Anxiety

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

  Lurking in the background in the USA was the defeat of the slave-holding Confederacy in the Civil War of 1861–5, which left many Southern Evangelicals unreconciled to the idea of equality for African Americans; that racist ethos had actually been the raison d’être for the Southern Baptist Convention separating from abolitionist Baptists in the North in 1845. [26] Protestant identity would in the end splinter into two contrasting directions for world Christianity, but in 1914 the present-day divisions between liberal and conservative theologies were not yet at all fixed, let alone the global political consequences that have flowed from them. An important stage in the process was a series of very widely distributed short British and American essays published in twelve volumes between 1910 and 1915, The Fundamentals. They articulated increasing unease among some Evangelicals about nineteenth-century Protestant explorations of the Bible, and set out a series of points to be defended. These five main principles were ‘verbal inerrancy’ (that is, no possibility of the Bible being mistaken in its literal meaning); the divinity of Jesus Christ; his Virgin Birth; the affirmation that Jesus died on the cross in the place of sinful humanity (a theory technically known as penal substitution); and the proposition that Christ was physically resurrected to return again in the flesh. [27] In 1919 the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association was founded, expanding through its use of mass rallies from a mainly Baptist base, with Pentecostalism a growing component, to affect most Protestant Churches. It was then not at all obvious that within a century matters of sex and gender would be the chief battleground on which Fundamentalists would take their stand, in alliance with other varieties of conservative Christians. Yet already the expansion of anglophone Protestantism through formal and informal imperialism had turned its theological debate on sex into a global conversation. VICTORIAN VALUES AND IMPERIAL CULTURES As nineteenth-century Britain built up an increasingly vast empire on the back of generally successful achievements by its army and navy, so it evolved a masculine ethos similar to that of the citizen armies of mainland Europe in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. There were important differences: this was a patriotism of deference, shaped by British pride in its constitutional monarchy and attendant aristocracy, both of which had been strengthened after previous humiliations in the American War of Independence by their epic achievements contributing to Napoleon’s defeat. All that was framed from 1837 by the long reign of Queen Victoria, who by 1901 had managed to outlive any previous ruler in the Atlantic Isles, and who learned over time how to play the role of grandmotherly figurehead for her subjects worldwide. British territorial reach continued to expand into the 1920s (its largest nominal extent came with its acquisition of a League of Nations’ mandate over the former Ottoman territories of Palestine in 1923).

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

  Fired? Really? Over a Facebook comment? This makes no sense. “I’m going to talk to Cranium and see what he wants to do,” Trotsky says. “I’ll get back to you.” Later in the day Trotsky starts badgering me to get on the phone with him. I’m with my kids at Six Flags, and it’s their last day in California, and I’d really like to spend the day focusing on them but Trotsky insists on talking now. I’m still reeling from Trotsky’s earlier remark about me being as close to fired as you can get without being fired. Early in the afternoon I see the news that HubSpot has filed its IPO registration paperwork. I realize that this might have something to do with why everyone is so hyped up. We agree to talk at four o’clock my time, seven back East. I call Trotsky from the car, inching along on the 405 freeway in stop-and-go traffic. The kids are in the backseat, wiped out. I’m talking on earbuds so they can’t hear what Trotsky says. I figure it won’t be pleasant. For all I know he’s going to fire me, and if so, I would just as soon they didn’t hear that. I’d rather wait until tomorrow to have this chat, so I would not have to do this in front of my kids, but Trotsky won’t relent. He enumerates the problems my joke has caused and how it demonstrates poor judgment on my part. His tone is officious. He seems to be choosing his words carefully, as if he has written down everything he is going to say and is working his way through a list. Instead of Trotsky, my pal, the guy with the raunchy sense of humor, the one who was so friendly with me that the blog women complained about us, now there is a new Trotsky, and this one is telling me, in a very serious and solemn voice, that I have committed a grievous crime against the Cult of the Orange People, a near mortal sin as far as HubSpot is concerned. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending weeks on end sitting in a room with writers who talk about huge cocks and dry vaginas, but really, honestly, my little comment on Atticus’s post does not seem like a big deal to me. But it is, Trotsky says. This thing I have done is very, very serious. It is very bad. This is a huge problem. It is going to take a lot of hard work for me to earn back the trust of my colleagues. “You’ve dug yourself into a hole,” he says. “I’m not sure you’ll ever be able to climb back out of it.” I don’t argue with him, or mention that it’s creepy to have people watching what I post on Facebook and then threatening to fire me over it. I’ve resolved to just hear him out, listen to everything he says, and find out what happens next.

