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 From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The extent to which free will had become an urgent moral problem in the high Roman Empire is also reflected in the attention devoted to the dynamics of volition in the romantic literature of the period. Fate is central to the poetics of the romance. A popular fatalism is prominent already in Chariton’s early novel and remains so down to the last of the romances, the Ethiopian Tale of Heliodorus. As usual, Achilles Tatius presents the most self-conscious and sardonic treatment of determinism in any of the romances. In book 1, Clitophon launches his first-person narrative with the report of a portentous dream. The nocturnal vision prompts a remarkably forthright reflection on the importance of dreams in a fatalistic universe. “The divine spirit loves to speak to men by night, not so that suffering may be forestalled (for Destiny cannot be overruled), but so that misfortune might be borne more lightly. The shock of the sudden and unforeseen stuns the soul, and overwhelms it, while the anticipation of misfortune allows us to brace ourselves and, by degrees, takes away the shock of suffering.” After the premonitory dream, Clitophon claimed, Fortune initiated her drama. The conscious theorization of the tension between Destiny and Fortune, at the very outset of the narration, is remarkable. The romances are narratives driven by the dialectic between order and flux, displacement and resolution. Fortune authors the sufferings and misadventures that drive the plot, but Destiny prevails in the felicitous ending.67

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  As in the pagan romances, the Acts reveal deep generic similarities in the treatment of sex, so that there is a sense in which the genre speaks collectively, or at least uses a shared syntax of conventions and symbols. Even in the apostolic traditions that rely least on the manipulation of sexual protocols, certain formulas recur. The Acts of Peter focus principally on the rivalry between the apostle Peter and the mountebank ur-heretic, Simon Magus. Sexual tropes are not, in the Petrine legends as we have them, a dominant thread. But they do suddenly play a commanding role when the story turns abruptly from the rivalry with Simon Magus toward the death of Peter. The fatal sequence begins when four concubines of the prefect Agrippa hear the “teaching about purity, and all the teachings of the Lord” and withdraw their sexual favors from the powerful official. Peter’s next triumph is a “a superlative beauty,” Xanthippe, the wife of a powerful man. Finally, “many other women” left their husbands, and husbands their wives, in the name of sexual purity. With so many marriage beds abandoned, Peter has put Rome in an epic stir of erotic frustration. Peter sneaks out of the city in disguise but, in a touching scene, encounters Christ and famously asks him, “Whither goest thou?” Peter marches back through the gates to his certain death. The apostle’s preaching on sexual chastity is the proximate cause of the most famous scene in apocryphal literature and the most hallowed martyrdom in Christian history (save one).32

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I had a spittoon alongside of the desk, a big brass one from the same establishment, and I would spit in it now and then to remind myself that it was there. All the pigeonholes were empty and all the drawers were empty; there wasn’t a thing on the desk or in it except a sheet of white paper on which I found it impossible to put so much as a pothook. When I think of the titanic efforts I made to canalize the hot lava which was bubbling inside me, the efforts I repeated thousands of times to bring the funnel into place and capture a word, a phrase, I think inevitably of the men of the old stone age. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand years, three hundred thousand years to arrive at the idea of the paleolith. A phantom struggle, because they weren’t dreaming of such a thing as the paleolith. It came without effort, born of a second, a miracle you might say, except that everything which happens is miraculous. Things happen or they don’t happen, that’s all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, an agony because we’ve lost the habit of falling asleep. We don’t know how to let go. We’re like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box. I think if I had been crazy I couldn’t have hit upon a better scheme to consolidate my anchorage than to install this Neanderthal object in the middle of the parlor. With my feet on the desk, picking up the current, and my spinal column snugly socketed in a thick leather cushion, I was in an ideal relation to the flotsam and jetsam which was whirling about me, and which, because they were crazy and part of the flux, my friends were trying to convince me was life. I remember vividly the first contact with reality that I got through my feet, so to speak. The million words or so which I had written, mind you, well ordered, well connected, were as nothing to me—crude ciphers from the old stone age—because the contact was through the head and the head is a useless appendage unless you’re anchored in midchannel deep in the mud. Everything I had written before was museum stuff, and most writing is still museum stuff and that’s why it doesn’t catch fire, doesn’t inflame the world. I was only a mouthpiece for the ancestral race which was talking through me; even my dreams were not authentic, not bona fide Henry Miller dreams. To sit still and think one thought which would come up out of me, out of the life buoy, was a Herculean task. I didn’t lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression—I lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the juice.