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 164 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Paul’s original position on the ethnic aspect of our problem, at least if we are to believe Gal 5:11, was that of an open-ethnic perspective, which allowed for non-Jews to join the Jewish ethnos as they opted to seek the favor of the God of the Jews22: “Why am I still being persecuted, if I am still preaching circumcision? In that case, the offense of the cross has been neutralized (NRSV: ‘removed’; katargeō).” The Paul we know from the letters, however, turned rather violently against those who declined to undergo the same change of mind he himself did, asking them to cut it all off rather than unsettle those whom he counted among his (Gentile) friends (Gal 5:12). In the Pauline world, as it also emerges in 1 Cor 7:17–18, it is of utmost importance that the ekklēsia reflects the diversity of the world as he knows it, divided up in two parts: Israel and the Gentiles (cf. Rom 3:29–31). Those who were called as Jews must remain Jews,23 and the same Community (Chicago, IL: Chicago University press, 1994); David C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The Historical and Social Setting of the Matthean Community (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). 20 On Matthew, see e.g., Matthias Konradt, Israel, Church and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew (trans. Kathleen Ess; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014); John Kampen, Matthew within Sectarian Judaism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019). On Paul see, e.g., Matthew Thiessen, Paul and the Gentile Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven, CT: Yale University press, 2017. 21 On this, see Runesson, “Was there a Christian Mission?” and idem, “Judging Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew: Between Othering and Inclusion,” in Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel and Early Christianity: Studies in Memory of Graham Stanton (ed. Daniel M. Gurtner et al.; London: Bloomsbury, 2011), 133–51. 22 For our purposes in this essay, I will leave open the question of whether this approach belonged to Paul’s previous or current life in Judaism, respectively; the point here is the (major) shift from one position to another. 23 Circumcision implying full Torah observance; cf. Gal 5:3. 104 104 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles goes for the Gentiles. If people began changing their status as a consequence of their newfound cultic loyalties, it would imply that neither Christ nor God had done a very careful job when the Spirit was poured over new members regardless of their ethnic (or other) status.24 Indeed, a self-imposed obligation to make changes in one’s status, post-Spirit, would be tantamount to a rejection of the Christ-event itself; it would place the member outside Christ (cf. Gal 5:4). 25 Paul’s change of mind is thus best described as a move toward a closed-ethnic position, refusing, on theo-ethnic grounds, non-Jews entry into the Jewish people. Instead, Paul creates an overarching category, a globalized Christ, as it were, in which a salvific “unity in diversity” may be found.

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

  Objection 3: Further, drunkenness fetters the reason; whereas it is conducive to anger. Therefore anger does not require an act of reason. On the contrary, The Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 6) that “anger listens to reason somewhat.” I answer that, As stated above [1420](A[2]), anger is a desire for vengeance. Now vengeance implies a comparison between the punishment to be inflicted and the hurt done; wherefore the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 6) that “anger, as if it had drawn the inference that it ought to quarrel with such a person, is therefore immediately exasperated.” Now to compare and to draw an inference is an act of reason. Therefore anger, in a fashion, requires an act of reason. Reply to Objection 1: The movement of the appetitive power may follow an act of reason in two ways. In the first way, it follows the reason in so far as the reason commands: and thus the will follows reason, wherefore it is called the rational appetite. In another way, it follows reason in so far as the reason denounces, and thus anger follows reason. For the Philosopher says (De Problem. xxviii, 3) that “anger follows reason, not in obedience to reason’s command, but as a result of reason’s denouncing the injury.” Because the sensitive appetite is subject to the reason, not immediately but through the will. Reply to Objection 2: Dumb animals have a natural instinct imparted to them by the Divine Reason, in virtue of which they are gifted with movements, both internal and external, like unto rational movements, as stated above ([1421]Q[40], A[3]). Reply to Objection 3: As stated in Ethic. vii, 6, “anger listens somewhat to reason” in so far as reason denounces the injury inflicted, “but listens not perfectly,” because it does not observe the rule of reason as to the measure of vengeance. Anger, therefore, requires an act of reason; and yet proves a hindrance to reason. Wherefore the Philosopher says (De Problem. iii, 2,27) that whose who are very drunk, so as to be incapable of the use of reason, do not get angry: but those who are slightly drunk, do get angry, through being still able, though hampered, to form a judgment of reason. Whether anger is more natural than desire?Objection 1: It would seem that anger is not more natural than desire. Because it is proper to man to be by nature a gentle animal. But “gentleness is contrary to anger,” as the Philosopher states (Rhet. ii, 3). Therefore anger is no more natural than desire, in fact it seems to be altogether unnatural to man. Objection 2: Further, reason is contrasted with nature: since those things that act according to reason, are not said to act according to nature. Now “anger requires an act of reason, but desire does not,” as stated in Ethic. vii, 6. Therefore desire is more natural than anger.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  The three parables recorded in Luke 15 were not voiced by Jesus for the benefit of the “unsaved,” that is, the lost sheep, the lost coin, or the prodigal son; rather the parables were intended for the religious center, the Pharisees and scribes who were murmuring. It is to this group that Jesus narrates the three parables. Yet all too often, when the dominant culture interprets these same parables, it focuses on those of the margins, who are usually perceived as lost. But as Jesus reached out to the margins of society, the center became upset that its constructed religious views might become jeopardized with the inclusion of “the people of the land.” They were concerned that the addition of these “undesirables” would pollute their theological perspectives and their ornate temples. Their disdain for the margins is best illustrated in the prayer of the Pharisee as recorded in Luke: “The Pharisee was standing, praying to himself these things: God, I thank you that I am not as the rest of men, rapacious, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week and tithe everything I receive” (18:11–12; emphasis added). While I am not questioning the concern God has for the lost, we misinterpret these parables when we ignore the subject of the narratives. Jesus was challenging the center to make room for those residing on the margins not because those on the margins require tutelage but rather, like the Pharisees and scribes of old, because there is much that the center needs to learn from the disenfranchised. During my seminary years, many Euroamerican churches wanted to offer me positions (at about a quarter of what other ministers were being paid) to start a Hispanic mission somewhere in the basement. There was a sincere desire to “reach out to the lost,” but when these Latino/as came to the church, they were ushered to the fellowship hall, where they could worship among themselves. The hope was that they would form a missionary church, some place else. The message was clear: you are not welcomed in our sanctuary—get saved and move on! It is always difficult for those at the center to listen to those who reside at the margins of society. The latter's interpretation of God's movement in the world challenges what society has always taught to be normative. Yet Jesus was able and willing to learn from the margins of his times. We sometimes forget that Jesus was human as well as divine. As a human, he had to learn how to overcome human frailties. As a child, Jesus had to learn how to walk, talk, and read. As an adult, he had to overcome the temptation of sin, specifically the human desire for fame and riches. Satan, according to Matthew 4:1–11, tempted Jesus with possessions (bread), privilege (jumping off the Temple and not being hurt because of who Christ is), and power (all the kingdoms of the earth).

