Contempt

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.

Page 126 of 253 · 20 per page

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Every week they screened new horrors, always with a somber narrator to remind us that this wasn’t make-believe but actual history, that what we were seeing had really happened and could happen again if we did not maintain ourselves in a state of vigilance. These shows always ended the same way. Overviews of ruined Berlin. Grinning GIs rousting the defeated Aryan soldiery from their hiding places in barn and cave and sewer. Himmler dead in his cell, hollow-eyed Hess in Spandau. The now lathered-up narrator crowing, “Thus was the high-flying Prussian eagle brought to ground!” and “Thus did the little Führer and his bullyboys turn tail and run, giving up forever their dream of The Thousand Year Reich!” But these glimpses of humiliation and loss lasted only a few minutes. They were tacked on as a pretense that the point of the show was to celebrate the victory of goodness over evil. We saw through this fraud, of course. We saw that the real point was to celebrate snappy uniforms and racy Mercedes staff cars and great marching, thousands of boots slamming down together on cobbled streets while banners streamed overhead and strong voices sang songs that stirred our blood though we couldn’t understand a word. The point was to watch Stukas peel off and dive toward burning cities, tanks blowing holes in buildings, men with Lugers and dogs ordering people around. These shows instructed us further in the faith we were already beginning to hold: that victims are contemptible, no matter how much people pretend otherwise; that it is more fun to be inside than outside, to be arrogant than to be kind, to be with a crowd than to be alone. Terry Silver had a Nazi armband that he swore was genuine, though anyone could see he’d made it himself. As soon as we reached his apartment Silver would get this armband from its hiding place and slip it on. Then he would strut around and treat Taylor and me like lackeys. We let him do it because of the candy Mrs. Silver left out in crystal bowls, because of the television set, and because without Silver to tell us what to do we were reduced to wandering the sidewalks, listlessly throwing rocks at signs. First we made a few calls. Taylor and I listened in on the extension in Mrs. Silver’s bedroom while Silver did the talking. He looked up people with Jewish-sounding names and screamed at them in pig German. He ordered entire banquets of Chinese food for his father and stepmother. Sometimes he called the parents of kids we didn’t like and assumed the voice and manner of a Concerned Adult—teacher, coach, counselor—just touching base to ask whether there was some problem at home that might account for Paul’s unusual behaviour at school the other day. Silver never laughed, never gave himself away. When he was being particularly plausible and suave, Taylor and I had to stuff Mrs.