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  A Romantic WeekendShe was meeting a man she had recently and abruptly fallen in love with. She was in a state of ghastly anxiety. He was married, for one thing, to a Korean woman whom he described as the embodiment of all that was feminine and elegant. Not only that, but a psychic had told her that a relationship with him could cripple her emotionally for the rest of her life. On top of this, she was tormented by the feeling that she looked inadequate. Perhaps her body tilted too far forward as she walked, perhaps her jacket made her torso look bulky in contrast to her calves and ankles, which were probably skinny. She felt like an object unraveling in every direction. In anticipation of their meeting, she had not been able to sleep the night before; she had therefore eaten some amphetamines and these had heightened her feeling of disintegration. When she arrived at the corner he wasn’t there. She stood against a building, trying to arrange her body in the least repulsive configuration possible. Her discomfort mounted. She crossed the street and stood on the other corner. It seemed as though everyone who walked by was eating. A large, distracted businessman went by holding a half-eaten hot dog. Two girls passed, sharing cashews from a white bag. The eating added to her sense that the world was disorderly and unbeautiful. She became acutely aware of the garbage on the street. The wind stirred it; a candy wrapper waved forlornly from its trapped position in the mesh of a jammed public wastebasket. This was all wrong, all horrible. Her meeting with him should be perfect and scrap-free. She couldn’t bear the thought of flapping trash. Why wasn’t he there to meet her? Minutes passed. Her shoulders drew together.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It seemed as though everyone who walked by was eating. A large, distracted businessman went by holding a half-eaten hot dog. Two girls passed, sharing cashews from a white bag. The eating added to her sense that the world was disorderly and unbeautiful. She became acutely aware of the garbage on the street. The wind stirred it; a candy wrapper waved forlornly from its trapped position in the mesh of a jammed public wastebasket. This was all wrong, all horrible. Her meeting with him should be perfect and scrap-free. She couldn’t bear the thought of flapping trash. Why wasn’t he there to meet her? Minutes passed. Her shoulders drew together. She stepped into a flower store. The store was clean and white, except for a few smudges on the linoleum floor. Homosexuals with low voices stood behind the counter. Arranged stalks bearing absurd blossoms protruded from sedate round vases and bristled in the aisles. She had a paroxysm of fantasy. He held her, helpless and swooning, in his arms. They were supported by a soft ball of puffy blue stuff. Thornless roses surrounded their heads. His gaze penetrated her so thoroughly, it was as though he had thrust his hand into her chest and begun feeling her ribs one by one. This was all right with her. “I have never met anyone I felt this way about,” he said. “I love you.” He made her do things she’d never done before, and then they went for a walk and looked at the new tulips that were bound to have grown up somewhere. None of this felt stupid or corny, but she knew that it was. Miserably, she tried to gain a sense of proportion. She stared at the flowers. They were an agony of bright, organized beauty. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to give him flowers. She wanted to be with him in a room full of flowers. She visualized herself standing in front of him, bearing a handful of blameless flowers trapped in the ugly pastel paper the florist would staple around them. The vision was brutally embarrassing, too much so to stay in her mind for more than seconds. She stepped out of the flower store. He was not there. Her anxiety approached despair. They were supposed to spend the weekend together. He stood in a cheap pizza stand across the street, eating a greasy slice and watching her as she stood on the corner. Her anxiety was visible to him. It was at once disconcerting and weirdly attractive. Her appearance otherwise was not pleasing.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  She was the world’s lying machine in microcosm, geared to the same unending, devastating fear which enables men to throw all their energies into creation of the death apparatus. To look at her one would think her fearless, one would think her the personification of courage and she was , so long as she was not obliged to turn in her traces. Behind her lay the calm fact of reality, a colossus which dogged her every step. Every day this colossal reality took on new proportions, every day it became more terrifying, more paralyzing. Every day she had to grow swifter wings, sharper jaws, more piercing, hypnotic eyes. It was a race to the outermost limits of the world, a race lost from the start, and no one to stop it. At the edge of the vacuum stood Truth, ready in one lightning-like sweep to recover the stolen ground. It was so simple and obvious that it drove her frantic. Marshal a thousand personalities, commandeer the biggest guns, deceive the greatest minds, make the longest detour—still the end would be defeat. In the final meeting everything was destined to fall apart—the cunning, the skill, the power, everything. She would be a grain of sand on the shore of the biggest ocean, and, worse than anything, she would resemble each and every other grain of sand on that ocean’s shore. She would be condemned to rocognize her unique self everywhere until the end of time. What a fate she had chosen for herself! That her uniqueness should be engulfed in the universal! That her power should be reduced to the utmost node of passivity! It was maddening, hallucinating. It could not be! It must not be! Onward! Like the black legions. Onward! Through every degree of the ever-widening circle. Onward and away from the self, until the last substantial particle of the soul be stretched to infinity. In her panic-stricken flight she seemed to bear the whole world in her womb. We were being driven out of the confines of the universe toward a nebula which no instrument could visualize. We were being rushed to a pause so still, so prolonged, that death by comparison seems a mad witches’ revel. In the morning, gazing at the bloodless crater of her face. Not a line in it, not a wrinkle, not a single blemish! The look of an angel in the arms of the Creator. Who killed Cock Robin? Who massacred the Iroquois? Not I, my lovely angel could say, and by God, who, gazing at that pure, blameless face, could deny her? Who could see in that sleep of innocence that one half of the face belonged to God and the other half to Satan? The mask was smooth as death, cool, lovely to the touch, waxen, like a petal open to the faintest breeze.