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  When Jesus cried out for Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37, his han was so deep that the Gospel writer uses a feminine metaphor, having Jesus refer to himself as a mother hen attempting to gather her brood under her protective wing.26 A GAY CHRIST On October 6, 1998, in the small Wyoming city of Laramie, a twenty-one-year-old college freshman majoring in political science, named Matthew Shepard, entered the Fireside Bar for a Heineken. He entered the bar alone around ten o'clock, coming from a dinner meeting with friends from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Alliance. There he met two individuals to whom Shepard revealed his homosexuality. The two individuals said that they too were gay and invited Shepard to leave with them. A little after midnight, they piled into a pickup truck and Shepard's assault began. He was later found pistol-whipped with a .357 magnum and left for dead, strung up on a split-rail fence along an old dirt road. He died several days later, never recovering from a coma. During the memorial service, bomb-sniffing dogs combed the church while SWAT teams and police in riot helmets were needed to keep the peace. Anti-gay protestors from different churches chose Shepard's funeral to protest what they perceived to be too much tolerance and too many concessions to the gay community. “We want to inject a little sanity and Gospel truth into what is shaping up to be an orgy of homosexual lies and propaganda” said the Reverend Fred Phelps, a Baptist preacher from Topeka, Kansas, who came with several members of his congregation to protest the memorial service. These church members waved antigay signs, shouted anti-gay slogans, and engaged mourners in loud and nasty debates. One protestor yelled, “Matthew was wicked!” Some of the signs read, “No Fags in Heaven,” “God Hates Fags,” and “No Tears for Queers.” One young girl, too young to even understand the message she held, carried a sign that read, “Fag = Anal Sex.”27 No doubt, many within the overall Christian church have strong negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians. Some Christians encourage violence toward gays and lesbians when they reduce sexual orientation to a disease or sin and encourage a crusade against those whom they perceive God hates. Violence is further advocated when Christians remain silent in the face of the violence experienced by the Shepards of our community. Perpetrators of gay bashing feel themselves justified in enforcing the rules of God and nature, administering justice to those whom God hates. Christians become complicit with the violence they breed due to their attitudes, words, and actions toward “the least of my people.” Historically, biblical texts have been used as clubs to submit gays and lesbians to conformity. Some of the most verbal (and physical) attacks upon gays and lesbians have been generated from the conservative Christian community, as demonstrated during Shepard's funeral. Yet Jesus warns that anyone who calls someone rhaka will be liable to the Sanhedrin or even hell's fire (Matt. 5:22).

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  A person who is deeply feeling is not a person who is habitually venting anger, fear or sorrow. Wise and fortunate individuals feel their emotions in the quiet of their interiors, learn from their feelings and are guided by them. They act intuitively and intelligently on those feelings. In addition, they share their feelings when appropriate and are responsive to the feelings and needs of others. And, of course, because they are human, they blow up from time to time; but also they look for the root of these eruptions, not primarily as being caused by another, but as an imbalance or disquiet within themselves. While physical feelings are both quantitatively and qualitatively distinguishable from emotions, both derive ultimately from the instincts. The five categorical emotional instincts described by Darwin are fear, anger, sorrow, disgust and joy. However, feelings, as the consciousness of a bodily attitude, come in a virtually infinite range and blend. These include the bittersweet longing for an absent friend or tender mirth at a child’s spontaneity. The Darwinian emotions correspond to distinct instincts, while feelings express a blending of (sensate-based) nuances and permutations. In addition, bodily feelings embody a relationship between an object or situation and our welfare. They are, in that sense, an elaboration of the basic affective valances of approach and avoidance. Feelings are the basic path by which we make our way in the world. In contrast, (fixated) emotional states derive from frustrated drives or engagement of the last-ditch mobilization of emergency (fight/flight/freeze). With the paucity of saber-toothed tigers, this critical reaction of last resort rarely makes sense in modern life. However, we are compelled to deal with a myriad of very different threats, such as speeding cars and overly eager surgeons, for which we lack much in the way of evolutionarily prepared protocols. Emotions are our constant companions, enhancing our lives and detracting from them. How we navigate the maze of emotions is a central factor in the conduct of our lives, for better or for worse. The question is: under what conditions are emotions adaptive—and conversely, when are they maladaptive? In general, the more that an emotion takes on the quality of shock or eruption, or the more that it is suppressed or repressed, the more prominent is the maladaptation. Indeed, often an emotion begins in a useful form and then, because we suppress it, turns against us in the form of physical symptoms or in a delayed and exaggerated explosion. Anger and resentment, when denied, can build to an explosive level. There is a popular expression that is apt here: “That which we resist, persists.” As damaging as emotions can be, repressing them only compounds the problem. However, let it be duly noted that the difference between repression/suppression and restraint/containment is significant though elusive. Remember once more how the samurai warrior delicately, but definitively, arrested his compulsion to strike, allowing him to feel his (former) murderous rage simply as pure energy—and ultimately as the bliss of feeling alive.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  You get in your car, drive to a distant street, and pull over. You don’t have the space in your brain to cry. You pick up your phone and see that, on Freecycle, someone is giving away catalog cards from a defunct library. You drive to a local Panera, take a stack of cards from a very nice woman who is probably wondering why you look like you’ve been forced to eat dog shit at gunpoint. Back at your house you calmly add the pile of cards to your scrap collection because you think you’d like to make a collage. Very late, your girlfriend—or is she?