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

  The Boss produced a glass of whisky and told me to drink it: I didn’t want to take it; but he insisted and I drank it off. “Did it burn?” he asked: “No, ’twas just like water!” I replied and noticed that the Boss and Reece exchanged a meaning look. At once the Boss declared I must walk up and down and each taking an arm they walked me solemnly round and round for half an hour. At the end of that time I was half asleep; the Boss stopped and gave me another jorum of whisky: for a moment it awakened me, then I began to get numb again and deaf. Again they gave me whisky: I revived but in five minutes I sagged down and begged them to let me sleep. “Sleep be d—d!” cried the Boss, “you’d never wake. Pull yourself together,” and again I was given whisky. Then, dimly I began to realise that I must use my will-power and so I started to jump about and shake off the overpowering drowsiness. Another two or three drinks of whisky and much frisking about occupied the next couple of hours, when suddenly I became aware of a sharp, intense pang of pain in my left thumb. “Now you can sleep,” said the Boss, “if you’re minded to; I guess whisky has wiped out the rattler!” The pain in my burnt thumb was acute: I found too I had a headache for the first time in my life. But Peggy gave me hot water to drink and the headache soon disappeared. In a day or two I was as well as ever, thanks, to the vigorous regimen of the Boss; in the course of a single year we lost two young men just through the little prairie snakes that seemed so insignificant. The days passed quickly till we came near the first towns in southern Texas: then every man wanted his arrears of salary from the Boss and proceeded to shave and doll up in wildest excitement. Charlie was like a madman. Half an hour after reaching the chief saloon in the town, everyone of them save Bent was crazy drunk and intent on finding some girl with whom to spend the night. I didn’t even go to the saloon with them and begged Charlie in vain not to play the fool. “That’s what I live for”, he shouted, and raced off.

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

  93 Money, in common use by the late eleventh century, came to symbolize the disturbing changes caused by this rapid economic growth that undermined the traditional social structure; it was seen as “the root of all evil,” and in popular iconography the deadly sin of avarice inspired visceral loathing and dread. 94 Originally Christians had been the most successful moneylenders, but during the twelfth century Jews had their lands confiscated and many were forced to become bailiffs, financial agents of the aristocracy, or moneylenders and were thereafter tainted by their association with money. 95 The Jew in Peter Abelard’s Dialogue (1125) explains that because Jews’ land tenure is so insecure, “the principal gain that is left for us is that we sustain our miserable lives here by lending money at interest to strangers. But that just makes us more hated by those who think that they are oppressed by it.” 96 Jews, of course, were not the only scapegoats of Christian anxiety. Since the Crusades, Muslims, once regarded with vague indifference in Europe, had now come to be regarded as fit only for extermination. In the mid-twelfth century Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, depicted Islam as a bloodthirsty religion that had been propagated entirely by the sword—a fantasy that may have reflected hidden guilt about Christian behavior during the First Crusade. 97 Disquiet about nascent capitalism and the growing violence of Western society, both of which were so obviously at odds with the radical teachings of Jesus, also surfaced in the “ heresies” that the Church had begun to persecute actively in the late twelfth century. Again, the challenge was political rather than doctrinal. The conditions of peasants had reached their lowest level, and poverty had become a major problem. 98 Some had become rich in the towns, but population growth had fragmented inheritances and multiplied the numbers of landless villagers roaming the countryside desperately seeking employment. The structural violence of the “three estate” system was the cause of much anxious soul-searching among Christians. In orthodox as well as heretical circles, the well-to-do were coming to the conclusion that the only way to save their souls was to give away their wealth, which they now regarded as sinful. After a serious illness, Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), son of a wealthy merchant, renounced his patrimony, lived as a hermit, and founded a new order of friars dedicated to serving the poor and sharing their poverty; it increased rapidly in membership. Francis’s rule was approved by Pope Innocent III, who hoped thereby to retain some control of the poverty movement that threatened the entire social order. Other groups were not such loyal adherents of the Church.