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

  At worst, it confirmed their darkest fears about what a Clinton presidency would mean. Conservatives also painted Clinton as a virulent opponent of religious freedom, only heightening their anxiety over the election and what it would mean for the future of the Supreme Court.2 Then there was the matter of her gender. John Piper had given a special dispensation to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket, but Hillary Clinton was no Sarah Palin. All policy issues aside, the fact that Clinton was a woman disqualified her in the eyes of many conservative evangelicals. But in the 2016 election, evangelical views of gender didn’t just affect Clinton’s appeal—or lack thereof. Gender was also a key factor in shoring up support for the unconventional, morally challenged Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump. EVANGELICAL INFATUATION with Donald Trump wasn’t instantaneous, and it didn’t start with leadership. Initially, prominent evangelicals preferred more traditional Republican candidates, and they had plenty to choose from. Candidate Mike Huckabee wasted no time in denouncing same-sex marriage, reproaching “trashy” women who swore, criticizing the Obamas for letting their girls listen to Beyoncé, warning that ISIS was a greater threat than the “sunburn” people might get from climate change, and declaring “war against a ‘secular theocracy.’” Ben Carson, too, was popular among evangelicals. An African American conservative, Carson knew how to play to the white evangelical crowd. He suggested that a Muslim should be disqualified from serving as president, defended the right to fly the Confederate flag, compared political correctness to the practices of Nazi Germany, and suggested that the Holocaust would not have happened if Jews had been armed. Carson appealed to evangelicals who claimed, and often sincerely believed, that they held no racist convictions, without requiring them to sacrifice any of their social and political commitments. Marco Rubio, meanwhile, was making a strong play for the evangelical vote. He had gathered a “religious liberty advisory board” that included Wayne Grudem and other evangelical academics and faith leaders, and his appeal was especially strong among northern establishment evangelicals—the Wheaton and Christianity Today types.3 Texas senator Ted Cruz also emerged as a contender. The son of a traveling evangelist, Cruz was raised in the dominionist tradition, and even more than Huckabee, Rubio, and Carson, he knew how to stoke the fears of conservative Christians. Cruz drew stark distinctions between good and evil; he, of course, was on God’s side, opposing the forces of evil. He talked of the need to “Restore America” and he echoed the militarized vocabulary that had come to permeate American evangelicalism. The nation was “under attack” and it was only going to get worse. With the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Cruz painted a doomsday scenario of what could happen with a liberal appointment to the Court: unlimited abortion-on-demand, the end of religious freedom, the Second Amendment disappearing from the Constitution. After his victory in the Iowa caucuses, Cruz drew endorsements from James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, and Glenn Beck.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  He heard the door open and‘the sound of Audrey and another woman talking and laughing and couldn’t help but squirm in his restraints. He’d been fantasizing about submitting to another, severe woman, while Audrey stood by — or submitting to Audrey while another dominant woman — or maybe even women — watched but now it would be for real. He was getting more and more agitated and nervous. What if she didn’t like him? What if she was too extreme? What if she wasn’t extreme enough? What if she thought he wasn’t worth her time? What if he didn’t like her? He heard footsteps coming towards the bedroom and decided fantasy and reality colliding, while he lay naked and bound, was a bit on the anxiety-producing side. ““Oh, this is very nice. I like what you’ve done with him. But that’s kind of a sad little cock, isn’t it?” “No, actually, he has quite a nice cock. I think he’s just nervous.” Audrey’s words washed over him like a calming balm and he began to swell with pride. “Ah, that’s better. Yes, I see what you mean.” Greg felt a hand wrap around his growing member as his blindfold was removed. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the light but as soon as he could see again, he saw her. She was pretty, but not beautiful — not the way Audrey was beautiful. She looked like an 434 | Dike kone Irish stereotype: red hair, green eyes, white skin, freckles, but it was the black leather dress she was wearing that got his attention. She stroked his erection and stared him in the eye. “You're a pretty little boy, aren’t you?” she asked. She picked up a black leather bag from the floor and set it on the bed, between his spread legs. Opening the bag without breaking eye contact with him, she reached in and brought out a red riding crop. “Would you like to play with me, Greg?” Audrey drifted to the head of the bed. She sat down next to him and began a light caress of his nipples. As they reacted to her touch, he turned his head to look at her and smile before feeling an intense stinging on the inside of his right thigh. His head immediately snapped back to watching Moira. Even though he was no longer gagged, he had grown used to not speaking unless required to do so.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  When I was about fourteen I discovered that to think of love before going to sleep was to dream of it during the night. And this experience taught me something else; if I repeated any lesson just before going to sleep, I knew it perfectly next morning; the mind, it seems, works even during unconsciousness. Often since, I have solved problems during sleep in mathematics and in chess that have puzzled me during the day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SCHOOL DAYS IN ENGLAND. Chapter III. In my thirteenth year the most important experience took place of my schoolboy life. Walking out one day with a West Indian boy of sixteen or so, I admitted that I was going to be “confirmed” in the Church of England. I was intensely religious at this time and took the whole rite with appalling seriousness. “Believe and thou shalt be saved” rang in my ears day and night, but I had no happy conviction. Believe what? “Believe in me, Jesus.” Of course I believe; then I should be happy, and I was not happy. “Believe not” and eternal damnation and eternal torture follow. My soul revolted at the iniquity of the awful condemnation. What became of the myriads who had not heard of Jesus? It was all a horrible puzzle to me; but the radiant figure and sweet teaching of Jesus just enabled me to believe and resolve to live as he had lived, unselfishly—purely. I never liked that word “purely” and used to relegate it to the darkest background of my thought. But I would try to be good—I’d try at least! “Do you believe all the fairy stories in the Bible!” my companion asked. “Of course I do”, I replied, “It’s the Word of God, isn’t it?” “Who is God?” asked the West Indian. “He made the world”, I added, “all this wonder”—and with a gesture I included earth and sky. “Who made God!” asked my companion. I turned away stricken: in a flash I saw I had been building on a word taught to me: “who made God?” I walked away alone, up the long meadow by the little brook, my thoughts in a whirl: story after story that I had accepted were now to me “fairy stories.” Jonah hadn’t lived three days in a whale’s belly. A man couldn’t get down a whale’s throat. The Gospel of Matthew began with Jesus’ pedigree, showing that he had been born of the seed of David through Joseph, his father, and in the very next chapter you are told that Joseph wasn’t his father; but the Holy Ghost. In an hour the whole fabric of my spiritual beliefs lay in ruins about me: I believed none of it, not a jot, nor a tittle: I felt as though I had been stripped naked to the cold.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  One day when he had just come into his room, I shot a question at him and he stopped, came over to me and put his arm on my shoulder as he answered. I don’t know how I knew; but by some instinct I felt a caress in the apparently innocent action. I didn’t like to draw away or show him that I objected; but I buried myself feverishly in the Trigonometry and he soon moved away. When I thought of it afterwards, I recalled the fact that his marked liking for me began after my fight with Jones. I had often been on the point of confessing to him my love-passages; but now I was glad I had kept them strenuously to myself, for day by day I noticed that his liking for me grew or rather his compliments and flatteries increased. I hardly knew what to do: working with him and in his room was a godsend to me; yet at the same time I didn’t like him much or admire him really. In some ways he was curiously dense; he spoke of the school life as the happiest of all and the healthiest; a good moral tone here, he would say, no lying, cheating or scandal, much better than life outside. I used to find it difficult not to laugh in his face. Moral tone indeed! when the Doctor came down out of temper, it was usually accepted among the boys that he had had his wife in the night and was therefore a little below par physically. Though a really good mathematical scholar and a first-rate teacher, patient and painstaking, with a gift of clear exposition, Stackpole seemed to me stupid and hidebound and I soon found that by laughing at his compliments I could balk his desire to lavish on me his unwelcome caresses. Once he kissed me, but my amused smile made him blush while he muttered shamefacedly, “You’re a queer lad!” At the same time I knew quite well that if I encouraged him, he would take further liberties. One day he talked of Jones and Henry H… He had evidently heard something of what had taken place in our bedroom; but I pretended not to know what he meant and when he asked me whether none of the big boys had made up to me, I ignored big Fawcett’s smutty excursions and said “No” adding that I was interested in girls and not in dirty boys. For some reason or other Stackpole seemed to me younger than I was and not twelve years older, and I had no real difficulty in keeping him within the bounds of propriety till the Math Exam.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  When we went into the “airlock” and they turned on one aircock after another of compressed air, the men put their hands to their ears and I soon imitated them for the pain was very acute. Indeed, the drums of the ears are often driven in and burst if the compressed air is brought in too quickly. I found that the best way of meeting the pressure was to keep swallowing air and forcing it up into the middle ear where it acted as an air-pad on the inner side of the drum and so lessened the pressure from the outside. It took about half an hour or so to “compress” us and that half an hour gave me lots to think about. When the air was fully compressed, the door of the airlock opened at a touch and we all went down to work with pick and shovel on the gravelly bottom. My headache soon became acute. The six of us were working naked to the waist in a small iron chamber with a temperature of about 180 Fahrenheit: in five minutes the sweat was pouring from us and all the while we were standing in icy water that was only kept from rising by the terrific air pressure. No wonder the headaches were blinding. The men didn’t work for more than ten minutes at a time, but I plugged on steadily, resolved to prove myself and get constant employment; only one man, a Swede named Anderson, worked at all as hard. I was overjoyed to find that together we did more than the four others. The amount done each week was estimated, he told me, by an inspector. Anderson was known to the Contractor and received half a wage extra as head of our gang. He assured me I could stay as long as I liked, but he advised me to leave at the end of a month: it was too unhealthy: above all, I mustn’t drink and should spend all my spare time in the open. He was kindness itself to me as indeed were all the others. After two hours’ work down below we went up into the airlock room to get gradually “decompressed”, the pressure of air in our veins having to be brought down gradually to the usual air pressure. The men began to put on their clothes and passed round a bottle of Schnapps; but though I was soon as cold as a wet rat and felt depressed and weak to boot, I would not touch the liquor. In the shed above I took a cupful of hot cocoa with Anderson which stopped the shivering and I was soon able to face the afternoon’s ordeal.