—appears at your house and says she has to get back to Bloomington. Where has she been this whole time? She doesn’t say, but she kisses you. “I think we’re meant to get through this,” she says. “Don’t worry. Promise me you won’t worry.” Dream House as Natural DisasterI get bad heartburn. It’s the Zoloft, which takes the edge off my anxiety but brings along a bunch of awful side effects, like a good friend who can’t shed a bad lover. Every so often, I take my nightly meds and within a few minutes feel as though a hot poker has been shoved down my esophagus. I chew antacids and walk to the bathroom. Often the pain, or the force of the neutralization, makes me vomit. I become, functionally, everyone’s favorite science fair project. When I bend over the toilet, I think a lot about how my heart is a volcano, like that quote from Kahlil Gibran. It’s dumb but it moved me—spoke to my shifting tectonic plates—and I wrote it down on a Post-it I stuck on my desk: “If your heart is a volcano how shall you expect flowers to bloom in your hands?” It stayed there until a bad day, working on this book, when I suddenly loathed the quote with every ember of my being and crumpled it up and threw it away. Reader, do you remember that ridiculous movie Volcano, the one with Tommy Lee Jones? Do you remember how they stopped eruption in the middle of downtown Los Angeles? They diverted it with cement roadblocks and pointed fire hoses at it, and rerouted the lava to the ocean, and everything was fine? Sweet reader, that is not how lava works. Anyone can tell you that. Here is the truth: I keep waiting for my anger to go dormant, but it won’t. I keep waiting for someone to reroute my anger into the ocean, but no one can. My heart is closer to Dante’s Peak of Dante’s Peak. My anger dissolves grandmas in acid lakes and razes quaint Pacific Northwest towns with ash and asphyxiates jet engines with its grit. Lava keeps leaking down my slopes. You should have listened to the scientist. You should have evacuated earlier.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Such a reading is based on the reader's self-centeredness. Self-centeredness begins with the fall of humanity, the original disobedience of Adam and Eve. In their act of eating the forbidden fruit, the mango, from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they committed sin, a sin rooted in the central idea of usurping God's authority as Creator.1 The original sin of humanity is the pride of attempting to become “like gods” (Gen. 3:5). Self-centeredness is the endeavor of replacing God with humans, expressed today as the drive for power and privilege. Through unlimited power and privilege, those in the center with sufficient economic privilege have the opportunity of becoming gods, usually at the expense of those who live in the periphery of society. For example, due to the high consumption of grain-fed livestock by residents of the United States, enough food is consumed by them to feed over a billion people in poor countries. According to Oxford economist Donald Hay, a mere 2 percent of the world's grain harvest is sufficient, if shared, to eliminate world hunger and malnutrition. Yet, ironically, in a world where over thirty-four thousand children die each day of hunger and preventable diseases, the number of overweight adults in the United States increased from 26 to 34 percent between 1988 and 1991. The United States, the world's center, consumes so much of the world's resources that its people now spend billions of dollars annually trying to lose weight in a world where the majority of its inhabitants go to bed hungry. In fact, the dollar value of the food thrown into North American garbage cans each year equals one-fifth of the total annual income of all the Christians living in Africa.2 This self-centeredness believes in its moral right to accumulate while others go hungry, never connecting the relationship between having and not having. The accumulation of wealth is understood as the product of “hard work.” The sharing of goods and possessions, each according to his or her needs, is usually attributed to Karl Marx, and most Christians believe this phrase to be a Marxist dictum. In reality, it is a biblical principle for the Christian church, one established early in its formation. The book of Acts states, “And the believers together, holding all things in common, sold their goods and possessions and distributed them to all, according to each one's need” (2:44–45). Yet this concept, dangerously reminiscent of some type of socialism, is rejected by those of us who live in a capitalist society, because we have been taught that communism/socialism is evil or possibly that it is a good idea that simply does not work. Our capitalist system takes precedence; we rarely think of how those who are economically disenfranchised understand passages like the one found in Acts 2. In spite of the dominant culture's rhetoric of succeeding through hard work, seldom have the rich or powerful worked as hard as a migrant laborer.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  White Christians were able to support slavery because it provided the “heathen” Africans an opportunity to hear the gospel and obtain eternal life. Their salvation (the spiritual) took precedence over their physical bondage (the material). To the Eurocentric mind-set, salvation was not the only benefit slave-bound Africans received. Additionally, they were taught civilization, how to distinguish good from evil, and basic reasoning abilities that elevated them from the “bestial sloth” of their existence. Slavery was as beneficial to the Africans as to the Euroamerican masters who were charged with their tutelage—if not more so. The Great Awakening, a pietistic movement that emphasized the need for a personal experience of conversion, swept throughout the colonies in the mid-1730s. This religious phenomenon served as a watershed for the conversion of many to Christianity, including Africans. Nevertheless, the motif of liberation found in the Bible had to be reconciled with the slaveholders’ desire to convert their property into obedient Christians. Slaves could be Christianized as long as it was recognized that the New Testament did not speak out against slavery; hence, Old Testament references to slavery remained authoritative. If Jesus Christ would have considered slavery to be a sin, surely he would have directly said so. Consequently, slaves were cautiously proselyted.3 In spite of slaveholders’ attempts to ignore the liberative motif of the Gospels, some slaves were radicalized by the victory of the resurrection of Christ, and many took up arms against their oppressors as a Christian action to gain a physical liberation that would match their spiritual freedom. Blacks were at all costs discouraged from reading the Bible lest they equate liberation in Christ with liberation in the world. Hence, white society, specifically Protestant white society, found itself censoring the Bible by determining what its slave population could and could not hear. Crucial to the maintenance of the American slavocracy was the overall systematic prohibition for blacks, slaves, and free Africans to learn how to read the Bible, or any other book for that matter. Laws