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Many cult groups have become so skilled at their public relations work that they have gained a high degree of social acceptance, even among prominent professionals. One ploy taken by wealthier groups is to lure respected professionals—scientists, lawyers, politicians, academicians, clergy—to speak at cult-sponsored conferences by offering them large honoraria, often at conferences held in exotic locations, with all expenses paid. These invited speakers may not know or even care about the cult involvement, but their mere presence at such conferences gives tacit approval to the cult. For instance, former British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, attended Moonie conferences. Sociologist Eileen Barker, who wrote The Making of a Moonie: Choice or Brainwashing and made her professional career saying my life work was mistaken, admits to attending 14 such conferences, but claims that this has not affected her objectivity! My concern about cults is broad and urgent. Their activities, if unchecked, will continue to wreak untold psychological and, at times, even physical damage, on many thousands, if not millions, of people who do not understand what constitutes unethical mind control. Unless legislative action is taken to make destructive cults accountable to society for violating the rights of their members, these groups will continue to deceive the general public into believing that they are doing nothing out of the ordinary. Speaking practically, I realize that many will be reluctant to add yet another issue to their list of serious concerns. Every day, when we read a newspaper or watch the TV news, we are confronted by the threat of nuclear war, global climate change, massive destruction of the earth’s natural resources, starvation in Africa, widespread political corruption, deadly microbes like the Ebola virus and so many other concerns. Why add another? Because like Ebola, the mind control viruses of cults sicken and drain life from human beings. Unless they are contained, they will continue to spread, infecting ever more people. Furthermore, like biological viruses, cults adapt to take advantage of human weaknesses. They exploit legal loopholes to escape prosecution. They manipulate and subvert Internet search engines to bury criticism that might alert people to their unethical behavior. They pour out scorn and disinformation about former members. They use social media to recruit new members. Thousands of stories about cults have appeared in the media in the past few years, yet few address the issue of mind control directly. They tend to be presented as stories about strange or controversial “religions” rather than about people who have been deceptively recruited and controlled through mind control. Media attention usually dies down after the big stories—Charles Manson, the Jonestown massacre, Waco, Heaven’s Gate, and the Tokyo subway sarin gassing by Aum Shinrikyo.195 It may seem that there are fewer cults because there have been fewer big stories, and as I’ve mentioned, many people with whom I come into casual conversation on the subject of destructive cults express surprise when I tell them that such groups are still a major problem in American society.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  “Teddy, this way!” I yelled. “No, it’s a dead end!” “We can get through! Follow me!” He didn’t. I turned and ran into the dead end. Teddy broke the other way. Half the mall cops followed him, half followed me. I got to the fence and knew exactly how to squirm through. Head, then shoulder, one leg, then twist, then the other leg—done. I was through. The guards hit the fence behind me and couldn’t follow. I ran across the field to a fence on the far side, popped through there, and then I was right on the road, three blocks from my house. I slipped my hands into my pockets and casually walked home, another harmless pedestrian out for a stroll. Once I got back to my house I waited for Teddy. He didn’t show up. I waited thirty minutes, forty minutes, an hour. No Teddy. Fuck. I ran to Teddy’s house in Linksfield. No Teddy. Monday morning I went to school. Still no Teddy. Fuck. Now I was worried. After school I went home and checked at my house again, nothing. Teddy’s house again, nothing. Then I ran back home. An hour later Teddy’s parents showed up. My mom greeted them at the door. “Teddy’s been arrested for shoplifting,” they said. Fuuuck. I eavesdropped on their whole conversation from the other room. From the start my mom was certain I was involved. “Well, where was Trevor?” she asked. “Teddy said he wasn’t with Trevor,” they said. My mom was skeptical. “Hmm. Are you sure Trevor wasn’t involved?” “No, apparently not. The cops said there was another kid, but he got away.” “So it was Trevor.” “No, we asked Teddy, and he said it wasn’t Trevor. He said it was some other kid.” “Huh…okay.” My mom called me in. “Do you know about this thing?” “What thing?” “Teddy was caught shoplifting.” “Whhaaat?” I played dumb. “Noooo. That’s crazy. I can’t believe it. Teddy? No.” “Where were you?” my mom asked. “I was at home.” “But you’re always with Teddy.” I shrugged. “Not on this occasion, I suppose.” For a moment my mom thought she’d caught me red-handed, but Teddy’d given me a solid alibi. I went back to my room, thinking I was in the clear. — The next day I was in class and my name was called over the PA system. “Trevor Noah, report to the principal’s office.” All the kids were like, “Ooooohhh.” The announcements could be heard in every classroom, so now, collectively, the whole school knew I was in trouble. I got up and walked to the office and waited anxiously on an uncomfortable wooden bench outside the door.