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

  Yet somehow my little comment, with no names mentioned, constitutes a firing offense, something that we need to spend a whole day going back and forth about, and which has put me into a hole so deep that I might never dig out. I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it. When Trotsky finishes working through his list, I say, “Okay. So what do you want me to do?” He doesn’t know. We’ll have to keep talking. “Do you have any questions for me?” he says. “Well,” I say, “the one thing that puzzles me is I kind of think you’re blowing this out of proportion. I guess the only question I would have is why you guys are making such a big deal out of this. I understand there’s extra sensitivity today because of the IPO announcement. Obviously I didn’t know that was happening. I’m sorry about the timing. But it all seems like such a small thing and I’m taken aback by the response.” I ask him if the HR department is going to get involved. He says he doesn’t know. They might be. “Are you filing an official report about this to HR?” I say. “Is all of this going to be documented somewhere, in my employee file?” “I don’t know,” he says. “Well I’m concerned because the way you’re handling this feels like you’re starting to build some documentation that can be used to support a case for firing me. Is that what HubSpot is doing? Are you starting a file on me, a sort of paper trail that you can use later if you want to fire me?” That’s when Trotsky delivers a line I will never forget: “The company,” he says, “doesn’t need a reason to fire you. The company can do whatever it wants.” A week later, on September 2, the Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend, Trotsky forwards me an email that Cranium has sent around to everyone in the marketing department. We’re all getting an amazing gift: customized Bose QuietComfort 15 headphones. “Congratulations for earning your place as the best marketing team in the world,” Cranium writes. “Workday, NetSuite, Salesforce, Rackspace, LinkedIn, and Facebook all look up to you and want to do marketing like you do (all of those companies have asked me to teach them how you guys do it).” Cranium says he knows everyone is working long hours getting ready for the Inbound conference, which takes place in two weeks. “We have a lot to do and a lot of pressure. But I know you guys can do it and once again prove you’re the best marketing team in the world. With your help we can rock INBOUND, crush the product launches, and exceed our revenue goals in Q4.”