forbade anyone from providing scholastic instruction to African slaves, and the general teaching of freed slaves was discouraged. Such restrictions prevented those of African descent from exploring the world outside their confined social location and made them dependent on white society to define and interpret reality for them, a reality that included the Bible. The norm of keeping African Americans uneducated continued for a century after legislation ended slavery. It was not until the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Topeka Board of Education that the purpose of segregation was unmasked and the right of African Americans to education was established, a right that has yet to be fulfilled half a century later. The response of most white churches to the “threat” of integration is worth noting. Many Christian schools (K through 12) were established by churches during this era of public-school desegregation. The dominant culture's Christian response was often to provide an alternative to desegregation, masked under the cloak of providing a “Christian” education.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  67 This is Benedetto Croce’s summary, in The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (trans. R. G. Collingwood; New York, NY: Macmillan, 1913), 157, of passages from Vico’s Scienza Nuova (1744), accessible in English in Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch, eds., The New Science of Giambattista Vico (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1948), such as l.vii (59); II.iv (127–128), and III (330). Paul without Judaism39 39 “The Announcement” he lays out to his groups lacked any Judaean requirements and required no biblical knowledge. Third, in response to those who thought that he should include Judaean content, he responded with a firm “No.” This was not because he had a different Judaism or because his groups were Gentiles. It was because, for him, being in Christ rendered every nomos, of Greeks or of Judaeans, a dead letter. Moses’ law too had served only until Christ. Paul was emphatically not “under law.” Fourth, Paul declared as vividly as one could imagine his abandonment of the zeal he formerly had for his ancestral traditions. Fifth, he was happy to eat with non-Judaeans in a way that leading Judaean Christ-followers—Peter, Paul’s associate Barnabas, and a group from Jesus’ brother James—could not accept. Sixth, as word about these points got around, from Rome to Jerusalem, Paul’s Announcement caused deep offence to other Judaeans, whether Christ-followers or not. Seventh, Paul faced a rough reception from Judaeans everywhere, which included repeated whippings, because of The Announcement. These indications present a fairly unified picture, though still beginning and partial, of one Judaean who consciously abandoned his ancestral custom. He did this not for the more common reasons of laxity, intermarriage, or attraction to the ways of another ethnos, however, but because he claimed an encounter with the resurrected figure of Jesus Christ, which in his view displaced the ethnos-polis-nomos foundations of ancient identity. This radical departure from the long-established, essential-seeming categories of life would require successive generations of Christ-followers in Paul’s trajectory—by no means the only Christian trajectory—to explain themselves, when Christ did not return to evacuate them. Their predicament remained awkward until perhaps already Tertullian and Origen in anticipation, but certainly Eusebius and his successors, managed to turn the tables and reform the social-political lexicon in light of Christianity’s ascendancy, so as to value this faith-based identity over ethnos- and polis-affiliation. 40 40

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In contrast, (fixated) emotional states derive from frustrated drives or engagement of the last-ditch mobilization of emergency (fight/flight/freeze). With the paucity of saber-toothed tigers, this critical reaction of last resort rarely makes sense in modern life. However, we are compelled to deal with a myriad of very different threats, such as speeding cars and overly eager surgeons, for which we lack much in the way of evolutionarily prepared protocols. Emotions are our constant companions, enhancing our lives and detracting from them. How we navigate the maze of emotions is a central factor in the conduct of our lives, for better or for worse. The question is: under what conditions are emotions adaptive—and conversely, when are they maladaptive? In general, the more that an emotion takes on the quality of shock or eruption, or the more that it is suppressed or repressed, the more prominent is the maladaptation. Indeed, often an emotion begins in a useful form and then, because we suppress it, turns against us in the form of physical symptoms or in a delayed and exaggerated explosion. Anger and resentment, when denied, can build to an explosive level. There is a popular expression that is apt here: “That which we resist, persists.” As damaging as emotions can be, repressing them only compounds the problem. However, let it be duly noted that the difference between repression/suppression and restraint/containment is significant though elusive. Remember once more how the samurai warrior delicately, but definitively, arrested his compulsion to strike, allowing him to feel his (former) murderous rage simply as pure energy—and ultimately as the bliss of feeling alive. As the successful parent knows, this strategy works well with children. Rather than suppress the child, encouraging a habit of repression, these parents help the child by providing a timely interruption, while guiding the child to feel his anger and source his needs and desires. This is what healthy aggression is about. On the other hand, we have the permissive parent who lets the child go out-of-control with temper tantrums, as the samurai was about to do but with lethal consequences. The effective parent, however, provides and channels the child’s aggression in a useful way. They do this by both allowing the child to feel her anger and then helping the child to understand what she is mad about. If emotions are not too extreme and are approached with a certain stance, they can serve the function of guiding our behaviors—even moving them toward positive goals. Here’s an example with which most of us can identify. Bob comes home from work and finds his house in chaos. He is furious and wants to yell at Jane and the kids, but he “stuffs” his rage. By bedtime he cannot unwind and has an acute attack of gastric reflux.