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  I am not against research into mind control. To the contrary, as a mental health professional, I am heartily in favor of ethically conducted research, which increases our knowledge of ourselves and the workings of the mind.199 Nor, for that matter, am I opposed to the classification of some information in the interest of maintaining national security. But if the government has indeed been conducting research into mind control, then it has a responsibility to inform the American public that mind control exists. In the absence of recognition by the government that mind control exists and that unethical mind control is wrong, the government’s silence indirectly condones the practice of undue influence by unethical people and organizations on the rest of society. One only need look around to see the effects of that silence: mind control groups are proliferating at an unprecedented pace. The principles of freedom and democracy demand that the reality of mind control be exposed to full public scrutiny. Cults, Mind Control And The Mental Health Profession The U.S. government issues licenses to professionals who are responsible for restoring ailing people’s mental well-being. Mental health professionals do this by developing specific techniques and therapies to address the problem that a patient or client may have. One population that cannot count on having its mental health needs met is that of cult victims and other victims of undue influence. This is particularly strange because for years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—which is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and is relied upon by clinicians, researchers, drug companies, health insurance companies, the courts and policy makers—has contained a designation for victims of cult brainwashing and thought reform. The most recent version, the DSM—5,200 identifies this group of patients under a special category: Other Specified Dissociative Disorder 300.15 (F44.9). If you go to page 305, number 2, you will read: “Identity disturbance due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasion: Individuals who have been subjected to intense coercive persuasion (e.g., brainwashing, thought reform, indoctrination while captive, torture, long-term political imprisonment, recruitment by sects/cults or by terror organizations) may present with prolonged changes in, or conscious questioning of, their identity.” I wish I could say that most mental health professionals have read it. To the contrary, it must be one of the DSM-5’s least known categories. Therapists and other practitioners are largely unaware that a diagnosis of mind control can even be made and are certainly unfamiliar with the specialized approaches that have been developed to address it. Meanwhile, a subset of their patients continue to suffer as a result of their cult involvement—that is, unless they turn to a relatively small handful of people who have recognized their needs and are willing to treat them.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. This He said as it were comforting His disciples, as much as to say, Be not troubled as though these things fell upon you unexpectedly; for, for this cause I came that I might send war upon the earth—nay He says not ‘war,’ but what is yet harder, a sword. For He sought by sharpness of speech so to rouse their attention, that they should not fall off in time of trial and difficulty, or say that He had told them smooth things, and had hid the difficulties. For it is better to meet with softness in deeds than in words; and therefore He stayed not in words, but shewing them the nature of their warfare, He taught them that it was more perilous than a civil war; saying, I am come to set a man against his father, and daughter against her mother, and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. So this warfare will be between not acquaintances merely, but the nearest and dearest kindred; and this shews Christ’s very great power; that His disciples after having heard this, yet undertook the mission, and brought over others. Yet was it not Christ who made this division, but the evil nature of the parties; when He says that it is He that does it, He speaks according to the manner of Scripture. As it is written, God hath given them eyes that they should not see. (Is. 6:10.) Here is also a great proof that the Old Testament is like the New. For among the Jews a man was to put his neighbour to death if he found him making a calf, or sacrificing to Baalphegor; so here to shew that it was the same God who ordained both that and these precepts, He reminds them of the prophecy, A man’s foes are they of his household. For this same thing happened among the Jews; there were Prophets, and false Prophets; there the multitude was divided, and houses were set against themselves; there some believed one part, and some another. JEROME. These are almost the words of the Prophet Micah. (Mic. 7:6.) We should always take note when a passage is cited out of the Old Testament, whether the sense only, or the very words are given.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I sit on the stoop for an hour or so, mooning. I come to the same conclusions I always come to when I have a minute to think for myself. Either I must go home immediately and start to write or I must run away and start a wholly new life. The thought of beginning a book terrifies me: there is so much to tell that I don’t know where or how to begin. The thought of running away and beginning all over again is equally terrifying: it means working like a nigger to keep body and soul together. For a man of my temperament, the world being what it is, there is absolutely no hope, no solution. Even if I could write the book I want to write nobody would take it—I know my compatriots only too well. Even if I could begin again it would be no use, because fundamentally I have no desire to work and no desire to become a useful member of society. I sit there staring at the house across the way. It seems not only ugly and senseless, like all the other houses on the street, but from staring at it so intently, it has suddenly become absurd. The idea of constructing a place of shelter in that particular way strikes me as absolutely insane. The city itself strikes me as a piece of the highest insanity, everything about it, sewers, elevated lines, slot machines, newspapers, telephones, cops, doorknobs, flophouses, screens, toilet paper, everything. Everything could just as well not be and not only nothing lost but a whole universe gained. I look at the people brushing by me to see if by chance one of them might agree with me. Supposing I intercepted one of them and just asked him a simple question. Supposing I just said to him suddenly: “Why do you go on living the way you do?” He would probably call a cop. I ask myself—does any one ever talk to himself the way I do? I ask myself if there isn’t something wrong with me. The only conclusion I can come to is that I am different.