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 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.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  The iconic cover of the April 1966 number of Time magazine posed a question, highlighted in red against a stark black background, that cut to the heart of the cultural debates of that age: Is God dead? Its March 2017 counterpart mimicked this dramatic style in posing the new question lying at the core of American public life: Is Truth dead? Do we live in an age of aggressively asserted private beliefs, rather than evidenced public truths? Was the sociologist and cultural critic Philip Rieff right in characterising the history of human civilisation as a shift from ‘fate’ to ‘faith’ – and finally to ‘fiction’? 1 Why are objective facts now less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to subjective emotion and personal belief? Is this just some transient form of generational narcissism, or is it the shape of the future? In such an environment, personal belief – that is, something that cannot be proved to be true but is believed to be reasonable – flourishes; the problem is that it is recategorised as ‘truth’. While some speak about a rejection of authority in western culture, we are really seeing a relocation of authority within individual private experience that leads to people becoming trapped in their own personal versions of reality, refusing to accept external referents that might call these into question. Many are alarmed at these developments, feeling that such an emphasis on context, discourse and history has led to a neglect of traditional concerns for truth and a responsible attempt to grasp a reality which ultimately lies beyond our control and to which we can be held accountable. We are caught up in a battle of ideas in which there is no criterion of adjudication accepted by both parties. Some claim that knowledge is independent of history, power and perspective, and others that knowledge is determined by history, power and perspective. A Post-Truth World: Conspiracy Theories and Wish-Fulfilment One of the most important manifestations of a post-truth culture is the surge in contemporary conspiracy theories. Dan Brown’s highly successful novel The Da Vinci Code (2002) fictionalised some controversial theories regarding early Christian history, arguing that the Catholic Church kept secret Jesus Christ’s marriage to Mary Magdalene, from which sprang a ‘holy lineage’ protected by a secret organisation known as the ‘Priory of Sion.’ 2 Despite its obvious evidential deficits – and the fact it is conceived as fiction – this theory achieved a huge following. It was what a lot of people wanted to believe. Some conspiracy theories are religious – for example, the idea that American government agencies have been infiltrated by Satanists.

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

  Wing Walker 145 away to fiddle with Buttercup’s struts, so it’s up to me and Leon to make conversation. “When did you last do this?” I ask. “Year or so ago.” “Where?” He shrugs. “Mexico. Britain. Australia. Thailand.” Everywhere, it seems, but the States. Nowhere I’d have heard of him. “Done it with another person before?” He smiles, showing small white teeth. Both eyeteeth point in slightly. Too poor for orthodontics. That’s okay, so was my family. “Yeah. I don’t like doing it alone.” Bob’s finished fiddling and he produces a second harness. “You’ll share the central brace,” he says, “one on each side. Ain’t had time to put up the other poles. We’ll just take Buttercup up and see how you get along together up there.” I hoist up to the lower wing with ease, I do it all the time. When I stand up and look down, Leon’s eyes whip away from my legs. Obviously likes women, at least a little. We attach the harnesses firmly to the central pole, checking to make sure they won’t tangle as we move around. It’s a wide waist belt with shoulder straps and a slender steel cable that attaches to the pole. That’s it. One skinny cable between me and eternity. My long hair is tightly braided and I wear a padded helmet as we’re only practicing. No need for glamour this morning. The earpiece of the radio tucks into the side. Bob turns the prop and Buttercup splutters into. life. It’s a crisp morning, and my hands are already tingling from the chill, but I don’t like to wear gloves, I like to feel Buttercup beneath my palms. I see that Leon is bare palmed too — or maybe he doesn’t have gloves. We trundle around to the runway, and Bob revs the engine. Normally, I’d brace myself against the back support as a lever against the wind as we take off — it’s harder with two as we have to stand one each side. But then we’re up and the ground falls away beneath Buttercup’s wings and the lift pushes my feet into the fabric. Bob’s voice comes over the radio. “I'll come around and level off at 500 feet, and fly straight. Then you can do whatever it is you’re going to do out there.” Beneath Buttercup’s wings, there are corn fields and the yellow flat plains of eastern Colorado. A dry creek, a tangle of cottonwoods, yellowing in the early fall days. The huddle of hangars and huts “N46 Cheyenne Blue around the airfield. Bob points her nose to the east and we fly into the slanting sun.