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  19Lecture 2—Luther and the Dawn of Protestantism õLuther wasn’t allowed to come because he was an outlaw. Another person had to take charge of getting everyone to agree and drafting the core beliefs of this new Lutheran faith. That person was Philipp Melanchthon, a professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg who was younger than Luther and his close collaborator. õHe consulted with other Protestants, read over Luther’s writings, and drafted a document that became one of the landmarks of the Reformation: the Augsburg Confession. It laid out the core beliefs of Lutheranism, including justification by faith alone and the importance of the sacraments, even if they are not agents of salvation. It asserted the right of priests to marry and denied that a man can purify his soul through isolation in a monastery. õLuther’s sympathizers among the German leaders signed onto the Augsburg Confession and demanded a public reading. Despite all this, Luther wasn’t thrilled with the final document. He thought the tone was too polite. Charles V hardly felt that way. In fact, the Confession paved the way for the Protestant princes of Germany to form an alliance against the emperor called the Schmalkaldic League, and they would go to war against him in the 1540s. õThe Augsburg Confession had inf luence well beyond the Holy Roman Empire. In 1536 it was translated into English, just as Protestant sentiments were beginning to spread throughout England. And Melanchthon’s work helped crystalize the ideas of early English reformers. õThat same year in Scandinavia, the king Christian III marched on Copenhagen, arrested the Catholic bishops, and declared that the Reformation had come to Denmark and Norway. He wanted to bring the churches into line with Lutheran beliefs, and now he also had a handy excuse to confiscate bishops’ valuable properties, which he needed to help pay the cost of the civil war he had just won. 20The History of Christianity II õThe fighting in German lands came to a temporary halt in 1555 when Charles V and the members of the Schmalkaldic League signed the Peace of Augsburg. This treaty gave Lutherans official standing within the Holy Roman Empire. It also proposed that the easiest way to avoid war was to say that each ruler gets to determine the religion of his territory. õThe Latin phrase for this is cuius regio, eius religio: “whose region, his religion.” The problem was that even if the Lutherans were satisfied, this treaty did not recognize internal divisions between the Lutherans and other groups of Protestants who had declared themselves all over Europe. SUGGESTED READING Ebeling, Luther. MacCulloch, The Reformation. Ma r t y, Martin Luther. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äWhat drove Luther to go public with his criticisms of the Catholic Church? äInitially, Luther believed he was just calling the church to be true to its original principles. Why did that call break the church apart? äWhy did the Holy Roman Emperor get involved in a theological argument?

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Before we can begin to understand how the margins find their liberation and salvation within the biblical text, we must first explore how the text is used to justify the oppression and damnation of those who are disenfranchised. A PRIVILEGED READING When we read the Bible, we read it from our social location, a reading that usually justifies our lifestyle even if, at times, our lifestyle contradicts the very essence of the gospel message. Historically, the Bible has been used to justify such acts as genocide, slavery, war, crusades, colonialism, economic plunder, and gender oppression. Bible verses were quoted, sermons preached from pulpits, and theses written in theological academic centers to justify barbaric acts that were labeled “Christian missionary zeal” or “righteous indignation.” Millions have unjustly died and perished in the name of Jesus and by the hands of those who call themselves his followers. In fact, one of the slave ships responsible for bringing Africans to the Americas was named the Jesus. Although I do not wish to enter into a discussion concerning the personal “spiritual” fervor of such individuals, I do question how they reconciled the Bible with their oppressive acts. For example, how could “Christian” slave masters during the antebellum period inflict unbearable misery upon other human beings, day in and day out, and still be able to sing God's praises and proclaim God's everlasting mercy on Sunday mornings? How is the love of Christ reconciled with the inhumanity of some of his self-proclaimed followers today who benefit from social structures designed to increase their status at others’ expense? In other words, how do they read the Bible from the center of power and privilege? The Age of Enlightenment is crucial in understanding how the dominant Eurocentric culture reads the Bible. The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century intellectual movement prevalent throughout western Europe. Centuries of bloody religious conflicts following the Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s, coupled with the rise of science, led thinkers of the Enlightenment to construct a new worldview based on human reason and understanding. Philosophical rationalism gained ascendancy, deriving its methodologies from science and natural philosophy. A major objective of this project was to replace religion, the source of so much human misery, with science. Science became the new means for knowing nature and the destiny of humans. In short, science was looked to as the salvation of humanity. The intolerance of the established Christian churches, which had led to centuries of religious warfare, was associated with a premodern worldview where the answer to every question of the universe was believed to reside in the Bible. The new “modern” worldview replaced the Bible with human reason and science. While all Christian groups reject the total replacement of religion with science, the tension created by modernity continues to exist. For example, throughout the United States today, state legislatures and local school boards attempt to include creationism (a literal reading of Genesis 1) within the school curricula, to be taught alongside evolutionary theory.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  For all cast out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty cast all, as much as she had, her whole livelihood.” The widow is generally idealized by the dominant culture as an example of Christian behavior for those who are poor, with her self-sacrifice compared with that of the self-indulgence of the religious leaders. Yet, for some Asian Americans, this interpretation maintains societal power relationships that are detrimental to the oppressed. In Mark's account, the story of the widow's offering is preceded by Jesus’ outrage toward the religious leaders who devour the possessions of widows. Mark states, “And [Jesus] said to them,…[the religious leaders are] devouring the houses of the widows under the pretense of praying at length” (12:38–40). In Luke's account, Jesus concludes the story of the widow's offering with his prediction of the Temple's destruction. Luke states, “Some were speaking about the Temple, that it was decorated with stones and gifts. He said, ‘These things you see, days will come when one stone will not be left on a stone’” (21:5–6). Reading Mark and Luke together, we discover that Jesus is not praising the widow's offering as a