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.

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• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  Molly, the doctor said, I know you don’t believe me. But someday you will feel better. And when you feel better, you might even be glad this happened. You’ll have a new kind of empathy. You’ll be a different person, a person you might like. [image file=image_rsrc2FR.jpg] 17I’ve been a Stevie Nicks fan since I was a kid, but it wasn’t until June was born that I heard Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage. Brandon bought it for me on vinyl, and I remember listening with June on my chest in the Ergo. When “That’s Alright” came on, I cried until her hair was wet. I heard it as a sad song about love and letting go, about setting a person free and wishing them well. I thought about my new baby, about all I wanted for her, the love I hoped she would go out and find. Now when I listen, it’s obviously a breakup song. Our singer has decided to leave the person she loved. She’s been thinking about it for a while, she says; this ending shouldn’t surprise him. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Brandon and I are arguing again. We’re arguing because we cannot stop. I wish for a megaphone. I want a way of saying I need this that will force him to listen. This time I will say something new. I think I might be gay, I say. YOU ARE NOT GAY, Brandon howls. Even as I say it, I don’t know if it’s true. To say “I’m not straight” would be more accurate. But sometimes lately I feel gay. When Nora fucks me, I feel gay. On the bus, I look around at men, trying to find one I want. There are never any. Did you not hear me? I ask. I think I might be gay. He jerks his hands to his ears, sputtering. You don’t get to tell me who I am, I say, and I feel it all the way down, everything about me hot and bristling. There’s a tension between how a character sees herself and how others see her. I wrote that in my notes from the fiction workshop the fall after jury duty. I knew that tension. It powered me like a battery. Now I am screaming: You don’t get to tell me who I am. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] We’re fighting over the gristle of our marriage, and it twists and buckles in our jaws, an odd substance that won’t snap. I’m tired of pleading. For as long as we’ve been married, the idea of us not being married has seemed to me an almost physical impossibility, like walking off the edge of the earth. I couldn’t imagine our marriage ending—not because of religion, not because of money, not because of children, but because of the pain. This is a good thing, I’ve always thought: the rupture of love should be unimaginable. Let’s do whatever work it takes to keep it that way, to avoid an ending.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  For more than a century the li seemed to have worked.26 But by the time of Confucius, the Four Fs had reasserted themselves. In the incipient market economy of the sixth century BCE, people were casting restraint to the winds in headlong and aggressive pursuit of luxury, wealth, and power. Large new states, ruled by erstwhile barbarians unfamiliar with the li, attacked the smaller principalities with impunity, resulting in terrible loss of life. Confucius was horrified. The Chinese seemed bent on self-destruction, and in his view, salvation lay in a renewed appreciation of the underlying spirit of the old rites. The rituals of consideration (shu) ensured that people did not treat others carelessly and were not driven simply by utility and self-interest; these gracious codes of behavior had made people conscious of the dignity of every human being; they expressed and conferred sacred respect; they taught every family member to live for the others; they introduced individuals to the virtue of “yielding” to their fellows, helping them to cultivate the “softness” and “pliability” of ren. Properly understood, therefore, the rites were a spiritual education that enabled people to transcend the limitations of selfishness. In the old days, it was thought that the li conferred a magical power on the recipient. Confucius reinterpreted this: when people are treated with reverence, they become conscious of their own sacred worth, and ordinary actions, such as eating and drinking, are lifted to a level higher than the biological and invested with holiness. The implications for politics were immense. If instead of ruthlessly pursuing his own self-interest to the detriment of others, a ruler would “curb his ego and submit to li for a single day,” Confucius believed, “everyone under Heaven would respond to his goodness!”27 What is ren, asked one of his disciples, and how can it be applied to political life? In exactly the same way as you apply it to family life, Confucius replied: by treating everybody with respect. Behave away from home as though you were in the presence of an important guest. Deal with the common people as though you were officiating at an important sacrifice. Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no feelings of opposition to you, whether it is the affairs of a State that you are handling or the affairs of a Family.28 There would be no destructive wars if a ruler behaved toward other princes and states in this way; the Golden Rule would make it impossible to invade somebody else’s territory because nobody would like this to happen to his own state. It was quite simple, Confucius explained to his outspoken pupil Zigong:

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  150 Biographical Notes Paul the Apostle (Saul of Tarsus) Paul was a Hellenistic Jew born and raised outside of Palestine. We do not know when he was born, but it was probably sometime during the ¿ rst decade A.D. Through his own letters and the encomiastic account found in the book of Acts, we can learn something of his history. He was raised as a strict Pharisaic Jew and prided himself on his scrupulous religiosity. At some point in his early adulthood, he learned of the Christians and their proclamation of the cruci ¿ ed man Jesus as the messiah. Incensed by this claim, Paul began a rigorous campaign of persecution against the Christians—only to be converted himself to faith in Jesus through some kind of visionary experience. Paul then became an ardent proponent of the faith and its best-known missionary. He saw his call as a missionary to the Gentiles and worked in major urban areas in the regions of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia to establish churches through the conversion of former pagans. A distinctive aspect of his message was that all people, Jew and Gentile, are made right with God through Jesus’ death and resurrection and by no other means. The practical payoff was that Gentiles did not need to become Jewish to be among the people of the Jewish God—in particular, the men did not need to become circumcised. We know about Paul principally through the letters he wrote to his churches when problems arose that he wanted to address. Seven letters in the New Testament indisputably come from his hand; six others claim him as an author, but there are reasons to doubt these claims. According to the book of Acts, Paul was eventually arrested for socially disruptive behavior and sent to Rome to face trial. An early tradition outside of the New Testament indicates that Paul was martyred there, in Rome, during the reign of the emperor Nero, in A.D. 64.