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

  [27] The Corpus discusses as sacraments Baptism, Eucharist, Ordination, entry to the monastic life and funerals, with descriptions of the liturgy attached to them – but not marriage. The omission of marriage from among the sacraments continued as a silence in the theological commentary of such greatly respected Eastern Christian authorities as John of Damascus in the eighth century. It is the same a century later with the writings of a monk from the Stoudios monastery in Constantinople who hence is known as Theodore the Stoudite, a major reformer of Byzantine monastic life. [28] Lurking behind this general reluctance in such a wide variety of commentators was that quiet anxiety about the nature of marriage that we have now traced through so many Christian centuries: should something so universally practised by humankind, and so inextricably involved with the physicality of sex (plus the raucous fun of the marriage celebrations on the day), enter the sacred mysteries of God? Nevertheless, the Church of Byzantium moved on, to comply with a drastic change in imperial law not long after Theodore the Stoudite had repeated much of the text of Pseudo-Dionysios. Sometime around 900 a new law (Novella) of the Emperor

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

  Self-denial, after all, was a useful virtue for entrepreneurial businessmen and industrious workers. But by the 1890s, this model of manly restraint had begun to falter. A new corporate, consumer economy meant that more men were earning a living by punching the clock, and self-discipline no longer promised the same payoff. As men moved to cities, the work they did changed significantly. For men whose strength had become superfluous, who no longer identified as producers, their very manhood seemed in question. There were other disruptions, too. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe began arriving at the nation’s shores, and “new women” started going to college, entering the professions, riding bicycles, wearing bloomers, and having fewer babies. In response to all of these changes, old ideas of manhood seemed insufficient. In their place, white native-born Protestant men began to assert a new kind of masculinity—a rougher, tougher masculinity. Nothing less than the fate of the nation, even the future of white Christian “civilization” appeared to be at stake.1 No one advanced this new American masculinity with more gusto than Theodore Roosevelt. As a young man, Roosevelt had been ridiculed for his “high voice, tight pants, and fancy clothing” and derided as a “weakling” and “Punkin-Lily.” But Roosevelt wanted power. Determined to reinvent himself, he went west, rechristening himself the “Cowboy of the Dakotas.” It was on the frontier that a new masculinity would be forged, a place where (white) men brought order to savagery, where men served as armed protectors and providers, where violence achieved a greater good. If the Wild West could mold “the exquisite Mr. Roosevelt” into a rugged masculine specimen, perhaps it could do the same for American manhood generally, so the thinking went. But there was a flaw in this plan. Even as Roosevelt was honing his masculinity on the western frontier, the mythical West was fading away. Rugged American manhood would need to be forged elsewhere—on the new frontiers of empire. This shift to a global stage was perfectly encapsulated in Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders,” a volunteer cavalry who fought in the Spanish-American War—a war that Roosevelt himself helped bring about. In this way, the new American imperialism was framed as a conservative effort to restore American manhood.2 When Roosevelt became president in 1901, the embodiment of heroic American manhood became the undisputed leader of the American nation. By fashioning a violent, fantasized masculinity, and then injecting that sensibility into national politics, Roosevelt offered ordinary men the sense that they were participating in a larger cause. Roosevelt’s hypermasculinity appealed to men anxious about their own status, and the nation’s. For many, these anxieties would become inseparable.3 FOR AMERICAN CHRISTIANS , the challenge was to reconcile this aggressive new masculinity with traditional Christian virtue. With its emphasis on gentility and restraint, Victorian Christianity suddenly seemed insufficiently masculine. Virile, aggressive men could hardly be expected to submit themselves to such an emasculating faith, and so in the 1910s, Christian men set out to “re-masculinize” American Christianity.