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

  24The History of Christianity II JOHN CALVIN AND GENEVA õThe most famous reformed theologian was John Calvin. On the Protestant spectrum, he’s between Luther and Zwingli. Calvin was born in 1509 in Picardy, France. He trained to be a priest, but became disillusioned with the French clergy. He saw them as immoral and poorly educated. õIn 1534, as he was about to be ordained, Calvin converted to Protestantism. Two years later, he published the first edition of a work he would continue revising for the rest of his life: his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion. In this book, Calvin laid out the most elaborate systematic theology of Protestantism that any reformer had produced thus far. õCalvin’s basic thesis was that man’s duty is not to know God because God is totally transcendent. Instead, man’s duty is to worship and obey. Only worship can bridge the gap between human and divine. Calvin is best known for his doctrine of predestination. He taught that before the beginning of time, God ordained some people for hell and elected others for heaven. õCalvin got a chance to put his ideas about the Christian life into practice. In 1536, a Swiss evangelist convinced him to help the city council of Geneva implement reform. Calvin said the baseline for church membership had to be a person’s fitness to receive the sacrament, and that meant good behavior, evidence that they were probably among the elect. He thought that the Eucharist was spiritual poison for those who took it without true faith. õHe made the clergy far more powerful than they were in Lutheran lands, where they tended to depend on a prince’s bureaucracy or a city council for their employment. He imposed lots of regulations on card playing, dice, gambling, and other activities (although Geneva had many such rules before Calvin showed up). 25Lecture 3—Zwingli, Calvin, and the Reformed Tradition õCalvin was a harsh man: He sentenced a named Michael Servetus, who denied the Trinity and infant baptism, to burn at the stake. Yet Calvin also spent a lot of time listening to Genevans explain their troubles and trying to help them understand the Bible. Calvin built a model of church governance and community discipline that became the envy of reformed Protestants all over Europe. French Protestants, who were persecuted in their home country, f looded into Geneva. õBut not all the refugees arrived from France. Many English refugees, including the Scottish reformer John Knox, found their way to Geneva, where they came to admire the way Calvin was running things. A later generation of Englishmen and women would borrow heavily from his ideas in the colonies of New England too.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  happen to be a rival, they are easy to bait into an overreaction that reveals something less than tough. The Saint: These people are paragons of goodness and purity. They support the best and most progressive causes. They can be very spiritual if that is the circle they travel in; or they are above the corruption and compromises of politics; or they have endless compassion for every type of victim. This saintly exterior developed early on as a way to disguise their strong hunger for power and attention or their strong sensual appetites. The irony is that often by projecting this saintly aura to the nth degree they will gain great power, leading a cult or political party. And once they are in power, the Shadow will have space to operate. They will become intolerant, railing at the impure, punishing them if necessary. Maximilien Robespierre (nicknamed the Incorruptible), who rose to power in the French Revolution, was just such a type. Under his reign, the guillotine was never busier. They are also secretly drawn to sex, to money, to the limelight, and to what is expressly taboo for their particular saintliness. The strain and the temptations are too much—they are the gurus who sleep with their students. They will appear the saint in public, but their family or spouse will see the demonic side in private. (See the story of the Tolstoys in chapter 2.) There are genuine saints out there, but they do not feel the need to publicize their deeds or grab power. To distinguish between the real and the fake, ignore their words and the aura they project, focusing on their deeds and the details of their life—how much they seem to enjoy power and attention, the astonishing degree of wealth they have accumulated, the number of mistresses, the level of self-absorption. Once you recognize this type, do not become a naive follower. Keep some distance. If they are enemies, simply shine a light on the clear signs of hypocrisy. As a variation on this, you will find people who propound a philosophy of free love and anything goes; but in fact they are after power. They prefer sex with those who are dependent on them. And of course anything goes, as long as it’s on their terms. The Passive-Aggressive Charmer: These types are amazingly nice and accommodating when you first meet them, so much so that you tend to let them into your life rather quickly. They smile a lot. They are upbeat and always willing to help. At some point, you may return the favor by hiring them for a job or helping them in their careers. You will detect along the way some cracks in the veneer— perhaps they make a somewhat critical comment out of the blue, or you hear from friends that they have been talking about you behind your back. Then something ugly occurs—a blowup, some act of sabotage or betrayal—so unlike that nice, charming person you first befriended.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  health of the project, and he had failed. Whereas before Eisner had only had the best things to say about their working relationship, now he often complained about his second-in-command and contemplated firing him. In the middle of this growing debacle, Eisner felt a new threat on the horizon—Jeffrey Katzenberg. He had once referred to Katzenberg as his golden retriever—so loyal and hardworking. It was Katzenberg who had overseen the string of early hits for the studio, including the biggest hit of all, Beauty and the Beast , the film that had initiated the renaissance of Disney’s animation department. But something about Katzenberg was making him increasingly nervous. Perhaps it was the memo that Katzenberg had written in 1990, in which he dissected the string of flops Disney had recently produced in live action. “Since 1984, we have slowly drifted away from our original vision of how to run a business,” he wrote. Katzenberg criticized the studio’s decision to go for bigger-budget films such as Dick Tracy , trying to make “event movies.” Disney had fallen for “the blockbuster mentality” and had lost its soul in the process. The memo made Eisner uncomfortable. Dick Tracy was Eisner’s own pet project. Was Katzenberg indirectly criticizing his boss? When he thought about it, it seemed like this was a clear imitation of his own infamous memo at Paramount, in which he had advocated for less expensive, high-concept films. Now it occurred to him that Katzenberg saw himself as the next Eisner. Maybe he was angling to take Eisner’s job, to subtly undermine his authority. This began to eat away at him. Why was Katzenberg now cutting him out of story meetings? The animation department soon became the primary generator of profits for the studio, with new hits such as Aladdin and now The Lion King , which had been Katzenberg’s baby—he had come up with the story idea and developed it from start to finish. Magazine articles now began to feature Katzenberg as if he were the creative genius behind Disney’s resurgence in the genre. What about Roy Disney, the vice chairman of animation? What about Eisner himself, who was in charge of everything? To Eisner, Katzenberg was now playing the media, building himself up. An executive had reported to Eisner that Katzenberg was going around saying, “I’m the Walt Disney of today.” Suspicion soon turned into hatred. Eisner could not stand to be around him. Then, in March of 1994, Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter accident while on a skiing trip. To reassure shareholders and Wall Street, Eisner soon announced that he would take over Wells’s position as president. But suddenly here was Katzenberg pestering him with phone calls and memos, reminding Eisner that he had promised him the president’s job if Wells ever left the company. How insensitive, so soon after the tragedy. He stopped returning Katzenberg’s phone calls. Finally, in August 1994, Eisner fired Jeffrey Katzenberg, shocking almost everyone in Hollywood. He had fired the most successful