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  Building restaurants is a twenty-four-hour work cycle. I was used to periods like this, but now we also had June. I didn’t want to help open Dino’s. I would make a different contribution to the family business: I would pick up the slack at home, doing more parenting while Brandon worked extra. That I could do. I would protect myself and June from the chaos of opening a business. But soon I felt stuck: How would I ever be more than the primary parent for our child? He said I was being dramatic, and I knew I was. The restaurant would open, and then we’d find a new rhythm, a new normal. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] But a question: If this is what lots of marriages look like after children—if this is “normal,” as we’re told it is—does that mean it’s okay? No, this question instead: Is it okay with me? [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] It was okay until it wasn’t. I was angry, and I was often on my own with a three-year-old. When I wasn’t with June, I was with the contents of my skull. I thought of Nora. I thought of the lesbian mothers at June’s school, and every other lesbian-looking woman I saw. The fear that I’d planted that summer in our marriage, I watered it. I was what we were afraid of. I was the one who’d brought this into our house, the credible fear of our undoing. I should be the one to rout it out. That fall and early winter, I devoted myself to the task. I tried to go back to who I’d been before jury duty, to unsee whatever I’d seen in Nora, unfeel what I’d felt. As the months went by, I did manage to stop thinking about her. Thinking about her made me feel crazy, because it had no basis in anything. It was crazy. So I willed myself to stop, and after a while, it worked. I broke the habit. But the ground did not resolidify. It was porous now, and fertile. I watched my desire spread like seeds on a stiff wind, stick to women in coffee shops and on the street and outside school. The seeds bloomed, proliferated like invasives. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] June was in school each morning from eight forty-five to eleven forty-five. Sometimes after pickup we’d go visit Brandon at Dino’s, and the three of us would have lunch. The place was progressing nicely. It no longer looked like the check-cashing business it had been, with bulletproof glass and a burgundy laminate counter that curled like a question mark. Now the counter was gone and the drop ceiling too, along with the stink of cigarettes that had infused both. In their place was the sweet-sour perfume of sawdust and an airy, tall-ceilinged room trimmed with painter’s tape. There was reason to be proud.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] When we became parents, I needed Brandon’s help. But I had trouble identifying what I needed, putting my fingertip on it. I’d had little practice. Wasn’t I supposed to be a modern, independent woman? Wasn’t that the idea? And now Brandon had little to give. He was our breadwinner. Anyway, I felt lucky: even with Brandon back at work, he would usually be with us until lunchtime. He held June for hours, played music and sang. I did ask for help with a few minor tasks, things I couldn’t seem to get done on my own. I asked him to empty the dishwasher and the diaper pail, replenish the diaper stack on the shelf, and take out the garbage. I listed the tasks on a slip of paper and taped it to the kitchen cabinet. This way he wouldn’t forget, and I wouldn’t have to remind him. The list helped for a few days, and then it stopped working. He said he forgot to look at it. I knew he too was tired, was struggling, overwhelmed. I knew he worried about me and June when he was at work and that he worried about work when he was with us. But I was furious that he couldn’t remember a few measly chores, that he could forget my requests so easily. I was furious that he didn’t notice when the tasks weren’t done. I noticed, because it impacted me. I just never think of it, he said. You know how my brain works. I just don’t notice the same things you do. I need you to start noticing, I said. I need you to try. This is our house. Our baby. I need you to do this. But I’m already doing so much! he cried. You never notice how much I am doing. I see all of it, I said. And I need more. Just for a while. But you’re better at these things, he said. I need you to figure it out, I begged. Get good at them. But these things are more important to you than to me. How am I supposed to remember stuff that’s not important to me? [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] While a woman is taking care, who takes care of her? It’s an earnest question: I want to know. I wanted Brandon to care for me because I cared for him. Admittedly, it didn’t always look like care. When he was worn-out, I would snap, frustrated and bitter. He was bewildered by this and rightly asked why, when he got sick, I got mean. I flailed around like Oz behind the curtain.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  18 Leviticus is a legal text, and any talk of emotion would be as out of place as it would be in a Supreme Court ruling. In the ancient Middle East, “love” was a legal term used in international treaties: when two kings promised to “love” each other, they pledged to be helpful and loyal and to give each other practical assistance and support, even if it went against their short-term interest. This should be within the capacity of even the most pragmatic government. In our global village, everybody is our neighbor, and it is essential to make allies of our enemies. We need to create a world democracy in which everybody’s voice is heard and everybody’s aspirations are taken seriously. In the last resort, this kind of “love” and “concern for everybody” will serve our best interest better than shortsighted and self-serving policies. So during this step, we add one final stage to the meditation on the Immeasurables. After you have directed your friendship, compassion, sympathetic joy, and upeksha to yourself, to a person who is neutral to you, and to somebody you dislike, bring to mind