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

  By the 1980s, then, the Democratic Party had become the party of liberals, African Americans, and feminists, and the Republican Party the party of conservatives, traditionalists, and segregationists.10 White evangelicals didn’t just participate in this realignment, they helped instigate it. Billy Graham aided and abetted the southern strategy, advising Republicans on how to make inroads with southern evangelicals who, like him, were birthright Democrats. Southern Baptist pastors, too, switched to the Republican Party earlier than white southerners generally. The Southern Baptist shift to the Republican Party coincided with a “conservative resurgence” within the denomination. Traditionally, Baptists had supported a separation of church and state and advocated a civil libertarianism when it came to social issues. Their power secure in the South, Southern Baptists had largely avoided the challenges of modernism in the 1920s, and the reactionary response modernism provoked; in the 1940s, they’d seen no reason to join the NAE. Having devoted less energy to delineating doctrinal boundaries, Southern Baptists allowed for a relatively wide range of views on theological and social issues. Thus the SBC was home to Billy Graham, W. A. Criswell, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, among others.11 To be sure, many Southern Baptists backed the status quo, including both patriarchy and white supremacy. By the end of the 1960s, when explicit white supremacy was no longer tenable, gender became even more significant. Until that time, Southern Baptists held varying views on gender roles. Some believed the Bible prohibited women from preaching and teaching, while others supported women’s religious leadership. Beginning in the 1960s, however, fundamentalists began to battle for control of the SBC, and gender was at the heart of the struggle.12 By 1979, conservative Southern Baptists’ sense of cultural crisis was acute, and they set out to take over the denomination. Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler, W. A. Criswell, and other like-minded pastors and laymen had hatched a plan that involved electing conservatives to the presidency of the SBC and controlling strategic committee appointments. That year, through carefully orchestrated designs, they succeeded in electing one of their own as president of the Houston convention. Moderates cried foul—political machinations of this sort were not the Baptist way—but conservatives were unapologetic; they were “going for the jugular.” One by one, conservatives gained control of the denomination’s seminaries, purging faculties of moderate voices. Moderates denounced this “power-crazed authoritarianism, a win-atany-cost ethic and a total disregard for personal values and religious freedom,” but to little avail.13 Accounts of the battles over the SBC commonly focus on the question of biblical inerrancy, but the battle over inerrancy was in part a proxy fight over gender. Conservatives were alarmed by women’s liberation, abortion, and changing views on sexuality generally, but they also had concerns specific to the SBC. “Evangelical feminism” had been making inroads in Southern Baptist circles, and growing numbers of Baptist women had begun challenging male headship and claiming leadership positions; between 1975 and 1985, the number of women ordained in the SBC increased significantly.

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

  The great genius of the Shiah was its tragic perception that it is impossible fully to implement the ideals of religion in the inescapably violent realm of politics. Ashoka had discovered this even earlier than the Shii Imams when he promoted his compassionate dharma but could not disband his army. At best, people of faith can either bear witness to these values, as Khomeini did when he castigated the injustice of the Pahlavi regime in the 1960s, or provide an alternative that either challenges or seeks to mitigate state violence. But as we have seen throughout this story, even the most humanitarian traditions are unable to implement their ideals if they identify with a state ideology that inevitably depends upon force. Khomeini believed that the revolution had been a rebellion against the rational pragmatism of the modern world. The goal of his theory of velayat-e faqih was to institutionalize Shii values: the supreme jurist ( faqih ) and the ulema on the Council of Guardians would have the power to veto any legislation that violated the principles of Islamic justice. 104 But in practice, Khomeini would often have to reprove the guardians for playing selfish power games, just as he himself had felt compelled to pursue a cynical realpolitik during the hostage crisis. We have seen that revolutions can take a long time, and like the French Revolution, the Iranian Revolution has passed through many stages and is still in progress. As in France, Iranians feared that powerful external enemies would destroy the Islamic regime. In the summer of 1983 the Iraqis attacked Iranian troops with mustard gas and then with nerve gas the following year. 105 Khomeini was convinced that America would organize a coup similar to the one that had deposed Musaddiq in 1953. Because Iran had antagonized the West, she had forfeited essential equipment, spare parts, and technical advice; inflation was high, and by 1982 unemployment had risen to 30 percent of the general population and 50 percent in the cities. 106 The poor, whose plight Khomeini had championed, were not doing much better under the revolution. Yet Western observers had to acknowledge that, despite the growing opposition of Westernized Iranians, Khomeini never lost the love of the masses, especially the bazaaris, the madrassa students, the less-eminent ulema, and the poor. 107 These people, whom the shah’s modernization program had overlooked, still thought and spoke in a traditionally religious, premodern way that many Westerners could not even comprehend. After the Iranian Revolution, one exasperated U.S. official was heard to exclaim: “Whoever took religion seriously?”