paragon to be imitated by those who are marginalized; rather Jesus is denouncing a religious social structure that cons the widow out of the little she has.14 To side with the widows of the world becomes the appropriate action for minjung. Minjung is an untranslatable Korean word made up of two characters: min , which means “people,” and jung , which means “mass.” The word refers to all people who are marginalized and oppressed. When the poor are overburdened by economic structures designed to benefit the rich, then they belong to the minjung. When one race of people is dominated by another race so that the more powerful can extract cheap labor and resources, then they belong to the minjung. When one gender is domesticated by the other so as to serve the interests of those whom society says are the superior gender, then they belong to the minjung. Minjung theology is the theology of the colonized people, of those who are economically, politically, sexually, and socially oppressed. Jesus too belongs to the minjung , for throughout his earthly ministry he was followed by these masses of oppressed people; he ate with them, healed them, fed them, identified with them, and proclaimed God's liberation to them. A minjung reading of the Bible has its foundation in the life events of Jesus, events based not on power but powerlessness, events that sought justice for the disenfranchised. These events become the foundation for rereading the history of Asians and understanding what biblically based actions are required for liberation.15 A BLACK CHRIST The only whites recorded in the Gospel story were the white colonizers from Rome. With certainty we can conclude that Jesus was not Aryan. Does this mean then that he belonged to another racial group or perhaps was black?

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  What God has yoked together, let no one separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and put her away?” He said to them, “In view of your hardheartedness, Moses allowed you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, that whosoever puts away his wife, with the exception of fornication, and marries another commits adultery. And the one who marries a divorcée commits adultery.” In the above passage, Jesus dismisses the Deuteronomic law because of the social context in which it was written, a context in which the “hardheartedness” of men who benefited from sexism took preference over the intended will of the Creator expressed in the first two chapters of Genesis. Laws like Deuteronomy 24:1–2 are, according to Jesus, the product of men establishing sinful patriarchal hierarchies, rather than God's perfect will that men and women coexist as companions. Can Christians follow Jesus’ example and dismiss biblical verses, like the ones previously mentioned, if they cause oppression? In chapter 2 , we concluded by stating that the entire Bible should be read through the lens of the gospel message, specifically through passages like John 10:10, where Jesus states, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” If verses within the Bible advocate the subjugation of one person to another and hence prevent life from being lived abundantly by a segment of the population, then those verses are anti-gospel and must be reinterpreted in light of the fullest revelation of God found in Christ. Insistence on reading the text solely through the eyes of men violates the gospel message of liberation, as women are forced to conform to patriarchal traditions that rob them of their dignity. Women who read the text with their own eyes are simply no longer willing to accept biblical interpretations constructed by men as normative for their lives. In short, as demonstrated in Matthew 19:3–9, Jesus becomes the model by which Christians read, interpret, and accept (or dismiss) verses that appear to justify oppressive social structures. Feminism among Women of Color Women of color face multiple oppressors. They must learn how to survive in a society that privileges Euroamericans as well as privileges men. Like their Euroamerican sisters, they struggle for genuine respect of their personhood. As a result, they emphasize their social location while valuing their experiences as a source and lens for reading the biblical text. Yet, unlike their Euroamerican sisters, they must also face racial and ethnic discrimination from the dominant culture along with sexism from within their own marginalized group, where all too often Euroamerican men and men of color agree on the so-called biblical mandate that subordinates women.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In humans, such violence, however, has produced tragic consequences to the individual and society. I had the opportunity to speak with the mother of Ted Kaczynski (the “Unabomber,” whose vendetta was waged against the impersonality of technology) and with the father of Jeffrey Dahmer (a serial killer who dismembered his victims). They both told me horrific stories of how their young children were “broken” by terrifying hospital experiences. Both parents described how, after terrifying hospitalizations, each of these children retreated into his own world. While such experiences of rage leading to perverted violence are (fortunately) rare, the terror and anger evoked by medical procedures is (unfortunately) not. Rage Turned Against the Self With humans, the impulse toward violent aggression may become terrifying in itself and is then turned against the self, as Kahlbaum so presciently observed in his seminal work on catatonia. 48 This turning inward (or “retroflection”) results in further paralysis, suppression, passivity and resignation. The flipping between shutdown and outbursts of “impotent” and misdirected rage becomes the individual’s stereotypic reaction to later challenges that require much more nuanced and subtly differentiated feeling-based responses. In my accident (see Chapter 1), as I came out of shock, I experienced “a rolling wave of fiery rage” as my body continued its shaking and trembling; then I felt a “burning red fury” erupting “from deep within my belly.” I really wanted to kill the girl who’d hit me, and I thought, How could that stupid kid hit me in a crosswalk? Wasn’t she paying any attention? Damn her! I wanted to kill her, and it felt like I could have. Because rage is about wanting to kill, it is not hard to understand how frightening this urge can be; and how the rage could turn to fear as a way of preventing such murderous impulses. By allowing my body to do what it needed to do—by not stopping the shaking while tracking my inner body sensations—I was able to allow and contain the extreme survival emotions of rage and terror without becoming overwhelmed. Containment, it must be understood, is NOT suppression; it is rather building a larger, more resilient vessel to hold these difficult affects. And mercifully, this way, I came through the accident’s aftermath unscathed by trauma and more resilient to future challenge. As people revisit, move through and then move out of immobility in therapy, they frequently experience some rage. These primal sensations of fury (when contained) represent movements back into life. However, rage and other intense body sensations can be frightening if they occur abruptly. In effective therapy, the therapist supports and carefully guides the client through this powerful process. Guidance should be done slowly, by using a graduated approach so that the client is not overwhelmed. Ultimately, rage is (biologically) about the urge to kill. 49 When some women who have been raped begin to come out of shock (frequently months or even years later) they may have the impulse to kill their assailants.