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  That would have been to see himself in too ugly and soulless a light. To repress such a thought, he constructed what we shall call the aggressor’s narrative . He had to convince himself that his quest for power served some higher purpose. There was a belief at the time among Protestants that to make a lot of money was a sign of grace from God. With wealth, the religious individual could give back to the community and help support the local parish. But Rockefeller took this further. He believed that establishing order in the oil business was a divine mission, like ordering the cosmos. He was on a crusade to bring cheap prices and predictability to American households. Turning Standard Oil into a monopoly blended seamlessly with his deep religious convictions. Sincerely believing in this crusade, it did not bother his conscience to ruthlessly manipulate and ruin his rivals, to bribe legislators, to run roughshod over laws, to form fake rival enterprises to Standard Oil, to spark and use the violence of a strike (with Pennsylvania Railroad) that would help him in the long run. Belief in this narrative made him all the more energetic and aggressive, and for those who faced him, it could be confusing—perhaps there was some good in what he was doing; perhaps he was not a demon after all. Finally, to realize his dream of control, Rockefeller transformed himself into a superior reader of men and their psychology. And the most important quality for him to gauge in the various rivals he faced was their relative willpower and resiliency. He could sense this in people’s body language and in the patterns of their actions. Most people, he determined, are rather weak. They are mostly led by their emotions, which change by the day. They want things to be rather easy in life and tend to take the path of least resistance. They don’t have a stomach for protracted battles. They want money for the pleasures and comforts it can bring, for their yachts and mansions. They want to look powerful, to satisfy their ego. Make them afraid or confused or frustrated, or offer them an easy way out, and they would surrender to his stronger will. If they got angry, all the better. Anger burns itself out quickly, and Rockefeller always played for the long term. Look at how he played each of the antagonists in his path. With Clark, he carefully fed his arrogance and deliberately made him irritable, so that he would quickly agree to the auction just to get rid of Rockefeller, without thinking too deeply about the consequences. Colonel Payne was a vain and greedy man. Give him plenty of money and a nice title, and he would be satisfied and surrender to Rockefeller his refinery. For the other refinery owners, instill fears about the uncertain future, using the SIC as a convenient bogeyman.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I heard Pearl try to soothe her, then my mother joined them and I heard her voice too, lower than Pearl’s, the two of them speaking sometimes in turn and sometimes together so that their voices formed one murmurous braid of sound. Skipper shifted in his bed but slept on, and in time, as Norma’s keening subsided, I lay back and went to sleep myself. KENNETH PULLED UP the next afternoon and by dinnertime we all hated him. He knew it, and relished it, even sought it out. As soon as he stepped out of his Austin Healey, he started complaining about the remoteness of the camp and the discomfort of the drive and the imprecision of the directions Norma had left behind for him. He had a fussy, aggrieved voice and thin disappointed lips. He wore a golf cap and perforated leather gloves that snapped across the wrist. He removed one of his gloves as he complained, tugging delicately at each finger, then going on to the next until the glove came free. He took off the other just as slowly and carefully, then turned to Norma. “Don’t I get a kiss?” She bent forward to peck him on the cheek but he seized her face between his hands and kissed her long and full on the lips. It was obvious that he was French-kissing her. We stood watching this and smiling the same foolish smiles we had brought outside to welcome him with. After Kenneth had wolfed down a sandwich, Dwight made the mistake of offering him a drink. “Oh, boy,” Kenneth said. “I guess you don’t know much about me.” He said that he believed he had a duty to lay his cards on the table, and so he did. “I don’t know,” Dwight said. “I don’t see the harm in a drink now and then.” “I’m sure you don’t,” Kenneth said. “I’m sure the drug fiend doesn’t see the harm in a needle now and then.” This led to an exchange of words. My mother stepped in and acted jolly and moved us from the kitchen into the living room, where she must have hoped that the presence of the tree and the gifts would remind us why we were together, and call us to our better selves. But Kenneth started laying more cards on the table. There truly was no end of them. Skipper finally said, “Look, Kenneth . . . why don’t you lay off?” “What are you afraid of, Skipper?” “Afraid?” Skipper’s eyelids fluttered as if he were trying to confirm some improbable image. “I only tell you this because I love you,” Kenneth said, “but you are very frightened people. Very frightened. But hey, there’s no need to be—the news is good!” “Just who the hell do you think you are?” Dwight said. Kenneth smiled. “Go on. I can take it.” Norma tried to change the subject but Kenneth could take any comment and find something in it to deplore.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  suppress a yawn when you fail to entertain him, who always speaks his mind, who completely goes his own way in his ideas and style, who acts the same whether he’s talking to his boss or to a child, and you have imagined a person who would be shunned, ridiculed, and despised. We are all such good actors that we’re not even aware of this as it happens. We imagine we are almost always being sincere in our social encounters, which any good actor will tell you is the secret behind really believable acting. We take these skills for granted, but to see them in action, try to look at yourself as you interact with different members of your family and with your boss and colleagues at work. You will see yourself subtly changing what you say, your tone of voice, your mannerisms, your whole body language, to suit each individual and situation. For people you are trying to impress, you wear a much different face than with those with whom you are familiar and can let down your guard. You do this almost without thinking. Over the centuries various writers and thinkers, looking at humans from an outside perspective, have been struck by the theatrical quality of social life. The most famous quote expressing this comes from Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts.” If the theater and actors were traditionally represented by the image of masks, writers such as Shakespeare are implying that all of us are constantly wearing masks. Some people are better actors than others. Villainous types such as Iago in the play Othello are able to conceal their hostile intentions behind a friendly, benign smile. Others are able to act with more confidence and bravado—they often become leaders. People with consummate acting skills can better navigate our complex social environments and get ahead. Although we are all expert actors, at the same time we secretly experience this need to act and play a part as a burden. We are the most successful social animal on the planet. For hundreds of thousands of years our hunter-gatherer ancestors could survive only by constantly communicating with one another through nonverbal cues. Developed over so much time, before the invention of language, that is how the human face became so expressive, and gestures so elaborate. This is bred deep within us. We have a continual desire to communicate our feelings and yet at the same time the need to conceal them for proper social functioning. With these counterforces battling inside us, we cannot completely control what we communicate. Our real feelings continually leak out in the form of gestures, tones of voice, facial expressions, and posture. We are not trained, however, to pay attention to people’s nonverbal cues. By sheer habit, we fixate on the words people say, while also