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

  It was a serious loss but not irreparable. The Plain Indians, however, were as persistent that summer as mosquitoes. I never went out after game but they tried to cut me off and once at least nothing but the speed and stamina of Blue Devil saved me. I had to give up serious shooting and depend on luck bringing us near game. Gradually the Indians following us grew more numerous and bolder. We were attacked at nightfall and daybreak three or four days running and the half wild cattle began to get very scary. Bob did not conceal his anxiety. “Bad Injuns! very mean Injuns—!” One afternoon they followed us openly; there were at one time over a hundred in view; evidently they were getting ready for a serious attack. Bob’s genius got us a respite. While Charlie was advising a pitched battle, Bob suddenly remembered that there was a scrub-oak forest some five miles further on to our right that would give us a refuge. Charlie and Bent, the best shots, lay down and began to shoot and soon made the Indians keep out of sight. In three hours we reached the scrub-oak wood and the bay or bight in it where Bob said the cattle would be safe; for nothing could get through scrub-oak and as soon as we had driven the cattle deep into the bay and brought our wagon to the centre, on the arc of the bight, so to speak, no Indians could stampede the cattle without blotting us out first. For the moment we were safe and as luck would have it, the water in a little creek near by was drinkable. Still we were besieged by over a hundred Indians and those odds were heavy as even Bob admitted. Days passed and the siege continued: the Indians evidently meant to tire us out and get the herd, and our tempers didn’t improve under the enforced idleness and vigilance. One evening Charlie was sprawling at the fire taking up more than his share of it, when Bent who had been looking after the cattle, came in. “Take up your legs, Charlie,” he said roughly, “you don’t want the whole fire.” Charlie didn’t hear or paid no attention: the next moment Bent had thrown himself down on Charlie’s long limbs. With a curse Charlie pushed him off: the next moment Bent had hurled himself on Charlie and had shoved his head down in the fire. After a short struggle Charlie got free and in spite of all I could do, struck Bent. Bent groped for his gun at once; but Charlie was at him striking and swinging like a wild man and Bent had to meet the attack.

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

  Sure, my boss is half my age. Sure, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. But it’s only been one day. “It’s great,” I say, when I get home and find Sasha and the kids waiting for me, anxious to hear about Dad’s big new job. I tell the kids about the beanbag chairs and the Nerf gun fights and the kitchen with the giant wall of candy dispensers, with every kind of candy you can possibly imagine. The kids are seven years old now, and of course this sounds exciting to them. They can’t wait to come to the office with me. They’re going to bring their Nerf guns. “I’m sure we can do that,” I tell them. After dinner I pull Sasha out onto the porch and tell her what I’m really thinking. “This might be a mistake,” I say. “That’s what you said last time.” “Yeah, and last time I was right.” It’s galling to think that I may have leapt from one bad situation to another that’s even worse. What the hell is happening to me? After years of steadily climbing up some imaginary corporate ladder, I’m now turning into a serial screw-up. I glance through the window of the sliding doors. The kids are in the living room, fighting. They fight all the time, and with such passion that sometimes I think we should find an exorcist. They have been through a lot over the past couple of years. They’ve seen Sasha going in and out of the hospital, and then leaving her job. They’ve seen me lose my job at Newsweek, then take a new job in San Francisco and disappear for weeks at a time. They’ve seen me exhausted, burnt out, and depressed. They’ve heard us talking about moving to California. They’re frazzled. We all are. Whatever happens at HubSpot, the best course of action is to hunker down, pretend to be happy, and let our lives regain some stability. That doesn’t mean I can’t bitch to my wife about it. I tell Sasha about Cranium and Wingman not being there. I tell her about the guy who I thought was someone’s administrative assistant and who turned out to be my boss, and how I’m sitting in a room called the content factory, crammed in with two dozen people. Inside, something has happened. My daughter is screaming. She sounds like she has been set on fire. “Want a paper bag to breathe into?”

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

  Raised in nondenominational evangelicalism with a dose of Pentecostalism, Palin was a self-described “Bible-believing Christian,” a down-to-earth candidate (“just your average hockey mom”) who appealed to plain-folk evangelicals, to those tired of being disparaged by “liberal elites.” She was also a creationist, she was staunchly pro-gun and anti-abortion, and she had just given birth to her fifth child, who had Down syndrome. But Palin didn’t only, or even primarily, project a maternal image. A former beauty queen, she embodied an ideal of feminine beauty that had been elevated to a new level of spiritual—and political—significance. She was the ultimate culture warrior, a Phyllis Schlafly for a new generation, a moose-hunting pit bull in lipstick who could give feminists a run for their money, without compromising her sex appeal. In this way, Palin embodied the conservative ideal that “their” women knew how to please men. And Palin delighted in undermining the masculinity of liberal men, especially Barack Obama. Many voters found Palin’s unpredictability and general ignorance of world affairs disqualifying, but to many evangelicals, she was, in the words of Richard Land, “a rock star .”8 SEVENTY-FOUR PERCENT of white evangelicals voted for the McCain/Palin ticket. But 24 percent of white evangelicals—up 4 percent from 2004—broke ranks and voted for Obama. The Obama campaign had targeted moderate white evangelicals, the sort who had been voting Republican for twenty years but who wanted to expand the list of “moral values” to include things like poverty, climate change, human rights, and the environment. Obama doubled his support among white evangelicals ages eighteen to twenty-nine compared to Kerry’s in 2004, and nearly doubled his support among those ages thirty to forty-four. Scholars and pundits alike started to declare the end of the culture wars, and to look ahead to “the end of white Christian America.” The old guard was shaken.9 But militant evangelicalism was always at its strongest with a clear enemy to fight. Two weeks before the election, with an Obama victory appearing likely, one Colorado Springs pastor reminded fellow evangelicals of this: “This could be the best thing that ever happened to the evangelical cause. . . . We’re used to being against the tide.” He was right. The presidency of Barack Obama would strengthen evangelicals’ sense of embattlement and embolden the more militant voices within the movement.10 Race had been central to the formation of white evangelicals’ political and cultural identity, and so it’s not surprising that evangelical opposition to the first African American president would reflect a belief in his “otherness.” Explicit expressions of racism were rare, but among conservatives generally, the birther movement gained traction, questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s citizenship. Within evangelical circles, Franklin Graham added fuel to the fire by agreeing that the president had “some issues to deal with” regarding his birth certificate. Graham also questioned the legitimacy of Obama’s Christian faith. For Christian nationalists, casting doubt on Obama’s faith functioned in the same way as questioning the legitimacy of his citizenship.