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In my accident (see Chapter 1), as I came out of shock, I experienced “a rolling wave of fiery rage” as my body continued its shaking and trembling; then I felt a “burning red fury” erupting “from deep within my belly.” I really wanted to kill the girl who’d hit me, and I thought, How could that stupid kid hit me in a crosswalk? Wasn’t she paying any attention? Damn her! I wanted to kill her, and it felt like I could have. Because rage is about wanting to kill, it is not hard to understand how frightening this urge can be; and how the rage could turn to fear as a way of preventing such murderous impulses. By allowing my body to do what it needed to do—by not stopping the shaking while tracking my inner body sensations—I was able to allow and contain the extreme survival emotions of rage and terror without becoming overwhelmed. Containment, it must be understood, is NOT suppression; it is rather building a larger, more resilient vessel to hold these difficult affects. And mercifully, this way, I came through the accident’s aftermath unscathed by trauma and more resilient to future challenge. As people revisit, move through and then move out of immobility in therapy, they frequently experience some rage. These primal sensations of fury (when contained) represent movements back into life. However, rage and other intense body sensations can be frightening if they occur abruptly. In effective therapy, the therapist supports and carefully guides the client through this powerful process. Guidance should be done slowly, by using a graduated approach so that the client is not overwhelmed. Ultimately, rage is (biologically) about the urge to kill.49 When some women who have been raped begin to come out of shock (frequently months or even years later) they may have the impulse to kill their assailants. Occasionally, they have had the opportunity to carry out this impulse in action. Some of these women have been tried and sentenced for murder because the time elapsed was viewed as evidence of premeditation. Injustices have most certainly occurred due to general ignorance of the biological drama those women were playing out. A number of these women may have been acting upon the profound (and delayed) self-protective responses of rage and counterattack that they experienced as they came out of agitated immobility; and thus their reprisal (though much delayed) may have been biologically motivated, and not necessarily premeditated revenge, despite the outward appearance. These killings might have been prevented if effective treatment for the traumatized women had been available at the time.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  We’re all smoking illegally in the journal office with the door closed and the window open. We’re having a plasma party. “We aren’t discussing plasma ,” Bob says condescendingly. He’s smoking a horrendously smelly pipe. The longer he stays in here the more it feels like I’m breathing small daggers in through my nose. He and I don’t get along; each of us thinks the other needs to be taken down a peg. Once we had a hissing match in the hallway which ended with him suggesting that I could be fired, which drove me to tell him he was already fired, and both of us stomped into our offices and slammed our doors. “I had to fire Bob,” I tell Chris later. “I heard,” he says noncommittally. Bob is his best friend. They spend at least half of each day standing in front of chalkboards, writing equations and arguing about outer space. Then they write theoretical papers about what they come up with. They’re actually quite a big deal in the space physics community, but around here they’re just two guys who keep erasing my pictures. Someone knocks on the door and we put our cigarettes out. Bob hides his pipe in the palm of his hand and opens the door. It’s Gang Lu, one of their students. Everyone lights up again. Gang Lu stands stiffly talking to Chris while Bob holds a match to his pipe and puffs fiercely; nose daggers waft up and out, right in my direction. I give him a sugary smile and he gives me one back. Unimaginable, really, that less than two months from now one of his colleagues from abroad, a woman with delicate, birdlike features, will appear at the door to my office and identify herself as a friend of Bob’s. When she asks, I take her down the hall to the room with the long table and then to his empty office. I do this without saying anything because there’s nothing to say, and she takes it all in with small, serious nods until the moment she sees his blackboard covered with scribbles and arrows and equations. At that point her face loosens and she starts to cry in long ragged sobs. An hour later I go back and the office is empty. When I erase the blackboard finally, I can see where she laid her hands carefully, where the numbers are ghostly and blurred. Bob blows his smoke discreetly in my direction and waits for Chris to finish talking to Gang Lu, who is answering questions in a monotone — yes or no, or I don’t know. Another Chinese student named Shan lets himself in after knocking lightly. He nods and smiles at me and then stands at a respectful distance, waiting to ask Chris a question. It’s like a physics conference in here. I wish they’d all leave so I could make my usual midafternoon spate of personal calls. I begin thumbing through papers in a businesslike way.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  People from the margins insist that Christians move beyond an abstract belief in Jesus to a material response to those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, alien, sick, and incarcerated. The task for those seeking eternal life must go beyond an intellectual understanding of Jesus Christ to the actual doing of Christlike actions—not because salvation is achieved by those actions but because they serve as witness to the empowering grace given by God. To continue worshiping Christ apart from any commitment to those who are the least contributes to maintaining our present structures of oppression along gender, race, and class lines. To ignore the cry of those who are marginalized is to deny Christ's message, regardless of whether or not we confess our belief in him and proclaim his name with our lips. While people on the margins often connect the responsibility of those who benefit by the way society is structured with the process of salvation, those accustomed to a privileged lifestyle usually dismiss