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

  About two o’clock in the morning I passed a log-house and soon an American rode up beside me and wanted to know who I was, where I had brought the cattle from and where I was going! I told him the owner was behind me, and the boys and I were driving them straight ahead because some greasers had been interfering with us. “That’s the shooting I heard”, he said. “You have driven them across the river: haven’t you?” “I’ve driven them from the river,” I replied; “some of them were getting a drink.” I could feel him grin though I was not looking at him. “I guess I’ll see your friends pretty soon,” he said, “but this raiding is bad business. Them greasers’ll come across and give me trouble. We border-folk don’t want a fuss, hatched up by you foreigners!” I placated him as well as I could; but at first was unsuccessful. He didn’t say much but he evidently intended to come with me to the end because wherever I rode, I found him right behind the herd when I returned. Day had broken when I let the cattle halt for the first time. I reckoned I had gone twelve miles from the ford and the beasts were foot-sore and very tired; more and more of them requiring the whip in order to keep up even a walk. I bunched them together and came back to my saturnine acquaintance. “You are young to be at this game”, he said. “Who is your Boss?” “I don’t keep a boss”, I answered, taking him in with hostile scrutiny. He was a man of about forty, tall and lean with an enormous quid of tobacco in his left cheek—a typical Texan. His bronco interested me; instead of being an Indian pony of thirteen hands or so it was perhaps fifteen and a half and looked to be three-quarters bred. “A good horse you have there”, I said. “The best in the hull country,” he replied, “easy.” “That’s only your conceit”, I retorted. “The mare I am on right now can give him a hundred yards in a mile.” “You don’t want to risk any money on that, do you?” he remarked. “Oh, yes”, I smiled. “Well, we can try it out one of these days, but here comes your crowd”, and indeed, although I had not expected them, in five minutes Bent and Bob and Charlie rode up. “Get the cattle going”, cried Bob, as he came within earshot. “We must go on. The Mexicans have gone back but they will come right after us again. Who is this?” he added, ranging up beside the Texan. “My name is Locker”, said my acquaintance; “and I guess your raiding will set the whole border boiling. Can’t you buy cattle decently, like we all have to?” “How do you know how decently we paid for them?” cried Bent, thrusting forward his brown face like a weasel’s, his dog teeth showing.