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

  (In 1945, when President Truman proposed universal military training for males over the age of eighteen, evangelical churches resisted, concerned about what would happen to men “removed from home and church influences” and “subjected to the temptations for which military training camps are notorious.”)19 No font of virtue, the military became for evangelicals a mission field, ripe for harvest. Through organizations like the Navigators, the Officers’ Christian Fellowship, the Overseas Christian Servicemen’s Centers, and the Christian Military Fellowship, evangelicals stepped up to address the moral shortcomings of the nation’s soldiers. The military, which had its own reasons to be concerned about the discipline and moral vitality of its forces, welcomed the work of evangelical organizations. It was the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial relationship.20 Graham cut his teeth as a revivalist during the Second World War. As the first paid evangelist for Youth for Christ, he worked both to evangelize the nation’s youth and to craft heroic Christian citizens who could promote Christianity and democracy at home and abroad. YFC rallies featured patriotic hymns, color guards, and veterans’ testimonies, and Graham preached a gospel of heroic Christian nationalism with unparalleled passion. By the end of the war, he had emerged as one of evangelicalism’s rising stars.21 IN THE FALL OF 1949 , however, Graham’s future was uncertain. Harboring doubts about the authority of the Bible, he began to question whether God might be calling him to a different path. It was on a particularly dark night of the soul that Graham, open Bible before him, resolved to set his intellectual difficulties aside and surrender completely to the authority of God’s Word. He later recalled waking up with a renewed sense of purpose as he prepared for his upcoming visit to Los Angeles, refreshed with a vision that “something unusual was going to happen” there. What happened next did seem nothing short of miraculous. Two factors contributed to the unprecedented success of Graham’s LA crusade: the looming threat of nuclear annihilation and the conversion of a celebrity cowboy. The Lord worked in mysterious ways.22 Two days before the opening of Graham’s revival, President Truman announced that Russia had successfully tested an atomic bomb. Imminent destruction suddenly seemed a very real possibility, which suited the revivalist’s message just fine. With an urgent call for repentance, Graham brought the residents of Los Angeles to their knees: “Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself who had declared war against Almighty God,” he inveighed. In this war it was clear that America was on God’s side, but it was time that Americans started acting like it. Their city was third on the list of Soviet targets, he warned, not because of its strategic significance but because of its reputation as a “city of wickedness and sin”—a city plagued by crime, drinking, rampant sexual immorality, and the dissolution of marriages.

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

  90 Lecture 17: Paul’s Letter to the Romans Paul’s Letter to the Romans Lecture 17 By all counts, Romans has a unique position among the Pauline epistles. The letter indicates that Paul was not the founder of the church in Rome and that he had never even visited it. T he letter does not appear, at least on the surface, to be directed to any problems found in the Roman church; when it does deal with ethical or theological issues, it does so abstractly—not in direct response to a situation in the congregation. Instead of addressing the needs of the Roman church per se, Paul uses the letter to explain at great length his understanding of the Christian gospel, emphasizing in particular his view that salvation comes to all people—Jew and Gentile equally—through faith in Christ, apart from doing the works of the Law. His reasons for developing his views at such length to a church he had never visited are never stated, but may be inferred from some of the things he says in the course of the letter. Paul indicates that he is about to travel to Jerusalem and he is concerned about his reception among “Jewish-Christians” there, who are suspicious of his “Law-free” gospel (15:25–31). He may be developing his views about the relationship of Jews and Gentiles in Christ as a trial run for his trip. Paul also indicates that he will be starting a mission to the West and suggests that he would like to use the Roman church as a base of operations (1:10–15). Given the misperceptions that some people in the Roman community have about his gospel (e.g., 3:8), he may be using the letter to assure his readers that his mission is worthy of their support. Whatever the precise reason for the letter, it’s clear that Romans provides the most systematic exposition of Paul’s understanding of God’s work of salvation through Christ. We have already seen some of the basic features of Paul’s understanding of the importance of Christ as the way to salvation. In Romans, we ¿ nd the clearest development of Paul’s theological reÀ ections. A close reading of Romans indicates that Paul has different ways of conceptualizing how God used Christ’s death to bring salvation; that is to say, Paul has different conceptual “models” for salvation. The model Paul