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Look at how he played each of the antagonists in his path. With Clark, he carefully fed his arrogance and deliberately made him irritable, so that he would quickly agree to the auction just to get rid of Rockefeller, without thinking too deeply about the consequences. Colonel Payne was a vain and greedy man. Give him plenty of money and a nice title, and he would be satisfied and surrender to Rockefeller his refinery. For the other refinery owners, instill fears about the uncertain future, using the SIC as a convenient bogeyman. Make them feel isolated and weak, and sow some panic. Yes, his refineries were more profitable, as shown by his books, but the other owners failed to reason that Rockefeller himself was just as vulnerable as they were to the ups and downs of the business. If only they had united in opposition to his campaign, they could have countered him, but they were made too emotional to think straight, and they surrendered their refineries with ease. When it came to Scott, Rockefeller saw him as a hothead, enraged by Standard Oil’s threat to his preeminent position in business. Rockefeller welcomed the war with Scott and prepared for it by amassing vast amounts of cash. He would simply outlast him. And the angrier he made Scott with his unorthodox tactics, the more imprudent and rash Scott became, going so far as to try to crush the railroad strike, which only made his position weaker. With Benson, Rockefeller recognized the type—the man enamored with his own brilliance and wanting attention as the first one to defeat Standard Oil. Putting up obstacles in his path would only make him try harder, while weakening his finances. It would be simple to buy him off in the end, when he had grown tired of Rockefeller’s relentless pressure. As an extra measure, Rockefeller would always strategize to make his opponents feel rushed and impatient. Clark had only one day to plan for the auction. The refinery owners faced imminent doom in a few months unless they sold to him. Scott and Benson had to hurry up in their battles or face running out of money. This made them more emotional and less able to strategize. Understand: Rockefeller represents a type of individual that you will likely come across in your field. We shall call this type the sophisticated aggressor , as opposed to the primitive aggressor . Primitive aggressors have very short fuses. If someone triggers in them feelings of inferiority or weakness, they explode. They lack any self-control, and so they tend to not get very far in life, inevitably bullying and hurting too many people. Sophisticated aggressors are much trickier. They rise to top positions and can stay there because they know how to cloak their maneuvers, to present a distracting façade, and to play upon people’s emotions. They know that most people do not like confrontation or long struggles, and so they can

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  I Sunk Cost and the Fear of Waste n 2008, California voters approved the issuance of $9 billion in bonds for building a high- speed rail system connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. The system, capable of traveling up to 220 miles per hour, would also connect Californians all along the route in potentially transformative ways. The economic engines of the state are the coastal centers in the north (the Bay Area and Silicon Valley) and the south (Los Angeles and San Diego). The greater speed and mobility would allow the rest of the state in between to participate in the prosperity concentrated at the north and south coasts. It would also relieve the overdeveloped real estate markets in those northern and southern metropolitan areas by allowing people a reasonable commute from greater distances. When the bond issue passed, it was estimated that the route would be completed in 2020, at a cost of $33 billion, and that the rail system would be generating yearly operating revenue of $1.3 billion by 2020, with an operating surplus of $370 million, making the system self-supporting and increasingly profitable thereafter. The bonds that were issued covered only about a quarter of the expected cost to complete the project, but the rest would be made up in federal funds, additional state funds, and public-private partnerships. These projections and plans all came from the California High-Speed Rail Authority (or, as it refers to itself, “the Authority”). The Authority has been responsible from the beginning for planning, designing, building, and operating the system. They are the decision-maker, along with oversight from the governor and the state legislature. The Authority creates a new business plan and updates projections every two years. As the costs and completion dates have continued to climb in these updates, it has also become increasingly clear that the plans and projections— neither the original ones nor the later revisions—have not had any connection with reality.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Calling just about any New Testament (NT) text “anti-Jewish” is not accurate, if for no other reason than that most of them were written by those who would have identified themselves as being Jewish. This is certainly true for Matthew. Nevertheless, Matthew, while not being anti-Jewish, is explicitly anti-Pharisaic, and it was not too long after its composition when this distinction was lost. There is a connection between the animus that Matthew displayed toward his Pharisaic opponents and the later hostility that existed between Church and Synagogue. Several passages in the NT are problematic from the perspective of Jewish–Christian relations. John’s gospel has “the Jews” (οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι) and the infamous 8:44 (“You are of your father the devil”), and Matthew has chapter 23 and 27:25 (“And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’ ”). These problematic texts have obvious anti-Jewish implications for many modern readers and it is the obviousness of the problem that in some ways makes them less of a problem (inasmuch as they are at least easier to identity). The Sermon on the Mount is not usual y seen as a text with anti-Jewish implications, and to argue that such implications are present might come as a surprise, especial y since it has long been celebrated as the apex of Christian ethics. It is the lack of obviousness that makes it dangerous, as that which is beautiful and harmful is more threatening than that which is ugly and harmful. The Sermon on the Mount is a Trojan horse, which hides that which is dangerous within that which is attractive. When that which is attractive is embraced, that which is dangerous slips in as well without even being recognized. The Sermon on the Mount is built upon an ethical flaw. It establishes its terms through the negative othering of the Pharisees. Matthew’s stereotype of the Pharisee sets the boundary for Christian identity, and despite its demand to love enemies (5:44), this text requires a vilification of the other that can hardly be called love. The fact 128 128 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles that Christian identity is built upon and requires this negative representation of the other has troubling implications. If Christians wish to use this text for “spiritual” or “ethical” application, they cannot do so without adopting at least some of the terms of the text. Specifical y, the hypocritical Pharisee must be retained if these texts are to have their “meaning-effect.” To rehabilitate the Matthean Pharisees by changing the characterization of the Pharisees (if that is even possible) would be to undermine the structure of the Sermon on the Mount and would be for all practical purposes a repudiation of the Sermon.