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

  “Women and Love”, Edmond de Goncourt writes in his journal, “always constitute the subject of conversation wherever there is a meeting of intellectual people socially brought together by eating and drinking. Our talk at dinner was at first smutty (polissonne) and Tourgueneff listened to us with the open-mouthed wonder (l’étonnement un peu medusé) of a barbarian who only makes love (fait l’amour) very naturally (très naturellement).” Whoever reads this passage carefully will understand the freedom I intend to use. But I shall not be tied down even to French conventions. Just as in painting, our knowledge of what the Chinese and Japanese have done, has altered our whole conception of the art, so the Hindoos and Burmese too have extended our understanding of the art of love. I remember going with Rodin through the British Museum and being surprised at the time he spent over the little idols and figures of the South Sea Islanders: “Some of them are trivial”, he said, “but look at that, and that, and that—sheer masterpieces that anyone might be proud of—lovely things!” Art has become coextensive with humanity, and some of my experiences with so-called savages may be of interest even to the most cultured Europeans. I intend to tell what life has taught me, and if I begin at the A. B. C. of love, it is because I was brought up in Britain and the United States; I shall not stop there. Of course I know the publication of such a book will at once justify the worst that my enemies have said about me. For forty years now I have championed nearly all the unpopular causes, and have thus made many enemies; now they will all be able to gratify their malice while taking credit for prevision. In itself the book is sure to disgust the “unco guid” and the mediocrities of every kind who have always been unfriendly to me. I have no doubt too, that many sincere lovers of literature who would be willing to accept such license as ordinary French writers use, will condemn me for going beyond this limit. Yet there are many reasons why I should use perfect freedom in this last book. First of all, I made hideous blunders early in life and saw worse blunders made by other youths, out of sheer ignorance: I want to warn the young and impressionable against the shoals and hidden reefs of life’s ocean and chart, so to speak, at the very beginning of the voyage when the danger is greatest, the ‘unpath’d waters’. On the other hand I have missed indescribable pleasures because the power to enjoy and to give delight is keenest early in life, while the understanding both of how to give and how to receive pleasure comes much later, when the faculties are already on the decline.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  A more remarkable fact still is that the patient will often answer anyone whom his operator touches, or at whom he even points his finger, in however concealed a manner. All which is rationally explicable by expectation and suggestion, if only it be farther admitted that his senses are acutely sharpened for all the operator's movements.[538] He often shows great anxiety and restlessness if the latter is out of the room. A favorite experiment of Mr. E. Gurney's was to put the subject's hands through an opaque screen, and cause the operator to point at one finger. That finger presently grew insensible or rigid. A bystander pointing simultaneously at another finger, never made that insensible or rigid. Of course the elective rapport with their operator had been developed in these trained subjects during the hypnotic state, but the phenomenon then occurred in some of them during the waking state, even when their consciousness was absorbed in animated conversation with a fourth party.[539] I confess that when I saw these experiments I was impressed with the necessity for admitting between the emanations from different people differences for which we have no name, and a discriminative sensibility for them of the nature of which we can form no clear conception, but which seems to be developed in certain subjects by the hypnotic trance.—The enigmatic reports of the effect of magnets and metals, even if they be due, as many contend, to unintentional suggestion on the operator's part, certainly involve hyperæsthetic perception, for the operator seeks as well as possible to conceal the moment when the magnet is brought into play, and yet the subject not only finds it out that moment in away difficult to understand, but may develop effects which (in the first instance certainly) the operator did not expect to find. Unilateral contractures, movements, paralyses, hallucinations, etc., are made to pass to tile other side of the body, hallucinations to disappear, or to change to the complementary color, suggested emotions to pass into their opposites, etc. Many Italian observations agree with the French ones, and the upshot is that if unconscious suggestion lie at the bottom of this matter, the patients show an enormously exalted power of divining what it is they are expected to do. This hyperæsthetic perception is what concerns us now.[540] Its modus cannot yet be said to be defined.