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

  The writer reminds Timothy that having been taught by his mother Eunice and grandmother Lois, he has been acquainted ‘from childhood... with the sacred writings’ leading to ‘faith in Christ Jesus’. The writer might simply have been referring to teaching from the Hebrew Bible before Christian conversion, but otherwise, the rather prolonged chronology that this statement implies increases doubts that the letters are genuinely by Paul. [15] The writer of the Pastoral Epistles also adds a significant extra element on Christian marriage by telling women that their salvation will come from having children (1 Tim. 2.15). Thus procreation had arrived back at the centre of marriage where Judaism had placed it, despite Paul’s original silence on that issue. Children were not the only problem for the Haustafeln to regulate in Christian Churches. Equally in need of careful management were women who lacked the benefit of subordination to a husband, generally thanks to bereavement: widows. They presented a dual headache for developing Christian communities, either being dependent through poverty or age, or not being dependent enough. Some might enjoy financial resources and opinions of their own, not to mention the ability of grandmothers in most known human societies to intimidate the rest of their family, which an increasingly male clerical leadership might find difficult to control. A subsidiary issue, and a potential point of friction with surrounding society, was how to treat young widows: should they remarry or not? Crystallizing official Christianity was firmly of the opinion that they must remain faithful to one spouse, even if he were deceased; Roman legislation on marriage and procreation underlined imperial concern that they should remarry. The author of the Pastoral Epistles was torn between Christian theology, a desire for public respectability and a firm conviction that young widows were natural troublemakers: his eventual conclusion was that they should remarry, so as ‘to give the enemy no occasion to revile us’. That contradicted Paul’s earlier preference that all widows should stay unmarried, whatever their age. [16] As a result, an air of anxiety hangs over New Testament references to widows. The Acts of the Apostles indeed backdates trouble even to before the time of Paul’s ministry, when the surviving disciples of Jesus had to sort out accusations of preferential treatment between Greek- and Hebrew/Aramaic- speaking widows in the assembly in Jerusalem (Acts 6.1–7). After the Pastoral Epistles’ detailed regulations for their behaviour and the scope of their activities within the Church, Churches developed formal associations for eligible widows, mostly centred on confining them as much as possible to private life. The most restrictive view comes from a Syrian order for the running of a Church community, probably of third-century date, the Didascalia Apostolorum (‘Teaching of the Apostles’).

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

  Title : Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Author: Du Mez, Kristin Kobes ,Kobes Du Mez, Kristin ASIN : B07ZTSVLX3 JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE [image file=Image00000.jpg] How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation [image file=Image00000.jpg] Kristin Kobes Du Mez [image "image" file=Image00001.jpg] This one is for Jack. CONTENTSINTRODUCTION Chapter 1 SADDLING UP Chapter 2 JOHN WAYNE WILL SAVE YOUR ASS Chapter 3 GOD’S GIFT TO MAN Chapter 4 DISCIPLINE AND COMMAND Chapter 5 SLAVES AND SOLDIERS Chapter 6 GOING FOR THE JUGULAR Chapter 7 THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO Chapter 8 WAR FOR THE SOUL Chapter 9 TENDER WARRIORS Chapter 10 NO MORE CHRISTIAN NICE GUY Chapter 11 HOLY BALLS Chapter 12 PILGRIM’S PROGRESS IN CAMO Chapter 13 WHY WE WANT TO KILL YOU Chapter 14 SPIRITUAL BADASSES Chapter 15 A NEW HIGH PRIEST Chapter 16 EVANGELICAL MULLIGANS: A HISTORY CONCLUSION Acknowledgments Notes Index JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE INTRODUCTIONO N A BITTERLY COLD DAY IN JANUARY 2016 , Donald Trump stood on the stage of an auditorium at a small Christian college in Iowa. He boasted of his poll numbers and his crowd sizes. He warned of the dangers posed by Muslims and undocumented immigrants, and he talked of building a border wall. He denigrated American politicians as stupid, weak, and pathetic. He claimed that Christianity was “under siege” and urged Christians to band together and assert their power. He promised to lead. He had no doubts about the loyalty of his followers: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” he claimed.1 That morning, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, introduced Trump. As a pastor Jeffress couldn’t endorse a candidate, but he made clear that he wouldn’t be there if he didn’t think Trump “would make a great president.” Jeffress wasn’t alone. Already at that point, before the Iowa caucuses at the beginning of February, 42 percent of white evangelicals supported Trump—more than any other candidate. The reason was simple, Jeffress contended. Evangelicals were “sick and tired of the status quo.” They were looking for the leader who would “reverse the downward death spiral of this nation that we love so dearly.”2 I wasn’t in Iowa at the time, but I watched this spectacle unfold as it streamed online. I knew the setting well. The college was Dordt College, my alma mater. The town was Sioux Center, my hometown. I’d grown up a short walk from campus, on the other side of the old farmstead only recently converted back to native prairie. I’d attended the local Christian grade school, where my mom was my PE teacher. My dad, an ordained minister, taught theology at the college since before I was born. Every year as a child I’d attended Easter sunrise services in that auditorium, and as a college student I faithfully attended chapel services in that same space.