an “Enemy” with a capital E , something or someone that seems to threaten your survival and everything you stand for. It may be a state with whom your country is at war or an oppressive imperialism; it could be a religious tradition, or a nation that has injured and terrorized your people, deprived you of basic rights, and seems bent on your destruction. We begin, as always, with ourselves. You may, with good reason, feel deep anger toward the enemy. This is the starting point from which you have to work, so acknowledge your hatred. Take note of your profound reluctance to turn this enemy into a friend. Remember that we can become twinned with an enemy and come to resemble him. Our hatred may become an alter ego, a part of our identity. Reflect on the importance of distinguishing individuals from the leaders who preach hatred, and remember that people do not choose to be born into the situation that seems so inimical to you; it is one of the givens of life. Each member of an enemy nation, each adherent of every religious tradition, has his or her own personal history of distress and may be suffering from the situation as much as you. Does your enemy have a history of oppression, exploitation, exile, or persecution? Has your nation contributed to this? Finally, consider the flaws of your own people: Is your hatred another instance of the splinter and the plank? We are aiming at upeksha , an impartial, fair-minded assessment of the situation in the cause of peace. Try to wish for your enemy’s well-being and happiness; try to develop a sense of responsibility for your enemy’s pain. This is the supreme test of compassion. At first it may seem impossible.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Now that we have reached the twelfth step, we know that compassion cannot simply be a matter of sentiment or emotional tenderness. When Jesus tells us to love our enemies, he is commenting on the commandment in Leviticus “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” 18 Leviticus is a legal text, and any talk of emotion would be as out of place as it would be in a Supreme Court ruling. In the ancient Middle East, “love” was a legal term used in international treaties: when two kings promised to “love” each other, they pledged to be helpful and loyal and to give each other practical assistance and support, even if it went against their short-term interest. This should be within the capacity of even the most pragmatic government. In our global village, everybody is our neighbor, and it is essential to make allies of our enemies. We need to create a world democracy in which everybody’s voice is heard and everybody’s aspirations are taken seriously. In the last resort, this kind of “love” and “concern for everybody” will serve our best interest better than shortsighted and self-serving policies. So during this step, we add one final stage to the meditation on the Immeasurables. After you have directed your friendship, compassion, sympathetic joy, and upeksha to yourself, to a person who is neutral to you, and to somebody you dislike, bring to mind an “Enemy” with a capital E, something or someone that seems to threaten your survival and everything you stand for. It may be a state with whom your country is at war or an oppressive imperialism; it could be a religious tradition, or a nation that has injured and terrorized your people, deprived you of basic rights, and seems bent on your destruction. We begin, as always, with ourselves. You may, with good reason, feel deep anger toward the enemy. This is the starting point from which you have to work, so acknowledge your hatred. Take note of your profound reluctance to turn this enemy into a friend. Remember that we can become twinned with an enemy and come to resemble him. Our hatred may become an alter ego, a part of our identity. Reflect on the importance of distinguishing individuals from the leaders who preach hatred, and remember that people do not choose to be born into the situation that seems so inimical to you; it is one of the givens of life. Each member of an enemy nation, each adherent of every religious tradition, has his or her own personal history of distress and may be suffering from the situation as much as you. Does your enemy have a history of oppression, exploitation, exile, or persecution?

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The question is not just frivolously playing around with words: it seriously concerned a gathering of Latin- speaking bishops at Mâcon, in what is now eastern France, in the late sixth century. Faced with an obtuse colleague who maintained that the description ‘woman’ could not be included in the term ‘man’, they decided, on the basis of Gen. 1.26–27, that Mary’s humanity as a woman (mulier in Latin) must be interchangeable with the ‘Man’ (homo) in ‘Son of Man’. [40] The problem in Christian theology is always how far to push the figurative gendered language of biblical and theological discussion towards precision. Precision is a particularly besetting sin of Christian theology in the Western tradition, which is based on Latin – a language whose exactness is heaven-sent for the theological filing-systems of tidy-minded bureaucrats, as the exasperated discussion at Mâcon reveals. Such questions go to the heart of what Christianity is, and how it functions. There is thus plenty of fuel to ignite the varied bundles of anger that we all bring to thinking of sex, sexuality and gender. All the more reason to embark on a three-thousand-year voyage of exploration through the origins, developments, reversals and unexpected new directions that have brought the Christianities of the present day into their present turmoils. Often those expeditions have been characterized by self-righteous ecclesiastical interference in the happiness and freedom of others. Equally, on occasion, the struggles of Christians with the implications of their tangle of sacred scriptures have brought people genuine liberation and a sense of self-worth. Readers will be forced into their own judgements about the balance between these extremes in particular situations. I aim to provide some evidence for making decisions. As we set out on our travels, it is worth being armed with a quiet reminder from one of Greek Orthodoxy’s greatest scholarly bishops of modern times, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware: ‘Trying to gaze through the keyhole is never a dignified posture.’ [41]