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  In poor urban neighborhoods across the United States, black and brown boys routinely have multiple encounters with the police. Even though many of these children have done nothing wrong, they are targeted by police, presumed guilty, and suspected by law enforcement of being dangerous or engaged in criminal activity. The random stops, questioning, and harassment dramatically increase the risk of arrest for petty crimes. Many of these children develop criminal records for behavior that more affluent children engage in with impunity. Forced back to South Central, blocks from where his brother was murdered, Antonio struggled. A court later found that “[l]iving just blocks from where he was shot and his brother was killed, Nuñez suffered trauma symptoms, including flashbacks, an urgent need to avoid the area, a heightened awareness of potential threats, and an intensified need to protect himself from real or perceived threats.” He got his hands on a gun for self-defense but was quickly arrested for it and placed in a juvenile camp where supervisors reported that he eagerly participated in and positively responded to the structured environment and guidance of staff members. After returning from the camp, Antonio was invited to a party where two men twice Antonio’s age told him that they were planning to fake a kidnapping to get money from a relative who would pay the ransom. They insisted that Antonio join them. Fourteen-year-old Antonio got in a car with the men to pick up the ransom money. The pretend victim sat in the backseat, while Juan Perez drove and Antonio sat in the passenger seat. Before they arrived at their Orange County destination to retrieve the money, they found themselves being followed—and then chased—by two Latino men in a gray van. At some point, Perez and the other man gave Antonio a gun and told him to shoot at the van, and a dangerous high-speed shoot-out unfolded. The men chasing them were undercover police officers—but Antonio didn’t know that when he fired. When a marked police car joined the pursuit, Antonio dropped the gun just before the car crashed into some trees. No one was injured, but Antonio and Perez were charged with aggravated kidnapping and attempted murder of the police officers. Antonio and his twenty-seven-year-old co-defendant were tried together in a joint trial, and both were found guilty. Under California law, a juvenile has to be at least sixteen to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for murder. But there is no minimum age for kidnapping, so the Orange County judge sentenced Antonio to imprisonment until death, asserting that he was a dangerous gang member who could never change or be rehabilitated, despite his difficult background and the absence of any significant criminal history. The judge sent him to California’s dangerous, overcrowded adult prisons.

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

  330The History of Christianity II suggested that Pentecostal revival encourages a Protestant work ethic, motivation, and discipline; for example, many of these churches tell their members to avoid drugs and alcohol. õDaniel Olukoya, the Nigerian prosperity preacher, is an interesting case: He believes in demons and witches, but he also has a Ph.D. in molecular genetics. When he started his church in 1989, he was working at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research. The fact that he has a Ph.D. in genetics but trusts the Holy Spirit to heal gives his ministry even more credibility in the eyes of his followers. He is turning the authority of Western modernity on its head. õA British scholar named Paul Gifford has spent a long time studying Olukoya, and unlike Martin and Berger, he says that Pentecostal prosperity preaching is no force of modernization or political empowerment. Olukoya’s message robs people of control; it tells people to be distrustful of everyone but the church, and that the key to success in life is not to work hard, but to pray and give Olukoya lots of money. From this point of view, there is no Protestant work ethic. CONCLUSION õThe controversy over Aladura churches like Olukoya’s has spread around the world. These churches have been in Britain since the 1960s, established by Nigerians who went there to work and study, and they spread to other European countries in the 1970s. For years, African churches have been sending missionaries to help build congregations in Europe. õThese congregations tend to be more ethnically diverse than the ones back home, mixing African immigrants from many different backgrounds. They came to Europe with the hope of landing a good job, eventually paying for their extended family to come too. But the reality of immigrant life is never so rosy as the fantasy. 331Lecture 33—Prophetic Religion in Modern Africa õWhen things get hard—when immigrants struggle to find work, or their children start acting out—the theology of spiritual warfare can be a seductive tool for survival in this totally alien, secular culture. The church may tell them that Satan is behind a deportation order, or that their unruly nine-year-old has become possessed by a demon— and for a hefty fee, church elders can take that child away and perform an exorcism. õWestern authorities have struggled to stop the child abuse that happens under the guise of these “exorcisms,” while also battling the tendency of the Western media to sensationalize these stories and play into racist stereotypes of African immigrant religion as a primitive and violent sort of sorcery. SUGGESTED READING Gifford, Christianity, Development, and Modernity in Africa. Hastings, A History of African Christianity. Jenkins, The Next Christendom. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äWhy might the Aladura movement have appealed to Nigerians in the 1920s? äWhy did government officials in the Belgian Congo respond to a nonviolent religious movement with violent suppression? äWhy has the prosperity gospel become a worldwide movement, while so many Christians denounce it as a heresy?