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

  The man—gray hair, unstylishly cut; horn-rimmed glasses; button-down shirt—pulls his Subaru Outback into a parking garage and, palms a little sweaty, grabs his sensible laptop backpack, and heads to the front door of a gleaming, renovated historic redbrick building. It is April 15, 2013, and that man is me. I’m heading for my first day of work at HubSpot, the first job I’ve ever had that wasn’t in a newsroom. HubSpot’s offices occupy several floors of a nineteenth-century furniture factory that has been transformed into the cliché of what the home of a tech start-up should look like: exposed beams, frosted glass, a big atrium, modern art hanging in the lobby. Riding the elevator to the third floor, I feel both nerves and adrenaline. Part of me still can’t believe that I’ve pulled this off. Nine months ago I was unceremoniously dumped from my job at Newsweek magazine in New York. I was terrified that I might never work again. Now I’m about to become a marketing guy at one of the hottest tech start-ups on the East Coast. There is one slight problem: I know nothing about marketing. This didn’t seem like such a big deal when I was going through the interviews and talking these people into hiring me. Now I’m not so sure. I reassure myself by remembering that HubSpot seems pretty excited about having me come aboard. Cranium, the chief marketing officer or CMO, wrote an article on the HubSpot blog announcing that he had hired me. Tech blogs wrote up the story of the fifty-two-year-old Newsweek journalist leaving the media business to go work for a software company. But when I arrive at HubSpot’s reception desk, something weird happens: Nobody is expecting me. The receptionist, Penny, who could pass for a high school student, has no idea who I am or why I’m here. She frowns and looks me up on her computer: nothing. This seems odd. I wasn’t expecting a brass band and balloons, but I did assume that someone, presumably my boss, would be there to meet me on my first day at work. “I’m going to be working for Cranium,” I tell Penny. Cranium is a big, hulking, baby-faced guy in his late thirties who once was a college football lineman and still looks the part. In his official HubSpot management team photo, he wears an open-collar oxford shirt and a white T- shirt, like a beefy-faced frat boy. Officially he is the person who hired me, but the decision was made by HubSpot’s co-founders—Brian Halligan, the CEO, and Dharmesh Shah, the chief technology officer. Halligan and Shah didn’t recruit me; I recruited them.

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

  Let us go forth, the Cross of Jesus going on before.” Christians were called to fight the Lord’s battle, at home and abroad, and seek dominion in His name. The paperback edition of Walton’s book boasted 150,000 copies in print, and Walton became a frequent speaker at D. James Kennedy’s annual Reclaiming America for Christ conferences.29 By promoting preemptive war, Walton contributed to a “crusade theory of warfare.” In wars of Christian conquest, “righteous states” were justified in taking the offensive against their enemies. Crusade warfare made sense in the context of Cold War politics, where neutrality was not an option. But in the summer of 1987, in the midst of the Iran-Contra hearings, President Reagan had stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, ordering Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” Two years later, the wall came down. Although conservative evangelicals had been discomfited by Reagan’s pursuit of disarmament during his second term in office, in the end, it was his aggressive posture on the world stage, his penchant to “talk tough and carry a big stick,” that seemed to have produced indisputable results. The dominoes would soon begin to fall, but not in the direction conservative evangelicals had long feared.30 For decades, anticommunism had been a linchpin in the evangelical worldview, justifying militarism abroad and a militant pursuit of moral purity at home. The victory of the free world was something to celebrate, but it was also disorienting. Without a common enemy, it would be more difficult to sustain militant expressions of the faith. Yet even as the Cold War came to an anticlimactic end, the crusade theory of warfare endured. A flexible guide to combat, it could be employed to justify aggression against threats both foreign and domestic. Among Christian nationalists, it could effectively sanctify any engagement where the United States resorted to force. On the home front, it could validate questionable or even ruthless tactics wielded in defense of Christian America. In heroic pursuits of a higher good, the ends would justify the means. Conservative evangelicals knew they were called to fight the Lord’s battle. It just wasn’t entirely clear what that battle would be. Chapter 8 [image file=Image00000.jpg] WAR FOR THE SOULF OR EVANGELICALS, THE 1980S HAD TURNED OUT TO be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, evangelicals relished their newfound political power and worked to make the most of it. In addition to their public advocacy and presidential photo ops, they extended their influence behind the scenes. In the wake of the 1980 White House Conference, James Dobson had established the Family Research Council, a conservative policy research organization to support “pro-family” policies. With Reagan in the White House, Dobson became a “regular consultant” to the president.