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

  I got up and washed and returned to bed; the cold water had quieted me; but soon by thinking of Lucille and her soft, hot, hairy “pussy”, I grew randy again and in this state fell asleep. Again I dreamed of Lucille and again I was trying, trying in vain to get into her when again the spasm of pleasure overtook me; I felt my seed spirting hot and—awoke. But lo! when I put my hand down, there was no seed, only a little moisture just at the head of my sex—nothing more. Did it mean that I could only give forth seed once? I tested myself at once: while picturing Lucille’s sex, its soft hot roundnesses and hairs, I caressed my sex, moving my hand faster up and down till soon I brought on the orgasm of pleasure and felt distinctly the hot thrills as if my seed were spirting, but nothing came, hardly even the moisture. Next morning I tested myself at the high jump and found I couldn’t clear the bar at an inch lower than usual. I didn’t know what to do: why had I indulged so foolishly? But next night the dream of Lucille came back again, and again I awoke after an acute spasm of pleasure, all wet with my own seed. What was I to do? I got up and washed and put cold water in a sponge on my testicles and sex and all chilled crawled back into bed. But imagination was master. Time and again the dream came and awakened me. In the morning I felt exhausted, washed-out and needed no test to assure me that I was physically below par. That same afternoon I picked up by chance a little piece of whipcord and at once it occurred to me that if I tied this hard cord round my penis, as soon as the organ began to swell and stiffen in excitement, the cord would grow tight and awake me with the pain. That night I tied up Tommy and gave myself up to thoughts of Lucille’s private parts: as soon as my sex stood and grew stiff, the whipcord hurt dreadfully and I had to apply cold water at once to reduce my unruly member to ordinary proportions. I returned to bed and went to sleep: I had a short sweet dream of Lucille’s beauties but then awoke in agony. I got up quickly and sat on the cold marble slab of the washing-stand. That acted more speedily than even the cold water; why? I didn’t learn the reason for many a year. The cord was effective, did all I wanted: after this experience I wore it regularly and within a week was again able to walk under the bar and afterwards jump it, able too to pull myself up with one hand till my chin was above the bar. I had conquered temptation and once more was captain of my body.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Such people tend to think in highly polarised terms, preferring reductive simplifications over acknowledging the complexity of the world and life, and adopting an ‘arrogant, dismissive communication style’, talking at others rather than with others, and preferring personal disparagement to serious engagement with the issues – precisely because such an engagement is seen as threatening. As Johnson points out, this sort of ‘defensive cognitive closure’ leads to rival or conflicting ideas being judged immediately and automatically as ‘ridiculous’. People holding rival views are not simply wrong; they are often denigrated as ‘stupid’ as well. What can be done about this? My training as an academic immediately suggests a set of solutions. Go where the evidence takes you – and be honest if you are going beyond it. Be willing to confront ambiguity and live with uncertainty. Talk to people with opposing views, partly to ensure you have grasped their positions, and partly because of the importance of maintaining personal relationships in the face of disagreements. As a scholar, I make a point of reading works advocating alternative perspectives and talking to those who hold such views, partly to ensure I have understood them properly – but more importantly, to ensure I can hold my own views with integrity in the face of rival beliefs. But this won’t work in the face of dogmatism because the problem is ultimately psychological, not evidential. The issue is an ‘intolerance of ambiguity’, 29 which leads certain individuals to perceive an ambiguous situation ‘rigidly in black or white’, often leading to rapid evaluations and unreliable foreclosures of complex issues – such as medical diagnosis. 30 An ability to tolerate ambiguity is increasingly being linked with wellbeing. Perhaps we shall see more research on how to confront and cope with dogmatism in the future, as a way to help us understand others and achieve greater social cohesion. When Worlds Collide: Believing and Violence Growing up in Belfast during the late 1960s, I was surrounded by sectarian tensions arising from Ireland’s complex and troubled political history, which often involved religion. It was not difficult for me to frame these persuasively within my early atheist worldview: if there was no religion, there would be no religious violence. I never gave much thought to the consequences of my emerging teenage belief that religion was evil, and thus ought to be eliminated or excluded from society.