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

  198The History of Christianity II õHeyrick wrote a pamphlet in 1824 called Immediate, not Gradual Abolition, and that title gives a pretty clear idea of when she thought slavery should end. Wilberforce thought this view was dangerous—he thought a gradual approach was best—and told his colleagues not to get involved with women’s anti-slavery societies because they were too radical and inappropriate. But Heyrick’s writing had a big inf luence on the American abolitionist most famous for demanding an immediate end to slavery, William Lloyd Garrison. CHRISTIAN REFORM õBy the early 19 th century, the abolitionist movement was only one of a host of social reform movements swirling through North American and European societies at this time. Other movements included the temperance movement, the Sunday School movement, and the exploding missionary movement, which combined a desire to spread the gospel around the world with the goal of “civilizing” non-Christian societies and introducing them to Western education, technology, and social norms. õThis desire to reform the world was exploding at the same time that evangelical revivals were sweeping Britain and North America. Charles Grandison Finney, perhaps the greatest evangelist of the revival movement that historians call the Second Great Awakening, was also one of America’s leading abolitionists. õWomen were everywhere in these movements. Women made up a disproportionate number of regular churchgoers: In the 19 th century, women generally accounted for 55 to 70 percent of the total number going to church in America. 199Lecture 20—Christian Missions and Moral Reform õMany women devoted themselves to church-based volunteer work, abolitionist societies, Sunday School campaigns, tract societies, and moral reform groups like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). This last was founded in Ohio in 1874 to promote abstinence from alcohol. õFive years after the founding of the WCTU, a Methodist woman named Frances Willard became president, and remained in the position until her death in 1898. She was an ambitious feminist who expanded the mission of the organization to include lobbying for the eight-hour workday, prison reform, women’s suffrage, and women’s rights around the globe, although temperance always remained at the center. õWithin a decade, the WCTU had grown into an international organization that dispatched female missionaries to preach the gospel of temperance and moral purity in Australia, Italy, and even Japan and India. They recruited local women to take up the cause; for example, an Indian woman named Pandita Ramabai traveled around India stumping for temperance, and founded a college for Indian widows. GENDER AND CULTURE IN THE MISSION FIELD õThe missionary life was a seductive calling for many Protestant women in the 19 th century. Between 1861 and 1894, women founded women’s missionary societies in 33 denominations as well as 17 societies devoted to evangelizing within the borders of the U.S. õInitially, most churches had rules against single women going abroad as missionaries, so women would go abroad with their husbands. Most churches also thought it was inappropriate for women to do aggressive evangelization, so women’s societies and female missionaries focused

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The house was quiet. The only sound he heard was George breathing heavily in the other room; soon he could hear him snoring. Charlie had been slowly stroking his mother’s hair, desperately hoping that she would open her eyes. The blood from her head had saturated the towel and was spreading onto Charlie’s pants. Charlie thought his mother might be dying or was maybe even already dead. He had to call an ambulance. He stood up, flooded with anxiety, and cautiously made his way to the bedroom. Charlie saw George on the bed asleep and felt a surge of hatred for this man. He had never liked him, never understood why his mother had let him live with them. George didn’t like Charlie, either; he was rarely friendly to the boy. Even when he wasn’t drunk, George seemed angry all the time. His mother had told Charlie that George could be sweet, but Charlie never saw any of that. Charlie knew that George’s first wife and child had been killed in a car accident and that was why Charlie’s mom said he drank so much. In the eighteen months that George lived with them, it seemed to Charlie that there had been nothing but violence, loud arguments, pushing and shoving, threats, and turmoil. His mother had stopped smiling the way she used to; she’d become nervous and jumpy, and now, he thought, she’s on the kitchen floor, dead. Charlie walked to the dresser against the back wall of the bedroom to reach the phone. He had called 911 a year earlier, after George had hit his mom, but she had directed him to do so and told him what to say. When he reached the phone, he wasn’t sure why he didn’t just pick up the receiver. He could never really explain why he opened the dresser drawer instead, put his hand under the folded white T-shirts his mom had laundered, and felt for the handgun he knew George kept hidden there. He’d found it there when George had said Charlie could wear an Auburn University T-shirt someone had given him. It was way too small for George and way too big for Charlie, but he’d been grateful to have it; it had been one of George’s few kind gestures. This time he didn’t pull his hand back in fear as he had before. He picked up the gun. He’d never fired a gun before, but he knew he could do it. George was now snoring rhythmically. Charlie walked over to the bed, his arms stretched out, pointing the gun at George’s head. As Charlie hovered over him, the snoring stopped. The room grew very, very quiet. And that’s when Charlie pulled the trigger. The sound of the bullet firing was much louder than Charlie had expected. The gun jerked and pushed Charlie a step back; he almost lost his balance and fell. He looked at George and squeezed his eyes closed; it was horrible.