegedly said, to turn the altar stones into gallows and execution blocks, where they would do more for Gerechtigkeit, the word meaning both salvation and justice: “the hangman’s office was not as dangerous to souls as the idolatrous monks.”49 These were strong words, with hangmen being the lowest caste in sixteenth-century society. This was verbal iconoclasm, the students besmirching the holy altars with the foulest connotations they could imagine—and there was more than a hint of sexual humiliation in their reference to the prostitutes, too. The council was careful to play the incident down in its report to the Elector, insisting that only fourteen students had been involved, with some outsiders, and that they had all been punished. Something like a popular Reformation was brewing, but its extent is clear only from the outraged comments of its opponents, who had every reason to paint it as violent and subversive.50 A week later, on the night of December 10, it was reported that about forty well-armed “students and nobles” were roaming the streets with pipes and drums, threatening to storm the monasteries and kill all the monks.51 The council managed to quiet things down, however, placing a guard around the Franciscan monastery. Wittenberg was not the only place where the new evangelical ideas were being put into practice. Shortly after the Diet of Worms, in the summer, there had been attacks on the houses of priests in Erfurt. Luther was appalled by these disturbances, and still more by the fact that the town council apparently approved the action, refusing to punish the culprits. Johannes Lang, now the prior of the Erfurt monastery, was keeping mysteriously silent about the matter.52 Marooned up in the Wartburg, Luther was desperate for news, asking his correspondents about the latest from Erfurt. Luther had experience of politics in Erfurt in the days when the town had been so factionalized that it had hanged its own mayor; he would have been suspicious of anything that smacked of popular Reformation under the leadership of a town council.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Having ended the Italian Wars, he was now free to return to the situation in Germany—and to defeating the Reformation. Luther’s political theory, formed in 1523 when he wrote Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed, propounded that there were two realms: that of God, and that of the world. In the world, Christians must obey secular authorities set over them; they must not resist them, even if they acted unjustly. 1 In the realm of God, in contrast, the spiritual reigns, and consciences cannot be coerced. 2 This distinction had served Luther well throughout the Peasants’ War: Revolt against established authorities could never be sanctioned despite the justice of the peasants’ grievances. It had freed him to adopt a prophetic stance, admonishing the rulers for their treatment of the peasants while condemning the peasants for rebellion. His position had lasting consequences for the nature of Lutheranism, because his willingness to make compromises with political authorities, even when they were acting in an unchristian manner, provided the theological underpinnings of the accommodation many Lutherans would reach centuries later with the Nazi regime. But now Luther’s Reformation needed protection, and this raised the question of when, if ever, a Christian might resist legitimate authority in defense of religious truth. For Philip of Hesse—a shrewd political player with an imaginative grasp of the possible, who was becoming an increasingly important leader among the evangelicals—it was obvious that the supporters of Zwingli and Luther should unite, and that they should prepare to defend themselves. In trying to bring the two sides together at Marburg in 1529, Philip rightly saw that unless they acted together and were prepared to resist the emperor, they stood no chance of protecting their religious independence. 3 Failing to get the doctrinal unity he wanted at Marburg, Philip then proposed that the evangelicals should at least unite in refusing to support the emperor’s plans for war against the Turks—who were expanding into Eastern Europe and in the autumn of 1529 would lay siege to Vienna—unless he accepted the Reformation. This had the great merit of being a bargaining tool that did not entail armed resistance to the empire. But for Luther, such cynicism was anathema. Since the Turks were murderers and liars and desecrated marriage, it stood to reason that they must be fought. Luther was careful to argue against any kind of crusade, however: The Turks were not to be attacked on the grounds of what they believed. Many sacramentarians in southern Germany were prepared to contemplate armed resistance in the face of religious persecution.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He began to set up a new Church, and the Saxon Visitation of all the parishes in the territory began, with the instructions for the visitors of parish pastors in electoral Saxony finally agreed and printed in March 1528. 51 Luther began to see for himself just how ignorant of Christianity many Saxons were, and how many problems the fledgling ministry faced. Over the next years, Luther’s energies would be devoted to creating a new catechism, institutionalizing a new Church in partnership with the Elector and his officials, and continuing his battle against the sacramentarians. 