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

  As an evangelist to America’s youth, Graham hadn’t shied away from addressing the younger generation’s lax sexual morality, but in Cold War America the stakes suddenly seemed higher. With greatness thrust upon the nation, it was imperative that the nation’s citizens also pursue goodness. A strong nation was a virtuous one; sexual morality was an issue of national significance.23 For Graham, the stability of the home was key to both morality and security: “A nation is only as strong as her homes.” In the evangelical worldview, Satan and the communists were united in an effort to destroy the American home. And for Graham, a properly ordered family was a patriarchal one. Because Graham believed that God had cursed women to be under man’s rule, he believed that wives must submit to husbands’ authority. Graham acknowledged that this would come as a shock to certain “dictatorial wives,” and he didn’t hesitate to offer Christian housewives helpful tips: When a husband comes home from work, run out and kiss him. “Give him love at any cost. Cultivate modesty and the delicacy of youth. Be attractive.” Keep a clean house and don’t “nag and complain all the time.” He had advice for men, too. A man was “God’s representative”—the spiritual head of household, “the protector” and “provider of the home.” Also, husbands should remember to give wives a box of candy from time to time, or an orchid. Or maybe roses.24 Not all evangelicals in Graham’s day embraced such patriarchal teachings. Some believed Christ’s atonement had nullified any “curse” placed on Eve in the Book of Genesis, opening the way to egalitarian gender roles; in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, evangelicals in this tradition had been enthusiastic proponents of women’s rights. Graham’s patriarchal interpretation reflected the more reactionary tendencies of early-twentieth-century fundamentalism. He added a new twist, however, by wedding patriarchal gender roles to a rising Christian nationalism. In the late 1940s, there was nothing altogether unique about Graham’s instructions to husbands and wives. Many other Americans, too, celebrated “traditional” gender roles in Cold War America. The communist threat positioned women and men in distinct ways; men were to provide for their families and defend the nation, while women were deemed vulnerable and in need of protection. In this way, Cold War masculinity was intimately connected to militarism, to the point that they could seem inseparable. In the fall of 1949, then, Graham’s message resonated within and beyond the evangelical fold. But it wasn’t until the conversion of one of the city’s most famous latter-day cowboys that Graham’s revival would take hold in a way that would set the evangelist on course to become one of the most influential figures in the twentieth century.25 When Graham arrived in LA, the little-known thirty-three-year-old revivalist caught the eye of Stuart Hamblen, the hard-drinking “cowboy singer.” One of Hamblen’s biggest hits, “(I Won’t Go Huntin’, Jake) But I’ll Go Chasin’ Women,” had released that year.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  For example, the growth of online ‘echo chambers’ providing selectively curated information that is consistent with an in-group’s ideology or identity is not merely heightening cultural tensions; it is making it increasingly difficult to mediate between factions and tribes, who see the perpetuation of their favoured stereotypes as simply articulating ‘their truth’. As noted earlier, this problem is becoming especially significant within the political domain, as an increasingly toxic culture emerges, particularly in the United States. Fewer politicians are willing to socialise across party lines, or even partner with opponents in a variety of other activities. Ideological distance, based on what people believe , is now being supplemented by personal antagonism, based on how people feel about members of other communities. If we are to rebuild social cohesion and mitigate the negative social impact of ‘affective polarisation’ in western culture, 29 there is a clear need for public intellectuals to become diplomats, explaining one specific community’s idea without condemning or ridiculing others. In view of the importance of this issue, we shall reflect more on the role of ‘public intellectuals’ in mediating between communities of belief. Communal Mediation: The Role of the Public Intellectual So how do communities of belief communicate with a wider culture? Or with other communities of belief? As human knowledge expands, making it increasingly difficult for individuals to know what else is going on in the world of thought, how can these communities ensure that their ideas or perspectives are known to and appreciated by their peers in the world at large? The answer seems to lie, at least in part, in the idea of a public intellectual – a term that was first used in 1987 to explore the changing role of intellectuals in American public life. For Russell Jacoby, the term referred to ‘writers and thinkers who address a general and educated audience.’ 30 It has since taken on a number of meanings, including the justification of the academic life to a sceptical public, the defence of a specific discipline in the face of its critics (who wants to study classics in a scientific age?), or an individual without academic affiliation who speaks and writes intelligibly and engagingly on issues of public importance (such as Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, or Naomi Klein, before her appointment as professor at the University of British Columbia in 2021).