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

  Families purchased silver “purity rings” to provide girls with a constant reminder of the value of their virginity, and of their obligation to guard it vigilantly. “Purity balls” started popping up across the country, offering families opportunities to enact their commitment to sexual purity through public ceremony. At these events, fathers provided a model of masculine headship by “dating” their daughters, and girls pledged their sexual purity before their families and communities. Like “servant leadership” and complementarian theology, the purity movement enabled evangelicals to reassert patriarchal authority in the face of economic, political, and social change. The widespread popularity of the purity movement was fueled in part by an injection of federal funds. As early as 1981, President Reagan began directing government funding to abstinence-only sex education, and this funding continued through the 1990s, reaching its peak under the George W. Bush administration; by 2005, more than 100 abstinence-based groups would receive more than $104 million in federal funding. Here was a case of government intrusion into the most intimate of matters, yet evangelicals didn’t seem to mind.42 THE EVANGELICAL MEN’S MOVEMENT of the 1990s was marked by experimentation and laden with contradictions. “Soft patriarchy” papered over tensions between a harsher, authoritarian masculinity and a more egalitarian posture; the motif of the tender warrior reconciled militancy with a kinder, gentler, more emotive bearing. Inconsistencies within the evangelical men’s movement reflected those within evangelicalism as a whole in the post–Cold War years. Earlier in the decade, it might have appeared that the more egalitarian and emotive impulses had the upper hand. It was a new era for America, and for American evangelicals. Rhetoric of culture wars persisted, but evangelicals’ interests had expanded to include a broader array of issues, including racial reconciliation, antitrafficking activism, and addressing the persecution of the global church. At the end of the decade, however, the more militant movement would begin to reassert itself. When it did, this resurgent militancy would become intertwined both with the sexual purity movement and with the assertion of complementarianism within evangelical circles. In time it would become clear that the combination of all three could produce toxic outcomes. Chapter 10 [image file=Image00000.jpg] NO MORE CHRISTIAN NICE GUYJ OHN ELDREDGE DIDN’T LIKE OFFICE WORK. IT wasn’t good for his masculinity or his spirituality. Spiritual life was meant to be “frontier,” untamed. If evangelical men wanted to experience true Christianity, they’d need to get out of “their La-ZBoys and climate-controlled shopping malls and into God’s wild creation.” Eldredge’s 2001 book, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul , set the tone for a new evangelical militancy in the new millennium. Eldredge’s God was a warrior God, and men were made in his image. Aggression, not tenderness, was part of the masculine design. Wild at Heart would sell more than four million copies in the United States alone, becoming a ubiquitous presence in megachurch men’s groups, college dorm rooms, Christian bookstores, and church libraries.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “I guess Mr. Locker is all right”, I cried laughing; “I propose he should help us and take two or three hundred head as payment, or the value of them—” “Now you’re talking”, said Locker. “I call that sense. There is a herd of mine about a mile further on; if two or three hundred of your José steers join it, I can’t hinder ’em; but I’d rather have dollars; cash is scarce!” “Are they herded?” asked Bob. “Sure”, replied Locker. “I am too near the river to let any cattle run round loose though nobody has interfered with me in the last ten years.” Bob and I began moving the cattle on leaving Bent with Locker to conclude the negotiations. In an hour we had found Locker’s herd that must have numbered at least six thousand head and were guarded by three herdsmen. Locker and Bent had soon come to a working agreement. Locker it turned out had another herd some distance to the east from which he could draw three or four herdsmen. He had also a couple of boys, sons of his, whom he could send to rouse some of the neighboring farmers if the need was urgent. It turned out that we had done well to be generous to him for he knew the whole of the countryside like a book and was a good friend in our need. Late in the afternoon, Locker was informed by one of his sons, a youth of about sixteen, that twenty Mexicans had crossed the river and would be up to us in a short time. Locker sent him after the younger boy to round up as many Texans as possible but before they could be collected, a bunch of greasers, twenty or so, in number, rode up and demanded the return of the cattle. Bent and Locker put them off and as luck would have it, while they were arguing, three or four Texans came up, and one of them, a man of about forty years of age named Rossiter, took control of the whole dispute. He told the Mexican leader, who said he was Don Luis, a son of Don José, that if he stayed any longer he would probably be arrested and put in prison for raiding American territory and threatening people. The Mexican seemed to have a good deal of pluck, and declared that he would not only threaten but carry out his threat. Rossiter told him to wade right in. The loud talk began again, and a couple more Texans came up and the Mexican leader realizing that unless he did something at once he would be too late, started to circle round the cattle, no doubt thinking that if he did some thing his superior numbers would scare us.

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

  The book promoted “male headship,” the notion based on New Testament teachings that the husband was “the head of the wife,” that he had authority over her and was responsible for her; for LaHaye, this was particularly relevant in matters of finances. In addition to other more mundane topics, LaHaye included a chapter on “Physical Joys” that contained a helpful glossary of terms (“clitoris,” “vulva area,” “glans penis,” “areas of sexual sensitivity”) and two detailed charts of male and female sexual anatomy. This book was published by the evangelical Tyndale House Publishers two years before the feminist classic Our Bodies, Ourselves , and by 1973 it was already in its sixteenth printing, with more than 300,000 copies in print.2 LaHaye’s marital sex guide came at a time when evangelicals were increasingly concerned about sex in general. In 1960, the FDA approved the first birth control pill. In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown published Sex and the Single Girl , and two years later Newsweek heralded a “new morality” that required only a “meaningful relationship” to legitimate sexual intimacy. To conservative evangelicals, there was nothing remotely moral about this new morality, and as the morality gap grew, so, too, did evangelicals’ worry over what was being taught about sex in public schools. With no more consensus over moral values, which values would be conveyed to their children?3 This was not a question to take lightly, and Billy James Hargis—the fundamentalist pastor who helped spearhead Christian anticommunism in the 1950s and 1960s—took it upon himself to safeguard the sexual purity of America’s children. When Hargis turned his attention to sex in the mid-1960s, he didn’t do so at the expense of his anticommunism. Like Graham, Hargis considered sexual morality critical to the nation’s defense against communism. Others soon joined his new crusade. With none-too-subtle pamphlets like Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex? conservative Christian leaders sounded the alarm, and battles over sex ed soon broke out in nearly half of all school districts across the nation. Many of the citizens who waged this battle were the same ones who were fighting against gun control and unsettled by the prospects of interracial dating at desegregated schools. Organizations like the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan teamed up with Hargis. Hargis’s career would be cut short in 1976, when Time magazine published an exposé of the crusader’s sexual improprieties. The allegations came to light after a student at Hargis’s college revealed to his bride on their honeymoon that he’d had sex with Hargis, only to discover that she had, too. But others took up Hargis’s crusade where he left off.4 The year of Hargis’s downfall, LaHaye and his wife Beverly coauthored a more detailed Christian sex manual, The Act of Marriage . The LaHayes were also deeply concerned about changing sexual mores, but like Marabel Morgan, they were not anti-sex.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  These pilgrimages were not seriously interrupted by the Mohammedans after their conquest of Jerusalem by Omar in 637, until Syria and Palestine passed into the hands of the sultans of Egypt three centuries later. Under Hakim, 1010, a fierce persecution broke out against the Christian residents of Palestine and the pilgrims. It was, however, of short duration and was followed by a larger stream of pilgrims than before. The favorite route was through Rome and by the sea, a dangerous avenue, as it was infested by Saracen pirates. The conversion of the Hungarians in the tenth century opened up the route along the Danube. Barons, princes, bishops, monks followed one after the other, some of them leading large bodies of pious tourists. In 1035 Robert of Normandy went at the head of a great company of nobles. He found many waiting at the gates of Jerusalem, unable to pay the gold bezant demanded for admission, and paid it for them. In 1054 Luitbert, bishop of Cambray, is said to have led three thousand pilgrims. In 1064 Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, was accompanied by the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Regensburg and twelve thousand pilgrims.321 In 1092 Eric, king of the Danes, made the long journey. A sudden check was put upon the pilgrimages by the Seljukian Turks, who conquered the Holy Land in 1076. A rude and savage tribe, they heaped, with the intense fanaticism of new converts, all manner of insults and injuries upon the Christians. Many were imprisoned or sold into slavery. Those who returned to Europe carried with them a tale of woe which aroused the religious feelings of all classes. The other appeal, coming from the Greek emperors, was of less weight.322 The Eastern empire had been fast losing its hold on its Asiatic possessions. Romanus Diogenes was defeated in battle with the Turks and taken prisoner, 1071. During the rule of his successor, an emir established himself in Nicaea, the seat of the council called by the first Constantine, and extended his rule as far as the shores of the sea of Marmora. Alexius Comnenus, coming to the throne 1081, was less able to resist the advance of Islam and lost Antioch and Edessa in 1086. Thus pressed by his Asiatic foes, and seeing the very existence of his throne threatened, he applied for help to the west. He dwelt, it is true, on the desolations of Jerusalem; but it is in accordance with his imperial character to surmise that he was more concerned for the defence of his own empire than for the honor of religion. This dual appeal met a response, not only in the religious spirit of Europe, but in the warlike instincts of chivalry; and when the time came for the chief figure in Christendom, Urban II., to lift up his voice, his words acted upon the sensitive emotions as sparks upon dry leaves.323