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

  71 The Acts of the Apostles Lecture 13 This is our earliest account of Church history, the earliest account we have of the events that transpired after Jesus’ death as Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire. T o this point, we have been considering the Gospels of the New Testament and the life of the historical Jesus; it is now time to move on to Christianity as it developed after Jesus’ death. The earliest account we have about the ancient Christian movement is the Book of Acts, which comes from the pen of Luke, author of the third Gospel. We don’t know what his real name was, of course. Like the Gospel, the Book of Acts is anonymous. As we have seen, there was an early Christian tradition that Luke was the traveling companion of the apostle Paul. The four “we” passages indicate that the author was close to Paul. Because the Acts cover the spread of Christianity among the Gentiles, the author may have been a Gentile. There was one such Gentile physician named Luke, but many scholars question the validity of that tradition. On the other hand, the author may have had access to other sources. One thing is clear, no matter who wrote the Acts, Paul is the hero of this narrative, the man most responsible for the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world. The book’s title is a bit of a misnomer. The apostles do not ¿ gure prominently in it. The main players are the apostle Peter (chapters 1–12) and the newly converted apostle Paul (chapters 13–28). In another sense, the real player is the Holy Spirit, who is seen directing all the action from behind the scenes. The Book of Acts is chieÀ y concerned with the spread of the Christian church after the death of Jesus. Its overall structure and many of its themes are set up in the opening episode (1:1–11). The disciples meet with Jesus after his resurrection, and he instructs them that the end of all things is not yet at hand. They are anxious for the Kingdom of Israel to be restored. They will soon be empowered by the Holy Spirit to be Jesus’ witnesses. They are to spread the good news of his death and resurrection throughout the world “in Jerusalem and all Judea, in Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth” (1:8).

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

  But the Pax Persiana still depended on military force and taxes extorted from the subject races. Cyrus made a point of mentioning the unparalleled might of his army; as he and Marduk marched on Babylon, “his vast troops whose number, like the water in the river, could not be counted, were marching fully armed at his side.” 125 His victory proclamation also noted the tributary system that Cyrus had enforced: at Marduk’s “exalted command, all kings who sit on thrones, from every quarter, from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea, those who inhabit remote districts and the kings of the land of Amurru who live in tents, all of them, brought their weighty tribute into Shuanna and kissed my feet.” 126 Even the most peaceable empire required sustained military aggression and massive expropriation of resources from the populations it conquered. If imperial officials and soldiers felt any moral qualms about this, it would sap the empire’s energy; but if they could be convinced that these policies would ultimately benefit everyone, they would find them more palatable. 127 In the inscriptions of Darius I, who came to the Persian throne after the death of Cyrus’s son Cambyses in 522 BCE, we find a combination of three themes that would recur in the ideology of all successful empires: a dualistic worldview that pits the good of empire against evildoers who oppose it; a doctrine of election that sees the ruler as a divine agent; and a mission to save the world. 128 Darius’s political philosophy was strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism, skillfully adapted to sacralize the imperial project. 129 A large number of the royal inscriptions that have survived in the Persian heartland of the empire referred to the Zoroastrian creation myth. 130 They describe Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord who had appeared to Zoroaster, ordering the cosmos in four stages, creating successively earth, sky, humanity, and finally “happiness” ( shiyati ), which consisted of peace, security, truth, and abundant food. 131 At first there had been only one ruler, one people, and one language. 132 But after the assault of the Hostile Spirit (“the Lie”), humanity split into competing groups, governed by people who called themselves kings. There was war, bloodshed, and disorder for centuries. Then, on September 29, 522, Darius ascended the throne, and the Wise Lord inaugurated the fifth and final stage of creation: Darius would unite the world and restore the original happiness of mankind by creating a worldwide empire. 133 Here we see the difficulty of adapting a predominantly peaceful tradition to the realities of imperial rule. Darius shared Zoroaster’s horror of lawless violence. After Cambyses’s death, he had had to suppress rebellions all over the empire.