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

  They were, so to speak, spiritually programmed: the constantly repeated ritual gestures imprinted in their bodies and minds an instinctive knowledge of how an alpha male should comport himself; and the emotive hymns implanted a deep-rooted sense of entitlement, an entrenched belief that Aryans were born to dominate. 9 All this gave them the courage, tenacity, and energy to traverse the vast distances of northwestern India, eliminating every obstacle in their path. 10 We know practically nothing about Aryan life during this period, yet because mythology is not wholly about the heavenly world but essentially about the here and now, in these Vedic texts we catch glimpses of a community fighting for its life. The mythical battles—between devas and asuras and Indra and his cosmic dragons—reflected the wars between Aryans and dasas. 11 The Aryans experienced the Punjab as confinement and the dasas as perverse adversaries who were preventing them from attaining the wealth and open spaces that were their due. 12 This emotion ran through many of their stories. They imagined Vritra as a huge snake, coiled around the cosmic mountain and squeezing it so tightly that the waters could not escape. 13 Another story spoke of the demon Vala, who had incarcerated the sun together with a herd of cows in a cave so that without light, warmth, or food, the world was unviable. But after chanting a hymn beside the sacred fire, Indra had smashed into the mountain, liberated the cows, and set the sun high in the sky. 14 The names Vritra and Vala both derived from the Indo-European root *vr, “to obstruct, enclose, encircle,” and one of Indra’s titles was Vrtrahan (“beating the resistance”). 15 It was for the Aryans to fight their way through their encircling enemies as Indra had done. Liberation ( moksha ) would be another symbol that later generations would reinterpret; its opposite was amhas (“captivity”), cognate with the English anxiety and the German Angst, evoking a claustrophobic distress. 16 Later sages would conclude that the path to moksha lay in the realization that less is more. By the tenth century, the Aryans had reached the Doab, between the Yamuna and the Ganges Rivers. There they established two small kingdoms, one founded by the confederation of the Kuru and Panchala clans, the other by the Yadava. Every year when the weather was cooler, the Kuru-Panchala dispatched warriors to establish a new Aryan outpost a little farther to the east, where they would subjugate the local populations, raid their farms, and seize their cattle.

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

  Out in the countryside the faithful might just regard their liturgy as something that Christians did, without bothering too much about the dismal history of Christological debates that had created rival episcopal hierarchies. Muslims would certainly sympathize, and might value personal relationships above confessional ones. The scholarly Bishop Jacob in the course of his pastoral duties in late seventh-century Edessa (modern Urfa) had to write to a subordinate about the tricky case of a Christian woman married to a Muslim who was threatening to kill their local priest for banning her from the Eucharist; she was disobeying Church rules by her mixed marriage, but if the Church enforced the ban, murder might follow. [13] In this situation, Christian teaching on sex and the family presented both a challenge and an opportunity for episcopal authority and religious identity. As in Sasanian days, Islam accepted polygyny as one of the options of marriage, though, unlike Zoroastrians, Muslims did not make a point of close-kin unions. Marriage could provide an essential point of difference for Dyophysite Church leaders to clarify for the putatively faithful; in an Islamicate society, monogamy would be a mark of Christian distinctiveness, whereas, in the areas of the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean not under the control of Islam, it was simply everyone’s traditional form of marriage. Accordingly, the bishops re-emphasized their ban on polygyny for their flocks. Just as in the Sasanian era, elite lay figures in the Church of the East were outraged that bishops should thus try to infringe their privileged perquisite of polygyny as part of their positions of influence in the Caliphate. More than one anecdote of their hostility to moral instruction on marriage survives in patriarchal chronicles, some with edifying repentance attached to the story, which may or may not represent the real outcome. One court physician of the great Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (reigned 786–809) furiously confronted his Patriarch Timothy and appalled that austere celibate by shouting that he was a pederast; another court physician (who additionally served as a deacon of the Church) applied an epithet to a subsequent Patriarch best left in the decent obscurity of a monograph. [14] This was two centuries after the humbling of Patriarch Sabrisho’ and Bishop Gregory of Nisibis at the hands of Christian laity on the same issue, in the time of the Sasanians (above, Chapter 9). The bishops acted early in the era of the Caliphate to assert themselves against such independence of mind. As we have seen, even before the Chalcedonian schism, as early as the fifth century the Church of the East had been a pioneer among Christians in creating ‘canon law’, ecclesiastical legislation, including on the subject of the family (Chapter 9).

• 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 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 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 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.