such a theological perspective. A faith solely based on individual belief and disconnected from public responsibilities and actions allows the rich young rulers of our time to claim to be followers and disciples. If the words of Jesus are as true today as they were two thousand years ago, then “how hard it is for those [of the dominant culture] to enter into the reign of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for [those of the privileged center] to enter into the reign of God” (Luke 18:24–25). More Than Just Climbing Sycamore Trees It seems as if the author of Luke knew that readers would try to spiritualize the story of the rich young ruler. To counteract the attempt to harmonize the story of the rich young ruler with the lifestyle of today's wealthy, numerous homilies preached at prestigious congregations throughout this country have maintained that Jesus really did not mean to bind the salvation of the privileged with their actions toward the disenfranchised. Yet Luke 19:1–10 continues his Gospel by recounting the story of the rich sinner Zacchaeus. According to Luke, Zacchaeus was a senior tax collector, a post that made him a very wealthy man. In the Roman Empire, contracts to collect taxes were farmed out to wealthy persons who in turn hired local residents, like Zacchaeus, to do the actual collecting of funds. These individuals became personally responsible for paying Rome its taxes, although they were provided with the power of Rome to collect extra taxes from the masses in order to make a profit. Theft and fraud abounded as tax collectors attempted to appropriate the maximum amount a person could bear. Their dealings with Gentiles made Jewish tax collectors ritually unclean, and their dealings with Rome made them collaborators with the occupying colonizers and traitors to their own people.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Pop Single A year before I was born, the band ’Til Tuesday, led by Aimee Mann, came out with the single “Voices Carry.” The breathy, haunting song about an abusive relationship was a top-ten hit in the United States. In the music video—which was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV—the boyfriend is, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. A meathead in gold chains and a muscle shirt, he delivers his aggressively banal dialogue with the subtlety of an after-school special. Throughout the video, he dismantles Aimee piece by piece. At first, he compliments her music and her new hair—punky and platinum, with a rattail. Later, in a restaurant that looks like it was borrowed from a sitcom set, he removes her elaborate earpiece and replaces it with a more traditional earring before playfully chucking her under the chin. There is a shot of Mann behind a gauzy curtain, her face pressed into it with desperation, which cuts to her leaving for band practice. Here he confronts her on the steps of their brownstone; when he grabs her guitar case, she tears out of his grasp. When she returns, he scolds her for her lateness. “You know, this little hobby of yours has gone too far. Why can’t you for once do something for me?” When she speaks for the first time—“Like what?” she asks, tilting her chin upward in a challenge—he attacks her, pushing her against the stairs and forcibly kissing her. At the end of the video, they are sitting in a theater audience at Carnegie Hall. The boyfriend puts his arm around a now-polished Mann—sitting quietly, strung with pearls—before discovering her intact rattail and curling his lip in disgust. Mann begins to sing—softly at first, and then louder as she tears a stylish fascinator off her head. Then she stands up and is screaming, she is scream-singing—“He said ‘Shut up’ / He said ‘Shut up’”—and everyone is turning to look at her. This final scene, Mann said in an interview years later, was inspired by Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much , when Doris Day’s character lets loose a bloodcurdling scream during a symphony performance, to foil an assassination. Long after the video came out, in 1999 the song’s producer revealed that the initial demo of the song had used female pronouns—in the original version, Mann was singing about a woman. “The record company was predictably unhappy with such lyrics,” he wrote, “since this was a very powerful, commercial song and they would prefer as many of its components as possible to swim in the acceptable mainstream. I wasn’t certain what to think about the pressure to change the gender of the love interest, but eventually thought that it didn’t matter any to the impact of the song itself. Would a quasi-lesbian song have had any effect on the liberation of such homosexuals, then as now several difficult steps behind the gays on the path towards broad social acceptance?

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  In 1969 Jeb Magruder came to San Clemente for a job interview in the Nixon administration. The man giving the interview was Bob Haldeman, chief of staff. Haldeman was very earnest, completely devoted to the Nixon cause, and impressed Magruder with his honesty, sharpness, and intelligence. But as they left the interview to get in a golf cart for a tour of San Clemente, Haldeman suddenly became frantic—there were no carts available. He railed at those in charge of the carts, and his manner was insulting and harsh. He was almost hysterical. Magruder should have seen this incident as a sign that Haldeman was not what he appeared, that he had control issues and a vicious streak, but charmed by the aura of power at San Clemente and wanting the job, he chose to ignore this, much to his later dismay. In everyday life people can often do well at disguising their character flaws, but in times of stress or crisis these flaws can suddenly become very apparent. People under stress lose their normal self-control. They reveal their insecurities about their reputation, their fear of failure and lack of inner resilience. On the other hand, some people rise to the occasion and reveal strength under fire. There’s no way to tell until the heat is on, but you must pay extra attention to such moments. Similarly, how people handle power and responsibility will tell you a lot about them. As Lincoln said, “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” On the way to gaining power, people will tend to play the courtier, to seem deferential, to follow the party line, to do what it takes to make it to the top. Once at the top, there are fewer restraints and they will often reveal something about themselves you had not noticed before. Some people stay true to the values they had before attaining a high position—they remain respectful and empathetic. On the other hand, far more people suddenly feel entitled to treat others differently now that they have the power. That is what happened to Lyndon Johnson once he attained a position of ultimate security in the Senate, as Senate majority leader. Tired of the years he had to spend playing the perfect courtier, he now relished the power he had to upset or humiliate those who had crossed him in the past.