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

  36 For some time, Egyptian peasants had engaged in this type of disengagement ( anchoresis ) to escape economic or social tension. During the third century, there had been a crisis of human relations in the villages. These farmers were prosperous but acerbic and quick with their fists, yet the village’s tax burden and the need for cooperation to control the floodwaters of the Nile obliged them to live in unwelcome proximity with uncongenial neighbors. 37 Success was often resented. “Although I possess a good deal of land and am occupied with its cultivation,” one farmer explained, “I am not involved with any person in the village but keep to myself.” 38 When neighborly relationships became unendurable, therefore, people would sometimes retire to the very edge of the settlement. 39 But once Christianity reached the Egyptian countryside in the late third century, anchoresis was no longer a disgruntled withdrawal but had become a positive choice to live according to the gospel in a way that offered a welcome and challenging alternative to the acrimony and tedium of settled life. The monk ( monachos ) lived alone ( monos ), seeking the “freedom from care” ( amerimmia ) that Jesus had prescribed. 40 Like the renouncers of previous times, the monks set up a counterculture, casting off their functional role in the agrarian economy and rejecting its inherent violence. A monk’s struggle began as soon as he left his village. 41 At first, explained one of the greatest of these anchorites, he was plagued by terrifying thoughts “of lengthy old age, inability to perform manual labor, fear of the starvation that will ensue, of the sickness that follows undernourishment, and the deep shame of having to accept the necessities of life from the hands of others.” 42 Their greatest task, however, was to still the violent impulses that lurk in the depths of the human psyche. The monks often described their struggles as a battle with demons, which we moderns usually understand as sexual temptations. But they were less preoccupied by sex than we are: Egyptian monks usually avoided women because they symbolized the economic burden they wanted to escape. 43 Far more threatening than sex to these sharp-tongued Egyptian peasants was the “demon” of anger. 44 However provocative the circumstances, monks must never respond aggressively to any attack. One abbot ruled that there was no excuse for violent speech, even if your brother “plucks out your right eye and cuts off your right hand.” 45 A monk must not even look angry or make an impatient gesture. 46 These monks meditated constantly on Jesus’s command to “love your enemies” because most of them did have enemies in the community. 47 Evagrius of Pontus (d. 399), one of the most influential monastic teachers, drew on Paul’s doctrine of kenosis and instructed monks to empty their minds of the rage, avarice, pride, and vainglory that tore the soul apart and made them close their hearts to others.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  When arousal continues (because discharging it is too threatening), we find ourselves in a no-win situation. We feel compelled to find a source of threat, but the compulsion is internally generated and even if an external source of threat is identified, the compulsive, hypervigilant stance will continue because the internal arousal is still present. We will persistently try to find the source of the threat (where is it?) and identify it (what is it?), because that is what the primitive orienting response is programmed to do when the nervous system becomes aroused. The catch is that there is often no threat to be found. Hypervigilance becomes one of the ways we manage the excess energy resulting from an unsuccessful defense against an original threat. We use hypervigilance to channel some of that energy into the muscles of the head, neck, and eyes in an obsessive search for danger. When combined with the internal arousal that is still present, our rational brains can become irrational. They begin to search for and identify external sources of danger. This maladaptive practice channels much of the energy into a specific activity that will become more and more repetitive and compulsive. In the hypervigilant state, all chang e( including changes in our own internal state s) is perceived as a threat. What may appear to be unfounded paranoia may actually be our interpretation of the excitement of sexual arousal or even the effect of caffeine in a soft drink. As the freezing response gradually becomes more and more entrenched, the tendency for hypervigilance and defense grows stronger. Hypervigilant people are keyed to a state of intense alertness at all times and may actually develop a slightly furtive or fearful, open-eyed appearance due to this constant watchfulness. There is a growing tendency to see danger where there is none, and a diminished capacity to experience curiosity, pleasure, and the joy of life. All of this occurs because, at the core of our beings, we simply do not feel safe. Consequently, we will continually be on edge, ready to initiate a defensive response, but unable to execute it coherently. We search compulsively for the threat that can’t be found, even when a real threat stands before us. The nervous system can become so activated that it cannot readily tune down. As a result, behavioral and physiological rhythms (e.g., sleep) may be disturbed. We will be unable to unwind or relax, even in those moments when we feel safe enough to do so. Mrs. Thayer

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now one night, when Talano happened to be staying with this wife of his at one of their country estates, he dreamt that he saw her wandering through some very beautiful woods, which were situated not far away from the house. As he watched, an enormous and ferocious wolf seemed to emerge from a corner of the woods and hurl itself at Margarita’s throat, dragging her to the ground. She struggled to free herself, screaming for help, and when at length she managed to escape from its clutches, the whole of her throat and face appeared to be torn to ribbons. So when Talano got up next morning, he said to his wife: ‘Woman, your cussedness has been the bane of my life since the day we were married; but all the same I should be sorry if you came to any harm, and therefore, if you’ll take my advice, you won’t venture forth from the house today.’ When she asked him the reason, he told her about his dream, whereupon she tossed her head in the air and said: ‘Evil wishes beget evil dreams. You pretend to be very anxious for my safety, but you only dream these horrid things about me because you’d like to see them happen. You may rest assured that I shall never give you the satisfaction of seeing me suffer any such fate as the one you describe, whether on this day or any other.’ ‘I knew you would say that,’ said Talano. ‘A mangy dog never thanks you for combing its pelt. But you may think whatever you like. I only mentioned it for your own good, and once again I advise you to stay at home today, or at any rate to keep well away from those woods of ours.’ ‘Very well,’ said the woman, ‘I’ll do as you say.’ But then she began to think to herself: ‘Here’s a crafty fellow! Do you see how he tries to frighten me out of going near the woods today? He’s doubtless made an appointment there with some strumpet or other, and doesn’t want me to find him. Ah, he’d do well for himself at a supper for the blind, but knowing him as I do, I should be a great fool to take him at his word. He certainly won’t get away with this. I shall find out what business takes him to those woods, even if I have to wait there the whole day.’ No sooner had she reached the end of these deliberations than her husband left the house, whereupon she too left the house by a separate door and made her way to the woods without a moment’s delay, keeping out of sight as much as possible. On entering the woods, she concealed herself in the thickest part she could find, and kept a sharp lookout on all sides so that she could see if anyone was coming.