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

  Besides. It is an ill-disposed mind that is incited by the commission of crime to lend his assistance to another. But this is done in these arts: for we read of innocent children being slain by those who practise them. Therefore the persons by whose assistance such things are done have an evil mind. Again. The proper good of the intellect is truth. Since therefore it belongs to good to lead others to good, it belongs to any well-disposed intellect to lead others to truth. In the works of the magicians, however, many things are done by which men are mocked and deceived. The intellect whose help they use, therefore, is not morally well disposed. Further. A well-disposed intellect is allured by truth in which it takes delight, but not by lies. The magicians, however, in their invocations make use of various lies, whereby they allure those whose help they employ; for they threaten certain impossible things, as for instance that, unless the one who is called upon gives help, he who invokes him will shatter the heavens or displace the stars, as Porphyry narrates in his Letter to Anebontes. Those intellectual substances, therefore, with whose help the works of the magicians are performed do not seem to be intellectually well disposed. Moreover. That a superior should be subject as an inferior to one that commands him; or that an inferior should allow himself to be invoked as a superior, would seem to indicate a person of an ill-disposed mind. Now, magicians call upon those whose assistance they employ, as though these were their superiors: and as soon as they appear they command them as inferiors. In no way therefore are they seemingly of a well-disposed mind. Hereby we refute the error of pagans who ascribed these works to the gods. CHAPTER CVII THAT THE INTELLECTUAL SUBSTANCE WHOSE ASSISTANCE IS EMPLOYED IN THE MAGIC ARTS IS NOT EVIL IN ITS NATUREIT is impossible that there be natural malice in the intellectual substances whose assistance is employed in the practice of the magic arts. For if a thing tends to something by its nature, it tends thereto not accidentally but per se: as a heavy body tends downwards. Now if these intellectual substances are evil essentially, they tend to evil naturally: and, consequently, not accidentally but per se. But this is impossible: for We have proved that all things tend per se to good, and nothing tends to evil except accidentally. Therefore these intellectual substances are not naturally evil.

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

  321Lecture 32—Liberation Theologies in Latin America LATIN AMERICA AND THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT õProtestant conservatives agreed with the future pope there. They saw liberation theology as dangerous too, for many of the same reasons. Moreover, many Latin American evangelicals had strong links to the American Christian right. Another way of putting it might be: The American Christian right liked to meddle in Latin American affairs almost as much as the U.S. government did. õAmerican televangelists and radio ministries have had a huge impact in Latin America. For example, Pat Robertson used his TV channel to promote the Contras, the CIA-backed force fighting the communist Sandinistas, who took power in Nicaragua in 1979. õLatin American Protestants didn’t just fall into line behind American busybodies. And the more Latin American evangelicals learned about their North American colleagues, the more many of them realized that there were real theological differences between them. õThey generally shared a traditional view of gender roles and a commitment to anti-communism. But like many Christians in the developing world, more progressive Latin American evangelicals did not share the attitude of many Northern evangelicals that a commitment to social justice, to reforming the structural sin in society and calling on the government to help do so, makes one uncommitted to preaching the gospel. õAt an international conference of evangelicals in 1974 at Lausanne, Switzerland, evangelical leaders René Padilla (from Ecuador) and Samuel Escobar (from Peru) insisted that the conference’s official statement had to stress the church’s social responsibility. õThe prominent Argentinian evangelist Luis Palau, for his part, criticized Lausanne for being too cooperative with liberals. He preached that real social change can only come with winning more hearts for Christ, not through large-scale social reform. 322The History of Christianity II SUGGESTED READING Gonzalez and Gonzales, Christianity in Latin America. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation. Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äWhy were Protestant immigrants both a boon and a threat to the Catholic regimes of Latin America? äHow did Protestant and Catholic missionaries and priests respond to the challenges of evangelization among rural communities and the poor? äWhy did conservative evangelicals in the United States spend so much time and money meddling in Latin American affairs? 323 LECTURE 33 PROPHETIC RELIGION IN MODERN AFRICA T he Nigerian minister Daniel Olukoya is the head of a religious empire called Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, which has its headquarters outside of the enormous city of Lagos. This ministry has other branches all over Nigeria and in the United States, Europe, and other African countries. Olukoya preaches a particularly potent version of the prosperity gospel. This is a form of Christianity that emphasizes an idea that appears throughout the Bible—the notion that God rewards true believers with worldly blessings and punishes those who don’t keep the faith.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  traditions—how they viewed themselves and how others viewed them—was all to be played for. A Roman or Judaean male who felt perturbed by this variety, or the slovenly attitudes of the vulgus ( hoi polloi, ‘ammei ha-aretz) toward ancestral norms, could always join a group with higher admission requirements: a philosophical school (Stoics, Pharisees, Essenes), priestly college, purity club, particular synagogue, or literary coterie. Formal or informal initiation into such groups was real, sometimes an ordeal. Certainly, one could speak of getting in and staying in such groups. Once admitted among fellow purists, members could safely share their peeves concerning the larger society’s descent into the abyss. The larger society could have no such singlemindedness, however. Procreation has no standards. Before glancing over Paul’s letters in pursuit of our real-life historical question of how he presented himself to his groups in relation to Judaean ancestral tradition, it is worth trying to get a sense of the diversity that ancient categories permitted in relation to ancestral tradition, outside of in–out purity groups. Loyalty to one’s ethnos and polis were axiomatic values, as we have seen (cf. Herodotus 3.38). But every literate person knew that new affiliations and changing identities were always possible, whether individual or collective, voluntarily or under compulsion. This kind of thing was not framed as moving in or out of a religion, or in the case of Judaea as getting in or out of Judaism. How was it framed? I have mentioned Laconism, or Spartanizing, a famous example of cultural admiration and borrowing. The term referred in the first instance to those who allied with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. But Sparta’s fiercely disciplined way of life would remain highly attractive to modern societies from imperial Britain to Soviet Russia. Ancient admirers included philosophers, who liked its constitution from afar, and the young men who visited Laconia to see it in action—and faced periodic expulsion for the sake of maintaining cultural purity. In the opposite direction, Thucydides and the Spartans accused the Spartan king Pausanias of holding his ancestral laws in contempt, while favoring those of the Persians (1.132.1–2), a charge he did not accept but turned back on them.40 There were no objective measures of such things. Individuals acted as they saw fit, and sometimes incurred the wrath of opponents for compromising the ancestral traditions. There are surely parallels in modern politics. Herodotus charged the Persian king Cambyses with forsaking his laws and everyone else’s (3.36–38). The Scythians were a fund of fascination on this score. The reported curiosity of some of their leaders about foreign wisdom led other Scythians to violence. Anacharsis, Toxaris, and Scyles did not cease to be Scythians, or even royals (much less leave a “Scythism”), when they returned home as Athenian citizens or devotees of the Great Mother Cybele. Rather, they were deemed sufficiently defective Scythians to be killed for abandoning their ancestral traditions, or foreignizing as 2 Maccabees might have put it. 41