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Uber, the ride-sharing company, saves money by categorizing drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. Uber insists drivers prefer this because they enjoy more freedom. Uber and others in the “share economy” are creating a new form of serfdom, an underclass of quasi-employees who receive low pay and no benefits. As former secretary of labor Robert Reich put it in a June 2015 Facebook post: “The ‘share economy’ is bunk; it’s becoming a ‘share the scraps’ economy.” Tech companies also are pushing the U.S. government to increase the number of skilled foreign workers who can enter the country on H-1B visas. Reich says that too is a way to drive down labor costs. In a 2015 Facebook post, Reich recalls that during his time in office in the 1990s Valley employers claimed they could not find skilled workers in the United States, “when in reality they just didn’t want to pay higher wages to Americans.” Foreign workers are “easy to intimidate because if they lose their jobs they have to leave the U.S.,” Reich says. Why are tech companies so obsessed with cutting costs? Look at their financial results. Many don’t make a profit. The biggest difference between today’s tech start-ups and those of the pre-Internet era is that the old guard companies, like Microsoft and Lotus Development, generated massive profits almost from the beginning, while today many tech companies lose enormous amounts of money for years on end, even after they go public. They need to constantly drive costs down, using things like Halligan’s VORP metric. A more interesting question is why there are so many companies that remain in business while losing money. This seems like a peculiar business model. The point of creating a company is to generate a profit—or that used to be the case, anyway. That changed in the 1990s, during the first dotcom bubble, when Silicon Valley created a new kind of company, one that can lose money for years, and in fact might never turn a profit, yet still can make its founders and investors incredibly rich. A watershed moment occurred on August 9, 1995, when Netscape Communications, maker of the first web browser, pulled off a huge IPO and saw its shares nearly triple in their first day of trading. Until then, companies were typically expected to be profitable before they could sell shares to the public. Netscape was gushing red ink. Mary Meeker, an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, which underwrote the IPO, later recalled to Fortune: Was it early for the company to go public? Sure. There has been a rule of thumb that a company should have three quarters of obviously robust revenue growth. And you also traditionally wanted to see three quarters of profitability—improving profitability, for newer companies.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  Early in his presidency he announced his intention to open the armed forces to people regardless of their sexual orientation. Facing immediate backlash, he settled for a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Opposition came from within the military itself and from American evangelicals, and by this point, to be sure, the two groups were not mutually exclusive. Evangelicals in the military used materials supplied by the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family, and Exodus International to oppose opening the military to gay service members. In turn, Dobson hosted Colonel Ronald D. Ray on his radio show, and Ray warned listeners that “military leaders were real naive about the widespread agenda” homosexuals were advancing.14 Evangelicals weren’t just concerned about “gays in the military.” They feared the “feminization” of the military as a whole under Clinton’s watch. In 1994, Clinton signed an order allowing women to serve on combat ships and fighter planes, a move that raised the ire of religious conservatives. This not only went against God-ordained gender difference, but by putting women where they didn’t belong it exposed them to the threat of sexual assault. During the 1990s, a series of sex scandals rattled the military. From the Tailhook incident in 1991 to the adultery of air force pilot Kelly Flinn, it was clear to conservatives that the military was no place for women. Women belonged on a pedestal, not on the field of battle. Making matters worse, Clinton further emasculated the military by sending troops on an array of UN peacekeeping missions. As Schlafly put it, Clinton and “overpaid bureaucrats” seemed intent on establishing the UN as “a world government with its own police force and its own taxing authority,” but she reminded readers that “no man can serve two masters.” Sending US soldiers as “UN mercenaries . . . on phony ‘peacekeeping’ expeditions” to places like Somalia, Haiti, and Rwanda was unconstitutional and un-American. And unmanly.15 Schlafly was right to sense that peacekeeping forces differed from traditional militaries. Decoupled from nationalist agendas, the UN stood as a model of post–Cold War, nonimperialist military force, one that appeared to eschew traditional militarism and patriarchal masculinity. Some members of the military also found this change unsettling. In the aftermath of the Cold War and the Gulf War, marine fighter pilots reported that they were losing confidence in themselves. Two years after their decisive victory in Iraq, without a clear mission, they didn’t even feel “like real marines.”16 IF CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICALS needed one more thing not to like about the Clintons, there was the Lewinsky affair.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  By 2009, Time magazine was labeling “The New Calvinism” one of “10 ideas changing the world right now.” As Ted Olsen, managing editor at Christianity Today explained, “everyone knows” that the energy and passion in the evangelical world were “with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper of Minneapolis, Seattle’s pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention.”27 What was remarkable was that so many notoriously combative men could find common cause. There were certainly disagreements among leaders on a variety of topics, but they were able to smooth over these differences—including rather significant theological differences— because of a common reverence for patriarchal authority. For instance, one of the most notable theological differences among leaders concerned the question of cessationism—whether the spiritual gifts of tongues, prophecy, and healing ceased with the apostolic age (a view espoused by MacArthur) or continued into the present (a view expressed by charismatics and many New Calvinists, including Piper, Mahaney, and Grudem). Agreeing that “desperate times called for desperate measures,” these men could agree to disagree about speaking in tongues and the gift of prophecy because other issues—including gender complementarianism and church discipline—were more pressing.28 DOUG WILSON PROVIDES an interesting case study of the shifting alliances within the evangelical subculture. When he published Future Men in 2001, Wilson certainly wouldn’t have located himself at the