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

  What’s your job?” “Oh,” he says, “I run the content team.” “So if you run the content team,” I say, in a halting voice, “does that mean that you’re my boss?” I’m trying not to sound alarmed. “Do I work for you?” Zack says he doesn’t know if he would actually call himself my boss. Strictly speaking, as he understands it, my official manager will be Wingman. But on a day-to-day basis, well, it’s true that I will be working on the team that Zack manages. Fuuuuuuck, is what I say to myself. “Okay, cool,” is what I say out loud. Zack wants to take me to see where I will be working. I get up, feeling dizzy, and follow him out of the conference room, down a hallway past people who suddenly all seem way too young, like high school kids. They’re everywhere, all over the place. They’re rushing around carrying laptops, sitting in groups in little glass-walled meeting rooms, drawing on whiteboards, looking at PowerPoint presentations on giant monitors, drinking coffee, taking notes. I think I may be having a panic attack. Or an acid flashback. Part of me wants to dash for the door. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, a little voice inside my head keeps saying as I follow Zack and his gelled hair down the hall, my pulse thrumming in my temples. Nine months ago I was the technology editor of Newsweek. In that job I did not even notice people like Zack, or Wingman, or even Cranium. They are the kind of people whose calls I would not return, whose emails I deleted without opening. Even Halligan and Shah were such small fry that I probably would not have taken time to meet them for coffee, and I certainly would not have written about them. And Zack? Good grief. He’s five years out of college, and his work experience consists of two journalism internships and three years in an entry- level job in a regional Google ad sales office. Zack takes me to a cramped little shoebox of a room, about fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long, where twenty young women are packed into two rows, staring at laptops. This is the content factory. That is literally what they call it. These people are content creators. That is literally what they call themselves. “Hungry for more content? Click here to get some!” is something they write on little boxes that they place next to blog posts, hoping that the promise of “more content” will entice readers to stay on the site. I smile and shake hands and go down the line, past a blur of Ashleys, Amandas, Brittanys, and Courtneys, realizing as I do that I am literally twice the age of these people, in some cases more than twice their age. “So where were you before this?”

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Later that week I woke one morning with my head vibrating. What tethered it to my shoulders seemed less bone and muscle than live current. Maybe I had the stomach flu. I thought I could feel my intestines spin somehow, like thumbs twiddling. I should skip my morning coffee. I managed a little cereal, but it was hard to eat with my head this way. My insides felt heavy in comparison, though it was mostly empty in there. I had a dermatologist appointment in midmorning, an annual mole-and-freckle check, and I stopped afterward for a ginger ale. It was spicy going down, made me burp. I managed some toast for lunch. I thought about kissing my friend, and my gut turned over like a page. That night I was supposed to be a guest speaker in a class at the university, an extension course taught by an acquaintance. Brandon was at Delancey, so I’d booked a babysitter. She came at five thirty, and I kissed June good night, since I’d miss bedtime. On campus, I parked in the underground lot beneath the central plaza. The sky was still light as I stepped out of the elevator and made my way along a brick-paved path to the building where the class would meet. Sweat prickled my temples. I probably should have canceled, shouldn’t be walking into a classroom with these germs. Maybe it wasn’t contagious? Things had been stressful; maybe it was catching up with me. In the hallway outside the classroom I stopped to lean against the wall, its pimpled surface cool through my shirt. The nausea subsided, and I knocked on the door. I spoke to the students for an hour, and then I said something about needing to relieve the babysitter, hugged the friend who’d invited me, and left as fast as I’d come. I was in the parking-garage elevator when I understood what was going to happen. There was no one around when I stepped out at my floor. In the concrete hallway I made it a few steps before doubling over. It was all ginger ale, a watery puddle on the concrete. I was wearing cheap black boots, faux suede, and it had splashed onto the toes. I stood and took an inventory: I was otherwise intact. I felt almost proud. Look at me! A disaster, but upright! I took a few more steps down the hallway. I knew it was going to happen again. There was a trash can, but the lid was on it. Too late. I missed my shoes this time, silently commended myself. I hurried to the car before anyone could see what I’d done, unzipped my boots and tossed them in the trunk. My mouth tasted like bad milk. There was a napkin in the glove box, and I dragged it over my tongue, as though it would do anything.