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

  190The History of Christianity II õYet Catholicism was the only officially permitted religion of Cuba. It was the white people’s religion, and if you were not white, adopting at least the outward practices of Catholicism was crucial to survival. õIn Havana, the church sponsored fraternal societies called cabildos that were based on ethnicity. These became refuges for black free people and enslaved people alike, where they could escape white racism and mix African worship traditions with devotion to their patron saint. They could do traditional African dances before an altar of the Virgin Mary, and parade on a feast day with African drums. õTo clarify: To white Spanish onlookers she might have looked like the Virgin Mary, but for these believers she was also Yemaya, the deity of maternity and the ocean. õThe cabildos were the birthplaces of the fusion of folk Catholicism and African polytheism known as Santeria. In this faith, worshippers venerate African gods called orishas or santos and reimagined as Catholic saints. 191Lecture 19—Slave Religion in the Americas õMost of these gods come from the beliefs of the Yoruba people, a West African ethnic group that many Cuban slaves counted as their ancestors. The highest Yoruba God is the creator god Olorun, a supreme being who is a lot like God the Father or Jehovah in Christianity. õFor the Yoruba, he is the paragon of ashe, a spiritual energy that permeates the universe. A person can’t reach Olorun directly, but a person can seek help and manipulate this spiritual power by pleasing the lesser gods, the orishas, with sacrifices and offerings. õCuban worshippers kept sacred stones in a large soup tureen. These stones were meant to represent the deities; worshipers “fed” the deities’ stones with blood from sacrificed animals. This is one way they built a community and a spiritual world to replace the culture and communal structures that slavery had destroyed. SUGGESTED READING Breen, The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood. Raboteau, Slave Religion. Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äWhy did Christianity become both an ideology of oppression and a message of liberation on slave plantations? äWhat accounts for the appeal of religious leaders like Nat Turner and Rebecca? äWhat are the challenges in trying to recover the religious ideas and practices of enslaved people in the 18 th and 19 th centuries? 192

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  60 I am primarily focusing on 5:17–48, but this same logic that uses the Pharisees as a foil against which Jesus’ higher (fulfilled) righteousness stands in relief occurs often in the Sermon on the Mount. The “hypocrites,” obviously meaning the Pharisees, are explicitly mentioned in 6:1–6, 16–18, and might be seen implicitly elsewhere as well. E.g.: Are they the ones who “store up treasures for themselves?” (6:19). Matthew’s Trojan Horse127 127 Even if 5:21–48 could survive this deconstruction, its inner logic would be so ruptured that what would remain would be quite different from what we started with. If the distinction between positive inner righteousness and negative outer expression (as found in 5:21–22, 27–28), and between positive original intent and negative later additions (5:31–32, 19:8, and arguably also 5:33–37 and 38–42) were lost, the meaning potential of these statements would also be lost. Such is the danger with binary logic: one cannot have an inner if one has no outer, just as one cannot have original intent if there are no later additions. The significance of this is simply that Matthew needs his literary Pharisee stereotype. The higher righteousness of Jesus requires that the Pharisees maintain their status as empty hypocrites. Any change in this status would challenge the whole value system that is built upon this very distinction. If “they” cease being “them,” “we” also cease to be “us.” Conclusion: Is the Sermon on the Mount Ethically Flawed? Calling just about any New Testament (NT) text “anti-Jewish” is not accurate, if for no other reason than that most of them were written by those who would have identified themselves as being Jewish. This is certainly true for Matthew. Nevertheless, Matthew, while not being anti-Jewish, is explicitly anti-Pharisaic, and it was not too long after its composition when this distinction was lost. There is a connection between the animus that Matthew displayed toward his Pharisaic opponents and the later hostility that existed between Church and Synagogue. Several passages in the NT are problematic from the perspective of Jewish–Christian relations. John’s gospel has “the Jews” (οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι) and the infamous 8:44 (“You are of your father the devil”), and Matthew has chapter 23 and 27:25 (“And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’ ”). These problematic texts have obvious anti-Jewish implications for many modern readers and it is the obviousness of the problem that in some ways makes them less of a problem (inasmuch as they are at least easier to identity). The Sermon on the Mount is not usually seen as a text with anti-Jewish implications, and to argue that such implications are present might come as a surprise, especially since it has long been celebrated as the apex of Christian ethics. It is the lack of obviousness that makes it dangerous, as that which is beautiful and harmful is more threatening than that which is ugly and harmful. The Sermon on the Mount is a Trojan horse, which hides that which is dangerous within that which is attractive. When that which is attractive is embraced, that which is dangerous slips in as well without even being recognized. The Sermon on the Mount is built upon an ethical flaw. It establishes its terms through the negative othering of the Pharisees. Matthew’s stereotype of the Pharisee sets the boundary for Christian identity, and despite its demand to love enemies (5:44), this text requires a vilification of the other that can hardly be called love. The fact