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The communities became more and more the objects of suspicion, and a sharp blow was struck at them in 1312 by Clement V. and the council of Vienne. The council forbade their communal mode of life, and accused them of heresies.1048 They were accused of refusing to adore the host and of holding that it is possible to reach a state of perfection in this world. A person reaching this state is under no obligation to fast and pray, but may yield himself without sin to all the appetites of the body.1049 Clement’s bull erred by its failure to discriminate between heretical and orthodox communities, a defect which was corrected by John XXII. This pope expressly gave protection to the orthodox communities. In the fourteenth century, the number of houses increased very rapidly in Germany and by 1400 there was scarcely a German town which had not its beguinage. Up to that date, fifty-seven had been organized in Frankfurt, and in the middle of the fifteenth century there were one hundred and six such houses in Cologne and sixty in Strassburg. In 1368 Erfurt had four hundred Beguines and Beghards.1050 In the earlier part of the fourteenth century, the Beguines appeared in Southern France, where the Inquisition associated them closely with the Tertiaries of St. Francis and accused them of adopting the views of John Peter Olivi.1051 In the latter part of the fourteenth century, the Inquisition broke up many of the houses in Germany, their effects being equally divided between itself, the poor, and the municipality. Gregory XI., 1377, recognized that many of the Beghards were leading good lives. Boniface IX., 1394, made a sharp distinction between the communities and classed the heterodox Beghards with Lollards and Swestriones.1052 But to other "Beghards and Beguines, who practised voluntary poverty"1053 and devoted themselves to the good of the people, he gave papal recognition. To avoid persecution, many of them took refuge with the Franciscans and enrolled themselves as Tertiaries of the Franciscan order. With the Reformation the Beghards and Beguines for the most part disappear as separate communities.1054 These sectaries were in part forerunners and contemporaries of other communities with a pious and benevolent design developed in Holland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and with which German mysticism is closely associated. § 84. The Waldenses. "O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer lustre flings Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow of kings; A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay, Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and a blessing on thy way!" Whittier, The Vaudois Teacher.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “Yeah, did you run those IDs? Christ, they’re legitimate? We can’t even hold these people? It’s a fucking massacre here. What? Mullens? Yeah, hang on.” He uncuffed Locan and handed him the phone. eYeS2" “For Christ’s fucking sake, what’s with you two?” ““Mullens ... do you have any idea who the hell these people are?” “They used to be a husband and wife hit team. Do you believe in coincidences?” “Not really.” “They were hunting down the runaway wife of one of the biggest money launderers on the West Coast. We were too, trying to get to the lovelorn couple before they did. They were contracted to kill her and the boyfriend. We’d just located the couple at the Quality Inn about a half mile from where you’re staying. Then all hell broke loose. Seems you and your partner are the victims of mistaken identity; although, the way things turned out, maybe you weren’t the victims. “Anyway, the couple we got here, the guy looks a lot like you, and the wife, well, she’s blonde but she was traveling as a brunette.” “You’ve explained things to the local constabulary then?” 230 Robert Buckley “Yeah, you’re free to go, but I gotta tell you, Rome’s been in touch. They’re mightily put out that you haven’t been maintaining a low profile; in fact, they’re pissed. They want you and your partner back there the day before yesterday.” “Thanks, they'll have to wait.” “For crying out loud, try not to kill anyone for a while, will you?” “You know me, turn the other cheek.” “Shit. Get outta there.” They were allowed to dress and take their belongings. A police car escorted them back to the Interstate. Rachel sat still, her legs drawn up as she gnawed on the knuckles of one hand. “Hey, cut that out, will you? You’ll draw blood.” “T killed her didn’t I? They were the couple we saw making love in the window.” “Were they?” “You know they were. Did they have souls?” “Doesn’t matter — self defense.” “God, it was horrible, but why can’t I remember? Going dark?” “Yes, a pretty useful talent in our line of work.” “Stop! Just tell me what’s happening to me. I was dead asleep and I woke right up. I knew they were there before I even knew I was awake.” “Sometimes your senses will become acutely heightened.” “Sometimes?” “For instance, when you’ve just had really good sex.” “Cripes:” “Or whenever you feel threatened, or angry . “When are you going to tell me what’s happening to me... what . or even happy.” . Iam?” “Soon, Racey. Very soon.” “Rachel,” she insisted, though her chin trembled and a tear spilled over her cheek. “T promise you.”