center of evangelicalism. In fact, he was a stalwart critic of mainstream evangelicalism. Although his views on gender and authority aligned in many ways with those of other conservative evangelicals at the time, Wilson often carried those views to extreme, or perhaps logical, conclusions. A woman wearing a man’s clothing was “an abomination.” If a wife was not properly submissive, it was a husband’s duty to correct her. For instance, if dirty dishes lingered in the sink, he must immediately sit her down and remind her of her duty; if she rebelled, he was to call the elders of the church to intervene. In terms of child-rearing, “discipline must be painful.” God required the infliction of pain on those dear to us. Homosexuality must be suppressed, not excluding the possibility of the death penalty, though banishment was also an option. Wilson endorsed the concept of “Biblical hatred,” a form of militant masculine faithfulness exhibited by one of his heroes of the faith, Scottish minister John Knox.29 On issues of race, Wilson’s views were similarly extreme. In the 1990s, Wilson had coauthored Southern Slavery: As It Was , which questioned the supposed “brutalities, immoralities, and cruelties” of slavery. The slave trade might have been unbiblical, he allowed, but slavery most certainly was not. To the contrary, the radical abolitionists were the ones “driven by a zealous hatred of the Word of God.” Horrific descriptions of slavery were nothing more than abolitionist propaganda.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  Rather than turning the other cheek, they’d resolved to defend their faith and their nation, secure in the knowledge that the ends justify the means. Having replaced the Jesus of the Gospels with a vengeful warrior Christ, it’s no wonder many came to think of Trump in the same way. In 2016, many observers were stunned at evangelicals’ apparent betrayal of their own values. In reality, evangelicals did not cast their vote despite their beliefs, but because of them. Donald Trump did not trigger this militant turn; his rise was symptomatic of a long-standing condition. Survey data reveal the stark contours of the contemporary evangelical worldview. More than any other religious demographic in America, white evangelical Protestants support preemptive war, condone the use of torture, and favor the death penalty. They are more likely than members of other faith groups to own a gun, to believe citizens should be allowed to carry guns in most places, and to feel safer with a firearm around. White evangelicals are more opposed to immigration reform and have more negative views of immigrants than any other religious demographic; two-thirds support Trump’s border wall. Sixty-eight percent of white evangelical Protestants—more than any other demographic—do not think that the United States has a responsibility to accept refugees. More than half of white evangelical Protestants think a majority nonwhite US population would be a negative development. White evangelicals are considerably more likely than others to believe that Islam encourages violence, to refuse to see Islam as “part of mainstream American society,” and to perceive “natural conflict between Islam and democracy.” At the same time, white evangelicals believe that Christians in America face more discrimination than Muslims. White evangelicals are significantly more authoritarian than other religious groups, and they express confidence in their religious leaders at much higher rates than do members of other faiths.4 For evangelicals, domestic and foreign policy are two sides of the same coin. Christian nationalism—the belief that America is God’s chosen nation and must be defended as such—serves as a powerful predictor of intolerance toward immigrants, racial minorities, and non-Christians. It is linked to opposition to gay rights and gun control, to support for harsher punishments for criminals, to justifications for the use of excessive force against black Americans in law enforcement situations, and to traditionalist gender ideology. White evangelicals have pieced together this patchwork of issues, and a nostalgic commitment to rugged, aggressive, militant white masculinity serves as the thread binding them together into a coherent whole. A father’s rule in the home is inextricably linked to heroic leadership on the national stage, and the fate of the nation hinges on both.5 By November 2016, the affinities were clear. A substantial number of white evangelicals shared Trump’s nationalism, Islamophobia, racism, and nativism. They condoned his “nasty politics”: they agreed that injured protestors got what they deserved, that the country would be better off getting rid of “bad apples,” and that people were “too sensitive” about what was said in politics.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  How dare you say to your brother: ‘let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.” 5 Do we hear enough international news in the media? Are conflicts in other regions reported objectively and their background explained? Do you get to hear both sides of a dispute, or is reporting based on a narrowly national agenda? If you work in the media, consider how we can learn about the plight of our neighbors and adjust to the realities of our global society. Educators should realize that they have a responsibility to make sure that our children are given accurate, balanced, and respectful information about other peoples. If this had been done more carefully in the past, perhaps we would not be having so many problems in the present. We have thought carefully about the way our own suffering affects the way we behave. We have learned that the seeds of our anger are often in our own minds and that it is neither helpful nor accurate to assume that other people are always responsible for our pain. When you see violence in other parts of the world portrayed on the evening news, do you look askance at the rage and hatred in people’s faces, or do you ask yourself about the distress that has inspired this anger? Make a habit of looking behind the headlines to the ordinary people who are affected by a crisis. Remember that they did not choose to be born into that part of the world. Like you, they simply found themselves in a particular situation and may have been forced to conduct their whole lives in a context of violence, deprivation, and despair. We know from our own experience that deeds have long-term consequences. We are all affected, consciously and unconsciously, by the unkindness, neglect, contempt, and violence we have endured in the past. This is also true of whole nations: persecution, chronic warfare, bad governance, exploitation, marginalization, occupation, humiliation, enslavement, exile, impoverishment, and defamation all leave psychic scars that persist long after the event. They affect the way the new generation is brought up and can infiltrate the religious, intellectual, ethical, and social development of a country. People who have been taught to despise themselves cannot easily respect others.