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  123 identity. A border tells me where mine ends and yours starts. Borders “insist ... upon separation” while simultaneously “acknowledg[ing] connection.” 45 Thus, the border between Matthew’s community and the Pharisees ensured both the connectedness of these two groups as well as their differences. In order for Matthew to maintain his own constructed collective identity, the Pharisees also must maintain their collective identity. These two identities for Matthew are inseparably linked. His is what theirs is not, and therefore if theirs changed so would his. This would be true to a lesser degree (although still true) had Matthew not so sharply “othered” the Pharisees through his stereotypes. Borders can be more or less rigid depending upon the context. A less rigid, more porous border might have made Matthean identity less dependent upon the Pharisees. However, Matthew constructed a rigid boundary between his group and the Pharisees. Because of this, in his narrative they served not merely as an incidental border but as an essential one. In order for Matthew to be Matthew, the Pharisees had to be the Pharisees. Stereotypes create and strengthen borders by employing specific essentialist assumptions about the nature of the groups being represented: (1) they possess ontological status (discussed earlier); (2) membership is immutable; (3) knowledge of someone’s group membership has a great deal of inductive potential; (4) knowledge of someone’s membership in the group has a great deal of interpretive potential; (5) membership is exclusive. 46 Groups have an ontological status. This means that for Matthew the Pharisees were not merely a constructed communal collective held together by negotiated values and narratives, but that they were a real entity with a defining underlying essence. Hence, the various evils enumerated in the Sermon on the Mount (and elsewhere) were not just incidental features but rather features flowing from an ontologically given and unchangeable inner reality. The Pharisees were believed to be hypocrites not because of poor religious education, a lack of personal reflection, or some other societal cause; they were hypocrites by nature—it was an essential component of who they were. Group members “cannot cease to be a members”—membership is immutable. There is nothing in Matthew that indicates he had any hope that his Pharisaic rivals could change or convert, as a group or as individuals. Once a Pharisee, always a Pharisee. 47 The knowledge of someone’s group membership has a great deal of inductive potential—“knowing that someone belongs to the category tells us a lot about that person”; the knowledge of someone’s membership in the group has a great deal of interpretive potential as the already determined underlying essence provides a means by which other features can be understood. For Matthew to know someone was a Pharisee meant that all the descriptions and accusations contained in the Pharisee stereotype could be automatically applied. For Matthew, knowing that someone was 45 Friedman, Mappings, 3.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: The miser hates something accidental to himself, but not for that reason does he hate himself: thus a sick man hates his sickness for the very reason that he loves himself. Or we may say that avarice makes man hateful to others, but not to himself. In fact, it is caused by inordinate self-love, in respect of which, man desires temporal goods for himself more than he should. Whether a man can hate the truth?Objection 1: It would seem that a man cannot hate the truth. For good, true, and being are convertible. But a man cannot hate good. Neither, therefore, can he hate the truth. Objection 2: Further, “All men have a natural desire for knowledge,” as stated in the beginning of the Metaphysics i, 1. But knowledge is only of truth. Therefore truth is naturally desired and loved. But that which is in a thing naturally, is always in it. Therefore no man can hate the truth. Objection 3: Further, the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 4) that “men love those who are straightforward.” But there can be no other motive for this save truth. Therefore man loves the truth naturally. Therefore he cannot hate it. On the contrary, The Apostle says (Gal. 4:16): “Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” [*St. Thomas quotes the passage, probably from memory, as though it were an assertion: “I am become,” etc.] I answer that, Good, true and being are the same in reality, but differ as considered by reason. For good is considered in the light of something desirable, while being and true are not so considered: because good is “what all things seek.” Wherefore good, as such, cannot be the object of hatred, neither in general nor in particular. Being and truth in general cannot be the object of hatred: because disagreement is the cause of hatred, and agreement is the cause of love; while being and truth are common to all things. But nothing hinders some particular being or some particular truth being an object of hatred, in so far as it is considered as hurtful and repugnant; since hurtfulness and repugnance are not incompatible with the notion of being and truth, as they are with the notion of good.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Curly, a man with no hair. Jesus, a man with a beard. But there were also pictures of corpses. He meant to scare me off the subject with these pictures but instead they made me more interested. Finally Marian told me to stop bothering him. Marian and I disliked each other. Later we both found reasons for it, but our dislike was instinctive and mysterious. I tried to cover mine with a treacly stream of yes ma’ams and no ma’ams and offers of help. Marian wasn’t fooled. She knew I didn’t like her, and that I was not the young gentleman I pretended to be. She went out a lot, running errands, and she sometimes saw me on the street with my friends—bad company, from the looks of them. She knew I combed my hair differently after I left the house and rearranged my clothes. Once, driving past us, she yelled at me to pull up my pants. * * * MY FRIENDS WERE Terry Taylor and Terry Silver. All three of us lived with our mothers. Terry Taylor’s father was stationed in Korea. The war had been over for two years but he still hadn’t come home. Mrs. Taylor had filled the house with pictures of him, graduation portraits, snapshots in and out of uniform—always alone, leaning against trees, standing in front of houses. The living room was like a shrine; if you didn’t know better you would have thought that he had not survived Korea but had died some kind of hero’s death there, as Mrs. Taylor had perhaps anticipated. This