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

  The fact that some of the more militant fundamentalists had started their own organization (the American Council of Christian Churches, under the leadership of fundamentalist Carl McIntire) helped with this project, enabling the NAE to distance itself from more reactionary elements, and it was at this time that “evangelical” came to connote a more forward-looking alternative to the militant, separatist fundamentalism that had become an object of ridicule. But evangelicals never entirely abandoned a combative posture, and even as evangelicals worked to bring a new respectability to their “old-time religion,” fundamentalists fought to define the contours of that faith. The affinities ran deep, and it was not always possible to distinguish one from the other; eventually, fundamentalists would inject their militancy back into the broader evangelical movement. In his opening address of the first meeting of the NAE in 1942, the Reverend Harold John Ockenga warned his fellow “lone wolves” of the ominous clouds looming on the horizon that “spell[ed] annihilation” unless they decided to “run in a pack.” For decades, evangelicalism had “suffered nothing but a series of defeats,” but the time had come to usher in “a new era in evangelical Christianity.” As “children of the light,” they could learn a thing or two from “the children of this world,” from the Soviets and the Nazis. In matters of both church and state, defensive tactics had proven disastrous. Evangelicals must unite and take the offensive, before it was too late.13 Just how small was this remnant? When delegates came together the following year, news reports estimated that the NAE represented about two million members, based on denominational affiliation—a fraction of the 60 to 70 million Christians who were represented by the more liberal Federal Council of Churches. But the evangelical movement was never limited by denominational affiliation, and its influence was on the rise.14 The path forward was clear, and it would not be through denominational structures. To evangelize the nation, evangelicals needed magazines that could reach millions, and access to the airwaves for national radio broadcasts. They needed organizations for missions, and for evangelical colleges and Bible schools. They already possessed the resources and the brain power. What was missing was a network that would support and amplify these individual efforts.15 WHEN IT CAME TO evangelicals’ rebranding efforts, it was a handsome young North Carolina minister who would play the starring role. More than anything else, Billy Graham’s celebrity knit together the disconnected universe of American evangelicalism—so much so that historian George Marsden once quipped that the simplest definition of “evangelical” might well be “anyone who likes Billy Graham.” A one-time Fuller Brush salesman, Graham became the face of the new evangelicalism—and that face was an attractive, masculine one, a fact that rarely went unnoticed.

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

  The Quran seems aware that some Muslims would not be happy to hear that God had encouraged fighting: “Fighting has been ordained for you, though it is hateful to you.” 36 Once the ummah had started to engage in warfare, it seems that one group, which was strong enough to warrant extensive rebuttal, consistently refused to take part: Believers, why, when it is said to you, “Go and fight in God’s cause,” do you feel weighed down to the ground? Do you prefer this world to the world to come? How small is the enjoyment of this world compared with the life to come! If you do not go out and fight, God will punish you severely and put others in your place. 37 The Quran calls these people “laggers” and “liars,” and Muhammad was reproved for allowing them to “stay at home” during campaigns. 38 They are accused of apathy and cowardice and are equated with the kufar, the enemies of Islam. 39 Yet this group could point to the many verses in the Quran that instruct Muslims not to retaliate but to “forgive and forbear,” responding to aggression with mercy, patience, and courtesy. 40 At other times, the Quran looks forward confidently to a final reconciliation: “Let there be no argument between us and you—God will gather us together and to Him we shall return.” 41 The impressive consistency of this irenic theme throughout the Quran, Firestone believes, must reflect a strong tendency that survived in the ummah for some time—perhaps until the ninth century. 42 Ultimately, however, the more militant groups prevailed, possibly because by the ninth century, long after the Prophet’s death, the more aggressive verses reflected reality, since by this time Muslims had established an empire that could be maintained only by military force. A favorite text of those involved in the wars of conquest was the “Sword Verse,” which they regarded as God’s last word on the subject—though even here the endorsement of total warfare segues immediately into a demand for peace and leniency: When the forbidden months are over wherever you encounter the idolaters, kill them, seize them, besiege them, wait for them at every look-out post; but if they repent, maintain the prayer, and pay the prescribed alms let them go on their way, for God is most merciful and forgiving.