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Once we got home I ran her a hot bubble bath. I went into the bedroom to tell her it was ready, but she’d already fallen asleep. I wasn’t tired. I woke her up around 6:00 P.M. to eat dinner. I’d made her favorite meal, but she just kind of picked at it with her fork. “You OK?” I asked her. “Yeah, sure,” she answered, just like I would have. “You coming to the bar after work?” She was quiet for a minute. “Can I meet you at home? [’m just so tired.” I instantly grew sullen because I was scared. “What’s wrong with meeting me at the bar?” “Can we talk about this another time?” she asked me. “Yeah, sure,” I said. That night I packed her a lunch with the little red hearts on the bag. She picked it up and smiled—at the bag, not at me. I felt strange the next morning when the other women came to work to meet their butches. As each person asked me where Milli was I grew more defensive and anery. Milli and I fought about it that morning. “Did it ever occur to you that I might be uncomfortable at the bar?” Milli shouted. That had never occurred to me at all. “Why?” I asked, puzzled. “Because there’s attitude toward us.” “What are you talking about? Lots of the women at the bar are pros.” I was aware I was shouting and I wished I would stop. Stone Butch Blues W1 “They're hometown girls who turn tricks to pay the rent. They’re ashamed of what they do. They aren't into the life in the same way as the rest of us. We're different.” I had never thought about it. I was reeling. “Get it, baby? That’s your people, not mine.” Her ice-cold tone chilled me. “My people are the women I dance with. That’s who watches my back.” Milli always was a pro’s pro. I grabbed my leather jacket and took the bike far outside the city limits before I pulled off the road and sat down to think. The rest of the week we were super-polite to each other around the apartment. I couldn’t get Milli to respond to me. She wouldn’t play. “I don’t know,” I told Edwin. “I’m used to being the one who shuts down.” “Give her time,” Ed said. “You both just need time.” Sunday morning I was almost asleep when Milli came in. She was in the bathroom for a long time before I realized something was wrong, She turned her face away when I came to the bathroom door. I sat down on the tile floor. “You OK?” I asked her. “Yeah, baby. Go to sleep.” After a few minutes I got her to look at me. Her 18 = Leslie Feinberg

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  One day, I don’t know how, but I plucked up the courage to ask Zaheera for her phone number, which was a big deal back then because it wasn’t like cellphone numbers where everybody has everyone’s number for texting and everything. This was the landline. To her house. Where her parents might answer. We were talking one afternoon at school and I asked, “Can I get your phone number? Maybe I can call you and we can talk at home sometime.” She said yes, and my mind exploded. What???!!!! A girl is giving me her phone number???!!! This is insane!!! What do I do??!! I was so nervous. I’ll never forget her telling me the digits one by one as I wrote them down, trying to keep my hand from shaking. We said goodbye and went our separate ways to class, and I was like, Okay, Trevor. Play it cool. Don’t call her right away. I called her that night. At seven. She’d given me her number at two. That was me being cool. Dude, don’t call her at five. That’s too obvious. Call her at seven. I phoned her house that night. Her mom answered. I said, “May I speak to Zaheera, please?” Her mom called her, and she came to the phone and we talked. For like an hour. After that we started talking more, at school, on the phone. I never told her how I felt. Never made a move. Nothing. I was always too scared. Zaheera and Gary broke up. Then they got back together. Then they broke up. Then they got back together. They kissed once, but she didn’t like it, so they never kissed again. Then they broke up for real. I bided my time through it all. I watched Popular Gary go down in flames, and I was still the good friend. Yep, the plan is working. Matric dance, here we come. Only two and a half years to go… Then we had the mid-year school holidays. The day we came back, Zaheera wasn’t at school. Then she wasn’t at school the next day. Then she wasn’t at school the day after that. Eventually I went and tracked down Johanna on the quad. “Hey, where’s Zaheera?” I said. “She hasn’t been around for a while. Is she sick?” “No,” she said. “Didn’t anyone tell you? She left the school. She doesn’t go here anymore.” “What?” “Yeah, she left.” My first thought was, Wow, okay. That’s news. I should give her a call to catch up. “What school did she move to?” I asked. “She didn’t. Her dad got a job in America. During the break they moved there. They’ve emigrated.” “What?” “Yeah. She’s gone. She was such a good friend, too. I’m really sad. Are you as sad as I am?” “Uh…yeah,” I said, still trying to process everything. “I liked Zaheera. She was really cool.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  As her hand ran up my thigh, I froze. “I’m sorry, baby, it’s OK,” she reassured me. I rolled over and she came into my arms. “Usually it’s me that reacts like that,” she said. “It’s strange. It’s like being on the other side of the looking glass, you know?” I didn’t, but I could feel myself drift irresistibly toward sleep. “Sleep now, baby,’ Angie cooed in my ear. “You're safe here.” “Angie,” I asked her as I slipped into sleep, “will you be here when I wake up?” “Sleep now, baby,” she answered. Stone Butch Blues 77 IT WAS TIME TO FIND a factory job. The butches urged me to try to get into steel or auto. Of course I already knew that. I wasn’t a damn fool. The strength of the unions in those heavy industries had won livable wages and decent benefits. But Edwin said there was mote to it than that. The trade unions safeguarded job security. She told me that unlike a nonunion shop if she had a run-in with a jerk on the plant floor, it didn’t signal her last day on the job. You couldn’t be fired just because some foreman didn’t like your face. With union protection, all the butches agreed, a he-she could catve out a niche, and begin earning valuable seniority. In the meantime, while I was waiting for an opening, I had to work through the temporary labor agencies at minimum wage. In early autumn the agency sent me to a one-day job on the loading docks of a frozen food plant. My heart leaped when I saw