sepulchral atmosphere owed a lot to the presence of Mrs. Taylor herself. She was a tall, stooped woman with deep-set eyes. She sat in her living room all day long and chain-smoked cigarettes and stared out the picture window with an air of unutterable sadness, as if she knew things beyond mortal bearing. Sometimes she would call Taylor over and wrap her long arms around him, then close her eyes and hoarsely whisper, “Terence! Terence!” Eyes still closed, she would turn her head and resolutely push him away. Silver and I immediately saw the potential of this scene and we replayed it often, so often that we could bring tears to Taylor’s eyes just by saying “Terence! Terence!” Taylor was a dreamy thin-skinned boy who cried easily, a weakness from which he tried to distract us by committing acts of ferocious vandalism. He’d once been to juvenile court for breaking windows. Mrs. Taylor also had two daughters, both older than Terry and full of scorn for us and all our works. “Oh, God ,” they’d say when they saw us. “Look what the cat dragged in.” Silver and I suffered their insults meekly, but Taylor always had an answer. “Does your face hurt?” he would say. “I just wondered, it’s killing me.” “Is that sweater made of camel’s hair? I just wondered, I thought I saw two humps.” But they always had the last word.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I didn’t worry about him. He was too short. He was a mechanic. His clothes were wrong. I didn’t know why they were wrong, but they were. We hadn’t come all the way out here to end up with him. He didn’t even live in Seattle; he lived in a place called Chinook, a tiny village three hours north of Seattle, up in the Cascade Mountains. Besides, he’d already been married. He had three kids of his own living with him, all teenagers. I knew my mother would never let herself get tangled up in a mess like that. And even though Dwight kept driving down from the mountains to see my mother, every other weekend at first, then every weekend, he seemed to sense the futility of his case. His attentions to my mother were puppyish, fawning, as if he knew that the odds of getting his hands on her were pathetically slim and that even being in her presence was a piece of luck that depended on his displaying at every moment deference, bounce, optimism, and all manner of good cheer. He tried too hard. No eye is quicker to detect that kind of effort than the eye of a competitor who also happens to be a child. I seized on and stored away every nuance of Dwight’s abjection, his habit of licking his lips, the way his eyes darted from face to face to search out warning signs of disagreement or boredom, his uncertain smile, the phony timbre of his laughter at jokes he didn’t really get. Nobody could just go to the kitchen and make a drink, Dwight had to jump up and do it himself. Nobody could open a door or put on a coat without his help. They couldn’t even smoke their own cigarettes, they had to take one of Dwight’s and submit to a prolonged drama of ignition: the unsheathing of his monogrammed Zippo from its velvet case; the snapping open of the top against his pant leg; the presentation of the tall flame with its crown of oily smoke—then the whole ritual in reverse. I was a good mimic, or at least a cruel one, and Dwight was an easy target. I went to work as soon as he left the house. My mother and Kathy tried not to laugh but they did, and so did Marian, though she never really abandoned herself to it. “Dwight’s not that bad,” she would say to my mother, and my mother would nod. “He’s very nice,” Marian would add, and my mother would nod again and say, “Jack, that’s enough.” We spent Thanksgiving in Chinook with Dwight and his kids. Snow had fallen a few nights earlier. It had melted in the valley but still covered the trees on the upper slopes, which were purple with shadow when we arrived. Though it was still late afternoon the sun had already set behind the mountains.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  He also acted as unofficial recruiter for the army. He had served during World War II in “the European Theater,” as he liked to say, and had actually killed men. He sometimes brought in different items he had taken from their bodies, not only medals and bayonets, which you could buy in any pawnshop, but also letters in German and wallets with pictures of families inside. Whenever we wanted to distract Mr. Mitchell from collecting essays we hadn’t written, we would ask about the circumstances of his kills. Mr. Mitchell would crouch behind his desk, peer over the top, then roll into the middle of the room and spring to his feet yelling da-da-da-da-da . But he praised the courage and discipline of the Germans, and said that in his opinion we had fought on the wrong side. We should have gone into Moscow, not Berlin. As far as the concentration camps were concerned, we had to remember that nearly all the Jewish scientists had perished there. If they had lived, they would have helped Hitler develop his atomic bomb before we developed ours, and we would all be speaking German today. Mr. Mitchell relied heavily on audiovisual aids in teaching his classes. We saw the same movies many times, combat documentaries and FBI-produced cautionary tales about high-school kids tricked into joining communist cells in Anytown, U.S.A. On our final examination Mr. Mitchell asked, “What is your favorite amendment?” We were ready for this question, and all of us gave the correct answer—“The Right to Bear Arms”—except for a girl who answered “Freedom of Speech.” For this impertinence she failed not only the question but the whole test. When she argued that she could not logically be marked wrong on this question, Mr. Mitchell blew up and ordered her out of the classroom. She complained to the principal but nothing came of it. Most of the kids in the class thought she was being a smarty-pants, and so did I. Mr. Mitchell also taught PE. He had introduced boxing to the school, and every year he organized a smoker where hundreds of people paid good money to watch us boys beat the bejesus out of each other. Miss Houlihan taught speech. She had adopted some years back a theory of elocution that had to do with “reaching down” for words rather than merely saying them, as if they were already perfectly formed in our stomachs and waiting to be brought up like trout from a stock pond. Instead of using our lips we were supposed to simply let the words “escape.” This was hard to get the hang of. Miss Houlihan believed in getting the first thing right before moving on to the next, so we spent most of the year grunting “Hiawatha” in a choral arrangement she herself had devised. She liked it so much that in the spring she took us to a speech tournament in Mount Vernon.