52 The last came to a climax in 1529 when he encountered the Swiss at the colloquy of Marburg, arranged by Philip of Hesse, but there was no meeting of minds. 53 Luther wrote, “This is my body,” in chalk on the table where the debaters sat, and covered it over with the velvet tablecloth—as if protecting a relic—only to reveal it dramatically during the debate, to underline the importance of the biblical words. Insisting that the words “This is my body” meant exactly what they said, he added, “Here is our text. You haven’t yet managed to wring it from us, as you said you would, and we need no other.” 54 Where Oecolampadius and Zwingli insisted on the importance of John 6 and “spiritual eating,” repeating their stock phrase that the “flesh availeth nothing,” 55 Luther replied that physical eating was essential, too. “My dearest gentlemen, because the text of my lord Jesus Christ clearly states: ‘Hoc est corpus meum,’ truly I cannot get around it, but must confess and believe that the body of Christ is present therein,” he expostulated to Zwingli, breaking out of the Latin of debate into German (although still using Latin for the words of consecration). 56 When Zwingli, who to Luther’s great irritation frequently used Greek in the debate, accused him of restoring the sacrifice of the Mass yet again, Luther insisted, as at Worms, that he was “bound and held captive by the words of the Lord.” 57 As it became clear that the two sides could not agree, Luther washed his hands of them, consigning them to the judgment of God, “who will certainly decide who is right,” at which Zwingli burst into tears. 58 At the end of the meeting, Oecolampadius and Zwingli, pleased that at least they had all now met in person, wanted to embrace their opponents as brothers and allow all of them to take Communion with one another, but Luther bitterly refused. 59 He was, however, shattered by the debate, and the “angel of Satan, or whoever the angel of Death is” was attacking him so severely that he worried he might not reach home alive.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Jena was not territory hospitable to Luther, who was on a Visitation of the Saxon churches. Karlstadt now had his own parish in the small nearby town of Orlamünde, where he had begun to introduce the kind of Reformation he had failed to establish in Wittenberg. His ally Martin Reinhard was the preacher at Jena, where the local printing press had also been publishing Karlstadt’s work. In fact, Karlstadt himself was among the congregation at Jena that morning, disguised as a peasant under a felt hat. He was convinced that Luther’s tirade against the “crazies” was directed against him. After the sermon, he dashed off a letter to Luther proposing a meeting. Luther replied that he had no objections. A few hours later, Karlstadt—accompanied by Reinhard and Karlstadt’s brother-in-law and fellow preacher Dr. Gerhard Westerburg—arrived at the Black Bear Inn, where Luther was staying with his retinue of Saxon court officials.2 When the visitors entered the parlor, Luther motioned Karlstadt to a chair opposite him, insisting that their exchange take place in public. [image "42. In this hostile pamphlet from 1524, Luther, identified by his initials above him on the wall, is shown in league with the Devil, who is handing him a booklet. The Devil’s claw foot makes him instantly recognizable, and his felt hat is marked “S” for Satan. The Devil is dressed in peasant garb and the image insinuates that Luther is part of an unholy alliance with peasants." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_050_r1.jpg] [image "42. In this hostile pamphlet from 1524, Luther, identified by his initials above him on the wall, is shown in league with the Devil, who is handing him a booklet. The Devil’s claw foot makes him instantly recognizable, and his felt hat is marked “S” for Satan. The Devil is dressed in peasant garb and the image insinuates that Luther is part of an unholy alliance with peasants." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_050_r1.jpg] 42. In this hostile pamphlet from 1524, Luther, identified by his initials above him on the wall, is shown in league with the Devil, who is handing him a booklet. The Devil’s claw foot makes him instantly recognizable, and his felt hat is marked “S” for Satan. The Devil is dressed in peasant garb and the image insinuates that Luther is part of an unholy alliance with peasants.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  And stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.” Its urgent rhythms and tripling of verbs and adjectives were not unlike Müntzer’s incendiary rhetoric. 22 By the time Luther’s violent attack rolled off the press, the peasants had been defeated. Although it was printed together with his milder, previous Admonition to Peace, its bloodthirsty tone was tasteless after the deaths of many thousands, and was felt by many to be deeply offensive. Even Johann Rühel, who had written to Luther in such detail about Müntzer’s last days, was taken aback. Nikolaus von Amsdorf wrote to Luther that the Magdeburg preachers were now calling him a “flatterer of princes,” and Wenzeslaus Linck, too, felt compelled to tell him how it had shocked people. 