Grant walking into the factory ahead of me. I caught up to her and shook her hand. Unloading trucks on the docks was male turf. It meant a lot to have another butch watch your back. Grant dug her gloved hands deep inside the pockets of her blue Navy coat. “Brrr,” she shivered. “I’m freezin’ my ass off out here, let’s get inside.” Then she sauntered very slowly toward the loading docks. She never hurried. She was so cool. One of the truckers shouted, “He-shes at high noon!” Several guys peered out from inside the plant and shook their heads in disgust. It was going to be a long shift. I was glad we walked slowly, like we owned the goddamn parking lot. We climbed up on the dock. The foreman came out to look us over. Grant took off her glove and extended her hand. At first the foreman looked like he wasn’t going to shake her hand, but he did. What little respect Grant got, she earned. The afternoon was waning, The sun dipped low in the winter sky. A brutal wind blew off the frozen lake. The huge semi we were unloading served to block the wind, but not the cold. I shivered. We were told we would unload two of these long, long trucks during the shift. We both nodded. Personally, I had my doubts.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Darlene told us later that a family on their way to church found us. They got some people to help get us to their home nearby. They didn’t take us to the hospital because they didn’t know if we were in trouble with the law or not. When Edwin came to, she gave them Darlene’s number. Darlene and her friends came and got us. Darlene took care of both of us at their apartment for a week before Ed or I were really coherent. “Where’s Ed, is she OK?” was the first thing I remember asking Darlene. “That’s the first thing she asked me—how you were,” Darlene answered. “Alive. You’te both alive, you stupid motherfuckers.” Neither of us ever saw an emergency room doctor for fear they’d call the cops to see if we were in any trouble. When Ed and I could sit up and even walk a little, we began recuperating in the living room together during the days while Darlene slept. The couch opened up as a bed. Ed gave me The Ballot and the Bullet by Malcolm X. She encouraged me to read W.E.B. Du Bois and James Baldwin. But we each had a headache so bad we could hardly read the newspaper. All day long we lay next to each other and watched television: “Get Smart,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,’ “Green Acres.” We healed in spite of it. Ed got disability pay during her absence. I lost my job as a printer. When Ed and I finally showed up at the Malibou a month later, someone pulled the plug on the jukebox and everyone rushed up to hug us. “No, wait, gently,’ we shouted, both backing up toward the door. “Notice the resemblance?” I asked, as Ed and I put out faces near each other. We had matching gashes overt our right eyebrows. Speaking for myself, I lost a lot of confidence after that beating. The pain in my rib cage reminded me with every breath how vulnerable I really was. I propped myself up at a back table and watched Stone Butch Blues 59 all my friends dancing together. It felt good to be back home. Peaches sat down next to me, draped her arm around my shoulders, and planted a long sweet kiss on my cheek. Cookie offered me a job as a bouncer on the weekends. I held my ribs and winced. She said I could wait on tables until I healed, if I wanted to. I sure needed the money. I watched Justine, a stunning drag queen, going from table to table with an empty Maxwell House coffee can, collecting money. She came over to the table where Peaches and I were sitting and began counting out the bills. “You don’t have to contribute, darlin’.” “What’s it for?” I asked. “For your new suit,” she answered, and continued counting the bills. “Whose new suit?”

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  The next step would be for the parents to persuade Bruce to talk to me. I was worried about whether they could. The Moonies do a very thorough job of convincing people that former members are satanic and that even being in their presence could be dangerous.3 I mentally reviewed the possibilities. There were a number of ways things could go badly: Bruce could refuse to meet with me, or meet with me and walk away before we had enough time. He could later tell the Moonies his parents asked him to meet with me, in which case he might be whisked away and given deep phobias about Satan working through his family. He would have come to believe what I believed while I was a Moonie. I was programmed to fear my family and cut off personal contact for over a year. For the moment, then, all I could do was wait. The next morning I was interviewed for a television show on cults, something I do frequently all over the country. After the taping, I canceled all my appointments for the day. Bruce’s parents called from the Boston airport. They were about to leave for their son’s house. We reviewed our strategy one more time. I crossed my fingers. Two hours later the phone rang. They had managed to bring Bruce to a Chinese restaurant not far from my house. Bruce had agreed to meet me. I grabbed whatever I thought I might need to show him—file folders, photocopies of articles, and books—and threw them into the car and drove to the restaurant. When I arrived and met the family, the parents’ faces were full of worry and concern. Bruce tried to smile at first and shook my hand. But it was clear to me that he was thinking, “Can I trust this guy? Who is he?” I sat down in the booth with them. I asked Bruce about himself and why he thought his parents were so concerned that they flew from Minneapolis. Within an hour, after asking him enough questions to get a good handle on his state of mind, I decided to “go for it.” “Did they tell you about pledge service yet?” I asked. He shook his head and looked surprised. “What’s that?” “Oh, that’s a very important ceremony members do every Sunday morning, on the first day of every month, and on four holy days the group observes,” I started. “Members bow three times with their face touching the floor before an altar with Sun Myung Moon’s picture on it and recite a six-point pledge to be faithful to God, to Moon, and to the fatherland—Korea.” “You’re kidding!”