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  There are of course times when we are required to be assertive. Even when we have gone through this process and understood the context in which a terrorist conceived his idea, we cannot, if we take the Golden Rule as our criterion, condone the course of action he has chosen. We have, however, broadened our horizons by developing an informed understanding of the possible frustration, humiliation, and despair of his situation and can now empathize with the plight of many of his innocent compatriots and coreligionists, who may feel something similar but have not resorted to criminal vengeance. Yet we must still dissociate ourselves from his atrocity. Nor should the “principle of charity” make us passive and supine in the face of injustice, cruelty, and discrimination. As we develop our compassionate mind, we should feel an increasing sense of responsibility for the suffering of others and form a resolve to do everything we can to free them from their pain. But it is no good responding to injustice with hatred and contempt. This, again, will simply inspire further antagonism and make matters worse. When we speak out in the defense of decent values, we must make sure that we understand the context fully and do not dismiss the values of our opponents as barbaric simply because they seem alien to us. We may find that we have the same values but express them in a radically different way. How do we assert a strongly felt conviction with compassion? Saint Paul provides us with a useful checklist in the famous description of love quoted earlier. Charity is “patient and kind”; it “is never boastful, never conceited, never rude,” never envious or “quick to take offence.” Charity “keeps no score of wrongs” and “takes no pleasure in the wrongdoing of others.” 15 If we are quick to take offense and positively smack our lips in self-righteous delight at the wrongdoing of others, we will fail this test. If we speak impatiently, rudely, or unkindly, we may be in danger of bringing ourselves down to the level of intolerance we are condemning. An older translation rendered the phrase “never boastful, never conceited” as “charity ... is not puffed up.” Our critique should not inflate the ego. Sometimes when people are inveighing against an abuse or crime, they seem almost to swell before our eyes with delicious self- congratulation. Gandhi left us a fine example of compassionate assertiveness: advocating nonviolent resistance, he frequently asked people to consider whether they fought to change things or to punish. When Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek, Gandhi believed, he was urging them to show courage in the face of hostility. This was the way to transform hatred and contempt into respect. But nonviolence did not mean compliance with injustice: his opponents could have his dead body, Gandhi would insist, but not his obedience. During this step, we try to make ourselves mindful of the way we speak to others.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The Legislative Assembly’s declaration of war on the Habsburg monarchy (the family of Queen Marie Antoinette) in 1792 turned division into a chasm. That September, the Paris prisons witnessed the mass murder of people arrested on suspicion of treachery; furious frenzy knows no tidy boundaries, but among those slaughtered were three anti-Constitutional bishops and over two hundred priests. It was the beginning of the Terror. Amid all this, on 20 September 1792 the Legislative Assembly ended its work by enacting a new penal code, overturning centuries of Catholic shaping of the law in the cause of Enlightenment. It legalized divorce; marriage had already been declared once more to be a civil contract. It said nothing about sodomy, in a striking example of the principle gathering strength in eighteenth-century Europe that it was not the task of state legislation to interfere in private life. That legal silence on homosexuality remained characteristic of countries deriving their law from the changes in France, in comparison with the persistence of a much more punitive attitude in anglophone societies. [3] The context was that those now dominating the regime were abandoning even the Constitutional Church for a busily manufactured religion of Reason, Law and Liberty, with liturgical ceremonies to match, even in Paris’s Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Underlying it was the plan for a system of universal state education that would create an informed citizen body, overturning the patchwork of educational provision largely controlled by the old Church. [4] The pace of events brought the elimination of the King, executed on 21 January 1793, systematic execution of those defined as enemies of the new Republic, and a savage war against regions of France itself that had risen to defend traditional Catholic faith. Amid the slaughter, in October 1794 a revolutionary calendar was decreed as a centrepiece of de-Christianizing the everyday life of France, eliminating every Christian festival (and even Sundays) by its determinedly decimal construction of weeks around ten months with new seasonal names. Clergy, whether for or against the Constitutional Church, were hunted down for imprisonment or exile, and the only reliable safe course for them was to marry. The Revolution showed itself vigorously enthusiastic for marriage generally, and to return the clergy to the married state represented a gleeful extra blow against the old Church. As in the sixteenth- century European Reformations, many French priests discovered a vocation for matrimony; exactly how many will never be certain. When something of the old Catholic framework returned a decade later, more than three thousand, including around a thousand monks and supplemented by nearly three hundred nuns, sought papal absolution; probably many more chose not to reveal what they had done in bewildering times. [5] That turn away from de-Christianization in the first decade of the nineteenth century was the work of Napoleon Bonaparte, the most successful general to emerge from the Revolution.