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

  plagiarized. The sudden male preoccupation with a primordial human habit in the eighteenth century is yet another symptom of the age of individual choice, for few pursuits are more shaped by individual decision than masturbation. It must have been encouraged by the general development of greater privacy in the design of northern European housing, and the value on personal privacy that sprang out of that: many more sexual activities could now take place in private than would have been the case for earlier generations. [30] Society’s inability to control masturbation unnerved the self-confident philosophe or the moralizing clergyman just as much as did the self-assertion of women or the public emergence of homosexuality. At the end of the century, the lifelong bachelor Immanuel Kant accompanied his exposition of Enlightenment with extended intemperate remarks about masturbation: he loaded ‘self-abuse’ with preconceptions shaped more by personal dread than by logic, condemning it as worse than self-murder, that is, suicide. It was the ultimate enemy of the mature government of the self that Kant proclaimed as Enlightenment. This was in the context of his affirmation that any sexual act is of itself automatically debasing: ‘a stance almost religious in its dourness’, in the splendid phrase of one modern commentator on the German Enlightenment and society. [31] THE CHANCE TO CHOOSE: EVANGELICALISM European Protestant religion meanwhile was striving against dourness in a series of religious movements emphasizing human passions as much as did the Enlightenment. These twin phenomena may seem unrelated, or even opposed, since the religious fervour of what came to be known as ‘Evangelicalism’ sprang out of the Augustinian theology of Martin Luther, who had reaffirmed Christian pessimism about humanity in sharp contrast to Kant’s praise of humanity coming of age in the Enlightenment. Nevertheless, many religious leaders were in fact keenly interested in the scientific advances that accompanied Enlightenment thought, notably the founder of Methodism, John Wesley. Wesley’s championing of a doctrine of ‘Christian perfection’ crafted out of Reformation Protestantism was an emphatic rejection of the conclusions that John Calvin had drawn from Augustine on salvation, putting Wesley bitterly at odds with fellow Evangelical leaders who self-consciously championed Calvin’s predestinarianism. [32] The new-found freedoms of choice encouraged people to choose, shape and even re-invent their religion, pouring new life into Churches of the Reformation just at the moment when Protestant powers were beginning to create overseas empires that spread the Word across the world. What is remarkable is the interconnection of the various movements, which all took their immediate and their long-term origins from Protestant Germany, still recovering in the long aftermath of its seventeenth-century trauma in the Thirty Years War (1618–48). As we have noted in Chapter 14, from the 1670s a movement that came to be known (at first abusively by its opponents) as ‘Pietism’ affected first the Lutheran and later the Reformed Protestant Churches, and it was appreciatively noted by the serious-minded in England.

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

  Epilogue (Revised September 2016) A few weeks after I delivered a first draft of this book manuscript to my publisher, things took a weird, dark turn. On July 29, 2015, late in the afternoon, HubSpot issued a press release announcing that Wingman had been promoted to chief marketing officer. Buried in the second paragraph was a bombshell: Wingman had been promoted because HubSpot had fired its longtime CMO, Mike Volpe, the guy called Cranium in this book. Volpe was terminated for cause because he had “violated the Company’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics” in his “attempts to procure” a manuscript of a book involving HubSpot, the release said. Furthermore, Joe Chernov (Trotsky) had resigned from HubSpot “before the company could determine whether to terminate him for similar violations.” Brian Halligan, the CEO, had been “appropriately sanctioned” but would not be fired. Given the very public manner in which Volpe was fired and Chernov left the company, I decided to name them here. I left their nicknames intact in the main text of the book because, frankly, the fake names are a lot more memorable. The press release did not say what Volpe and Chernov had done. It said only that HubSpot had hired an outside law firm, Goodwin Procter, to conduct an investigation, and that after reviewing the law firm’s report, the board had voted to fire Volpe. Also, the board had “notified the appropriate legal authorities about these matters.” The press release did not specify that the book in question was my book. It just referred to “a book involving the Company.” I figured it was my book, but I couldn’t be sure. This kicked off a speculative whirlwind in Boston. What was the book? What did it say? What had Volpe and Chernov done? Why were legal authorities involved? Soon after the release was issued, a reporter from the Boston Globe, Curt Woodward, started calling HubSpot PR people trying to get an interview with Halligan or Shah. Later in the evening Woodward actually showed up at HubSpot headquarters and was let into the lobby. He wanted to interview an executive. Spinner enlisted the building’s security guard to ask Woodward to leave, and he did. The story made front-page news in the Globe the next day and was splashed across all of the local tech blogs. Most people speculated that the book in question was mine. The supposition seemed to be that Volpe and the others had engaged in some kind of hacking. HubSpot public relations did an abysmal job of managing the situation. Instead of coming clean, they tried to cover up, which only made things worse. “HubSpot & Crisis Communications: A Lesson in What Not to Do” was the title of a post by Maura FitzGerald, who runs Version 2.0 Communications, a public relations agency in Boston.