23 Luther seems to have taken the response to heart, for he composed a letter of explanation to the Mansfeld chancellor Caspar Müller, which he also had printed. Yet the letter, while it began mildly enough, hardly modified the message and the tone soon reverted to harshness: “So I still write: no one should have mercy on the stiff-necked, obstinate, deluded peasants, who won’t listen to anything, but whoever can should hew, stab, strangle and lay about himself as if amongst mad dogs.” 24 It seems that Luther had burned his bridges. The grandson of a peasant who liked to make much of his rural roots, Luther had set his face against them. Yet there was nothing surprising in his stand. It was already prefigured in his conflict with Karlstadt, from the moment that Luther decided to defeat the Wittenberg movement and support the Elector’s attempt to make peace with the Diet by slowing the pace of evangelical reform. Luther had already rejected the communal Reformation, powered by popular pressure, which inspired Karlstadt. This was the Reformation that was also popular among the lower townsfolk in Allstedt, Mühlhausen, and Frankenhausen, where Müntzer had his most loyal and zealous supporters. 25 But it could inspire rich and educated men, too, such as Christoph Meinhard, an Eisleben citizen who was probably related to Johann Agricola, a close friend of Luther. 26 The bounded community of a congregation where people knew one another, and could count on the bonds of oaths and a collective morality, drove Müntzer’s Reformation just as it had powered Karlstadt’s. This was not what animated most of the peasant protest, however: Müntzer was repeatedly outraged by those who would not follow his biblicist vision, and at the end blamed the disaster of Frankenhausen on the fact “that everyone was more concerned with his own self-interest than in bringing justice to the Christian people.” 27 Müntzer remains a difficult character to assess. 28 Direct divine inspiration was very important to his theology, with biblical texts playing only a supporting role.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  And stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you.” Its urgent rhythms and tripling of verbs and adjectives were not unlike Müntzer’s incendiary rhetoric. 22 By the time Luther’s violent attack rolled off the press, the peasants had been defeated. Although it was printed together with his milder, previous Admonition to Peace, its bloodthirsty tone was tasteless after the deaths of many thousands, and was felt by many to be deeply offensive. Even Johann Rühel, who had written to Luther in such detail about Müntzer’s last days, was taken aback. Nikolaus von Amsdorf wrote to Luther that the Magdeburg preachers were now calling him a “flatterer of princes,” and Wenzeslaus Linck, too, felt compelled to tell him how it had shocked people. 23 Luther seems to have taken the response to heart, for he composed a letter of explanation to the Mansfeld chancellor Caspar Müller, which he also had printed. Yet the letter, while it began mildly enough, hardly modified the message and the tone soon reverted to harshness: “So I still write: no one should have mercy on the stiff-necked, obstinate, deluded peasants, who won’t listen to anything, but whoever can should hew, stab, strangle and lay about himself as if amongst mad dogs.” 24 It seems that Luther had burned his bridges. The grandson of a peasant who liked to make much of his rural roots, Luther had set his face against them. Yet there was nothing surprising in his stand. It was already prefigured in his conflict with Karlstadt, from the moment that Luther decided to defeat the Wittenberg movement and support the Elector’s attempt to make peace with the Diet by slowing the pace of evangelical reform. Luther had already rejected the communal Reformation, powered by popular pressure, which inspired Karlstadt. This was the Reformation that was also popular among the lower townsfolk in Allstedt, Mühlhausen, and Frankenhausen, where Müntzer had his most loyal and zealous supporters. 25 But it could inspire rich and educated men, too, such as Christoph Meinhard, an Eisleben citizen who was probably related to Johann Agricola, a close friend of Luther. 26 The bounded community of a congregation where people knew one another, and could count on the bonds of oaths and a collective morality, drove Müntzer’s Reformation just as it had powered Karlstadt’s. This was not what animated most of the peasant protest, however: Müntzer was repeatedly outraged by those who would not follow his biblicist vision, and at the end blamed the disaster of Frankenhausen on the fact “that everyone was more concerned with his own self-interest than in bringing justice to the Christian people.” 27 Müntzer remains a difficult character to assess. 28 Direct divine inspiration was very important to his theology, with biblical texts playing only a supporting role.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  43 It was part of the parish for which Luther now had responsibility. — T HEN, just a few months after To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther published an even more radical treatise in October 1520, this time in Latin: De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae praeludium, or On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church . 