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  God duly, one after the other, struck the greedy pair dead, but that is also the last that we hear of Christians in the apostolic age trying such an experiment. The tale is so out of line with the social reality that can be glimpsed in New Testament epistles (local Churches based on families) that like the Gospel Infancy Narratives, it may have been created to convey theological messages through a story. One point might be that the Jerusalem Church represented a New Israel; the old Israel had supposedly set up a system of ‘Jubilee’, a year in which all land returned to the family to which it had originally belonged, and during which all slaves were released (Lev. 25; maybe itself a fiction). Another more prosaic lesson to be taught, and perhaps referencing contemporary Christian arguments, might have been that marriage was not conducive to strenuous asceticism. [3] Paul’s authentic letters certainly suggest that there were influential Christians in the communities that he was addressing who privileged sexual renunciation over marriage, and who claimed to monopolize the revelations of the Spirit because of their ascetic state. That would hardly be unusual either in Hellenistic Judaism or beyond it among the many would-be philosophers seeking wisdom or gnōsis in the Graeco-Roman world. The convolutions in Paul’s discussion of marriage in 1 Cor. 7 (above, Chapter 5) are probably caused by his determination to restrain such enthusiasm, despite his own inclinations to avoid the married state: he is forcefully insisting that all Christians, married or celibate, can have a part in the Spirit-filled salvation offered by Jesus. [4] Yet he and his opponents were arguing within a common tradition of asceticism, presented in its most thoroughgoing form to Hellenistic Jews or Christians by Philo of Alexandria. This radically narrowed the Greek term for self-control, enkrateia , into a preoccupation with sexual continence, to defend good Jews – and now good Christians – against the multiple temptations of sexual indulgence. Mainstream Christianity went on to invent a heresy out of the enkrateia word: ‘encratism’, used to castigate various people as religious deviants, among whom was the combative Syrian biblical scholar of the second century known in the Graeco-Roman world as Tatian. [5] In reality, the heresy of encratites consisted in the degree of rigour in their advocacy of self-denial compared with that of official Christian leaders, including an emphasis on a variety of such self-denials as abstaining from meat or alcohol or modes of dress, but always with the main emphasis on sexual enkrateia . Attempts by some Christian leaders such as the tidy-minded Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons at the end of the second century to present encratite views as aligned with gnosticism were deliberately misleading. [6] Really the debate about asceticism and encratism was an angry conversation within Christianity between variants of enthusiasm for enkrateia , expressing different degrees of distaste for marriage.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  From now on, Zack says, the blog will have several sub-blogs. I will be writing one of those sub-blogs, all by myself. That way I can write my articles without interfering with Jan’s lead-generation goals. “But I’m supposed to be launching a whole new site,” I tell him. “Inbound. The online magazine.” Zack knows about my project. He knows that I pitched the idea to Halligan and Dharmesh, and that they approved it. Nevertheless he says he doesn’t know what happened to that idea, but for now it isn’t going to happen. “Zack,” I say, “my idea was approved by the two guys who run the company. How can people just ignore what those guys tell them?” Zack says he doesn’t know how people can do that. “And I talked to Cranium, and he signed off on it too,” I say. “This was weeks ago. He told me to wait until after the Inbound conference and then we’d do it.” Zack knows this, too, but again he pleads ignorance. This wasn’t his decision. He’s just telling me what’s been decided. When I ask who made the decision, he says he doesn’t know. I’m trying not to sound pissed, because nobody ever raises their voice around here, but in a newsroom if this happened people would be slamming doors and turning the air blue with profanity. We’re out in a public space, a sort of lobby with couches and chairs, with lots of people streaming by. “Zack.” I’m working very hard to keep my voice down. I glance around to see if anyone is nearby. “Zack, what kind of place is this? You’re telling me that things just happen, and nobody knows why? Decisions get made, but nobody knows who made them? Does nobody make the decisions? Do the decisions make themselves?” “Well I think what they want is just—” “Who’s they?” I say, cutting him off. “You see what I mean? Who’s they? All I know is that someone just fucked me, and I don’t know who. There’s a dick in my ass, but it’s a mystery dick. Did you make the decision, and you just don’t want to tell me? Did Wingman make the decision? Did Cranium? Did Halligan change his mind? You keep saying they did this, and they want that, but who are we talking about? And why did they make this decision? What were their reasons? Why didn’t I get a chance to argue my case? It’s like a voice just comes out of a burning bush and tells us what to do. There’s a man behind the curtain, like in The Wizard of Oz. Is that where we are, Zack? Are we in the merry old land of Oz?” Zack remains calm. He has no doubt anticipated that I would be pissed.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  For evangelicals, family values politics were deeply intertwined with racial politics, and both were connected to evangelicals’ understanding of the nation and its role on the global stage.10 In the wake of Brown , for example, many southerners turned to private Christian academies to maintain segregation, and when the tax-exempt status of these “segregation academies” was revoked in 1970, evangelicals defended their right to whites-only schools by arguing for the authority of parents to make decisions about their children’s education, free from governmental “overreach.” Later, “forced busing” would offend these same sensibilities, in the North as well as the South. Although blatant defenses of segregation and racial inequality would be rare, many southern evangelicals and fundamentalists who persisted in their unreconstructed views of race would find common cause with more “tolerant” evangelicals on issues like social welfare policy and “law and order” politics that would carry clear racial undertones.11 In this way, the evangelicalism that gained respectability and prominence in Cold War America cannot be separated from its southern roots. Ideals of evangelical masculinity that manifested during this period reflect this formative influence. Some proponents of Christian masculinity praised Confederate generals and defended the institution of slavery, but for many, the racial subtext was more subtle. Invariably, however, the heroic Christian man was a white man, and not infrequently a white man who defended against the threat of nonwhite men and foreigners. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN white masculine power, family values politics, and a militant defense of Christian America was on clear display in the early 1960s in southern California, the center of the evangelical political resurgence. In 1961, Pepperdine College, a hotbed of Sunbelt evangelicalism popular with conservative donors and Christian celebrities alike, hosted a “freedom forum.” With the recent election of the Catholic Democrat John F. Kennedy, the mood was more urgent than triumphalist. Kennedy’s Catholicism was cause for serious concern among fundamentalists in particular, and the contention that Kennedy was soft on communism—this despite the fact that Kennedy had increased military spending by 14 percent during his first nine months in office—was also a matter of concern. At the forum, fifteen hundred businessmen and educators discussed ideas such as outlawing the Communist Party, refusing to seat Red China in the UN, disbanding President Kennedy’s Peace Corps, and commending the extremist John Birch Society. The highlight of the event was a televised luncheon with Barry Goldwater.12 Goldwater seemed the perfect antidote to Kennedy, and conservative evangelicals were drawn to his hard-edged, bombastic style, and to the “cowboy conservatism” he embodied. For his 1958 Senate campaign poster he’d stood, rifle in hand, in a buckskin jacket and cowboy hat, and in public appearances he liked to conjure the aura of the heroic cowboy, standing alone against all odds, refusing to compromise. As the freedom forum’s featured speaker, Goldwater invoked his own hero, Theodore Roosevelt—“America’s ultimate cowboy president.” Like Roosevelt, Goldwater warned against “peace at any price,” and called instead for a strong defense and courageous citizenry.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  8 We do not engage in many dialogues like this today. The debates in our parliamentary institutions, the media, academia, and the law courts are essentially competitive. It is not enough for us to seek the truth; we also want to defeat and even humiliate our opponents. The malice and bullying tactics decried by Socrates are embraced with enthusiasm as part of the fun. A great deal of this type of discourse is a display of ego. There is no question of anybody admitting that she does not know the answer or has doubts about the validity of her case—even about complex issues for which there are no easy answers. Admitting that your opponents may have a valid point seems unthinkable. The last thing anybody intends is a change of mind. But while aggressive debate may be useful in politics, it is unlikely to transform hearts and minds—especially when an issue arouses passions that are already bitter and entrenched. In our highly contentious world, we need to develop a twenty-first-century form of Socrates’ compassionate discourse. For some years now, I have tried to counter the stereotypical view of Islam that has been current in the West for centuries but has become more prevalent since the atrocities of September 11, 2001. Like any received idea, it is based on what the Buddha called “hearsay” rather than accurate knowledge or understanding. So when politicians or pundits have insisted that Islam is an inherently violent, intolerant faith or inveigh furiously against the practice of veiling, for example, I have written articles, based on my study of Islamic history, to challenge this. But I have recently decided that this is counterproductive. All that happens is that my article is virulently attacked and my assailants rehearse the old ideas again with greater venom. As a result, the intellectual atmosphere becomes even more polluted and people remain entrenched in angry negativity. As the Daoists pointed out, we often identify with our ideas so strongly that we feel personally assaulted if these are criticized or corrected. Perhaps it would be better to take a leaf out of the Buddha’s book and start from where people actually are rather than where we think they ought to be. In such public debates, instead of trying to bludgeon other people into accepting our own point of view, we may need to find a way of posing Socratic questions that lead to personal insight rather than simply repeating the facts as we see them yet again. We should make a point of asking ourselves whether we want to win the argument or seek the truth, whether we are ready to change our views if the evidence is sufficiently compelling, and whether we are making “place for the other” in our minds in the Socratic manner.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  So during this step, we add one final stage to the meditation on the Immeasurables. After you have directed your friendship, compassion, sympathetic joy, and upeksha to yourself, to a person who is neutral to you, and to somebody you dislike, bring to mind an “Enemy” with a capital E, something or someone that seems to threaten your survival and everything you stand for. It may be a state with whom your country is at war or an oppressive imperialism; it could be a religious tradition, or a nation that has injured and terrorized your people, deprived you of basic rights, and seems bent on your destruction. We begin, as always, with ourselves. You may, with good reason, feel deep anger toward the enemy. This is the starting point from which you have to work, so acknowledge your hatred. Take note of your profound reluctance to turn this enemy into a friend. Remember that we can become twinned with an enemy and come to resemble him. Our hatred may become an alter ego, a part of our identity. Reflect on the importance of distinguishing individuals from the leaders who preach hatred, and remember that people do not choose to be born into the situation that seems so inimical to you; it is one of the givens of life. Each member of an enemy nation, each adherent of every religious tradition, has his or her own personal history of distress and may be suffering from the situation as much as you. Does your enemy have a history of oppression, exploitation, exile, or persecution? Has your nation contributed to this? Finally, consider the flaws of your own people: Is your hatred another instance of the splinter and the plank? We are aiming at upeksha, an impartial, fair-minded assessment of the situation in the cause of peace. Try to wish for your enemy’s well-being and happiness; try to develop a sense of responsibility for your enemy’s pain. This is the supreme test of compassion. At first it may seem impossible. But if you have the will and determination to overcome your own hatred, this exercise can over time change your patterns of hostility, suspicion, and disgust. As we saw in the story of Yaakov and Esau, our enemy is our other self. We are bound together by our enmity and share the same predicament.