44 That month, he finally received his own official copy of the papal bull threatening excommunicaton and giving him sixty days to recant. The clock started ticking. The striking title of the treatise suggested that the Church was so corrupt that, like the Jews in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, Christians were now in exile. When the emperor’s confessor read it, he was so shocked that he felt as if someone had “split him with a rod from head to toe.” He refused to believe that Luther had written it, because it lacked his former “skill.” 45 But if he was the author, he mused, perhaps it had simply been written in a fit of rage in reaction to the bull. Had Luther simply fallen prey to anger, one of the seven deadly sins? His opponent Thomas Murner decided to translate the tract into German, because he was convinced that as soon as people read it, they would be appalled. He could hardly have made a bigger mistake. The translation appeared with what had now become the standard image of Luther—based on Cranach’s depiction of him as the pious monk—and, printed in Augsburg, it simply served to spread Luther’s teaching yet more widely. The treatise opens with Luther jesting that booksellers and readers should burn his earlier work on indulgences, for it was simply not radical enough. Indeed, Luther now denounces the Pope as Nimrod, the “mighty hunter,” the biblical king and tyrant who set himself up against God. The papacy is the “GRAND HUNTING OF THE BISHOP OF ROME,” that is, Rome is Babylon and the Pope is the Antichrist. Luther had already depicted the Pope as the Antichrist in To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, but there it had been hidden in the final sections of the tract; here it is emblazoned in block capitals at the start. 46 Luther claimed that he owed this new insight to the attacks of Eck, Emser, and their ilk, because their lame defense of existing theology revealed just how corrupt it had become. His opponents’ works are dismissed as “the filth of this vile-smelling cloaca.” They are “wicked men,” one of them even described as “driven by a messenger of Satan.” 47 Whereas Luther had tentatively suggested in 1519 that a Council of the Church might consider whether laypeople should receive the sacrament in both kinds, here he attacked the entire sacramental system of the Church and its significance for accompanying the individual through the different stages of life. Of the seven sacraments—baptism, confirmation, Communion, confession, marriage, ordination, last rites—only baptism and Communion were definitely sanctioned by Scripture.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Very soon, however, Luther was linking him with the Devil: It was Satan who, in the shape of Karlstadt, turned against Luther to shatter the Reformation. Karlstadt was an “angel” who had become an “angel of light”—that is, he was of the Devil. 60 Luther had originally approved many of the changes that Karlstadt had introduced—Communion in two kinds, a service in German—but in 1523, when he introduced a new liturgy, it was in Latin, and until 1523, Communion for the laity was to be bread only. The distinctive features of the Wittenberg Mass, with priests wearing secular clothing, and the congregation permitted to touch the bread and wine themselves rather than receiving them from the priest, were abolished. In other respects, however, Luther’s later German liturgy of 1526 was little different from Karlstadt’s. Indeed, although Luther later rewrote the story of the dispute as a doctrinal breach, Karlstadt had been no sacramentarian at this point: To all intents and purposes he held the same position on the Eucharist as Luther. It would be tempting to conclude that the real breach was over the leadership of the nascent Reformation movement. And yet this would be only half the truth. At a deeper level Luther grasped a key difference between himself and Karlstadt. Although they were shaped by the same spiritual tradition, the Theologia deutsch, and both were influenced by Staupitz, they were taking different paths and this led them, in time, to take different attitudes to the sacrament. Two years later, Karlstadt would argue that Communion was a memorial act only—the presence of Christ in the Eucharist was his spiritual presence, not his actual existence in the bread. Luther had already sensed Karlstadt’s hostility to the flesh when he read his treatise on vows. Soon the two men’s theologies would become irreconcilable. With Luther back, Zwilling brought into line, Karlstadt muzzled, and the council’s radical ordinances overturned, it seemed that the Wittenberg Reformation had been comprehensively defeated. And yet not every trace was obliterated. The begging ordinance and the common chest remained in force. The monks could not be brought back, and the smashed images could not be restored. In the end, most of Karlstadt’s reforms would be reintroduced—although Luther pointedly waited until he died in 1541 before abolishing the elevation of the sacrament in Wittenberg. Still, the council had resigned from its religious role, and thereafter the Wittenberg Reformation was a princely Reformation, not one driven by a popular civic movement. It was Luther who decided when weak consciences were strong enough to graduate from pap.