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.

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

  Solomon is not to be compared with Theognis, Socrates, and other Greek sages; moreover he is said to have been overcome by women, and therefore does not deserve to be ranked among wise men. Paul was an arch-traitor; calling God now the God of the Jews, now the God of the Gentiles, now both at once; not seldom contradicting the Old Testament, Christ, and himself, and generally accommodating his doctrine to circumstances. The heathen emperor thinks it absurd that Christian baptism should be able to cleanse from gross sins, while it cannot remove a wart, or gout, or any bodily evil. He puts the Bible far below the Hellenic literature, and asserts, that it made men slaves, while the study of the classics educated great heroes and philosophers. The first Christians he styles most contemptible men, and the Christians of his day he charges with ignorance, intolerance, and worshipping dead persons, bones, and the wood of the cross.

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

  through a bloody battle of parties, that for such a price he would at once turn Christian himself.485 Such an example could not but shed its evil influence on the lower clergy of the great cities. Jerome sketches a sarcastic description of the Roman priests, who squandered all their care on dress and perfumery, curled their hair with crisping pins, wore sparkling rings, paid far too great attention to women, and looked more like bridegrooms than like clergymen.486 And in the Greek church it was little better. Gregory Nazianzen, himself a bishop, and for a long time patriarch of Constantinople, frequently mourns the ambition, the official jealousies, and the luxury of the hierarchy, and utters the wish that the bishops might be distinguished only by a higher grade of virtue. § 54. Organization of the Hierarchy: Country Bishop, City Bishops, and Metropolitans. The episcopate, notwithstanding the unity of the office and its rights, admitted the different grades of country bishop, ordinary city bishop, metropolitan, and patriarch. Such a distinction had already established itself on the basis of free religious sentiment in the church; so that the incumbents of the apostolic sees, like Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, stood at the head of the hierarchy. But this gradation now assumed a political character, and became both modified and confirmed by attachment to the municipal division of the Roman empire. Constantine the Great divided the whole empire into four praefectures (the Oriental, the Illyrian, the Italian, and the Gallic); the praefectures into vicariates, dioceses, or proconsulates, fourteen or fifteen in all;487 and each diocese again into several provinces.488 The praefectures were governed by Praefecti Praetorio, the dioceses by Vicarii, the provinces by Rectores, with various titles—commonly Praesides. It was natural, that after the union of church and state the ecclesiastical organization and the political should, so far as seemed proper, and hence of course with manifold exceptions, accommodate themselves to one another. In the East this principle of conformity was more palpably and rigidly carried out than in the West. The council of Nice in the fourth century proceeds upon it, and the second and fourth ecumenical councils confirm it. The political influence made itself most distinctly felt in the elevation of Constantinople to a patriarchal see. The Roman bishop Leo, however, protested against the reference of his own power to political considerations, and planted it exclusively upon the primacy of Peter; though evidently the Roman see owed its importance to the favorable cooperation of both these influences. The power of the patriarchs extended over one or more municipal dioceses; while the metropolitans presided over single provinces. The word diocese (dioivkhsi") passed from the political into the ecclesiastical terminology, and denoted at first a patriarchal district, comprising several provinces (thus the expression occurs continually in the Greek acts of councils), but afterward came to be applied in the West to each episcopal district. The circuit of a metropolitan was called in the East an eparchy (ejparciva), in the West provincia.

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

  In Salerno, also, women practised medicine and lectured, as did Trotula, about 1059, who wrote on the diseases of women. In Paris, as we have been reminded by Denifle, the daughters of one Mangold taught theology in the latter part of the eleventh century.1277 On the other hand, due care was taken to protect the students of Bologna against the wiles of women. The statutes of its college, founded by Cardinal Albornoz, 1367, for Spanish students, forbade them dancing because "the devil easily tempts men to evil through this amusement," and also forbade women to "enter the premises because a woman was the head of sin, the right hand of the devil, and the cause of the expulsion from paradise."1278 A graduate of civil law was required at Bologna to have studied seven years, and of canon law six years. To become a doctor of both laws, utriusque juris, a term of ten years was prescribed. In 1292, Nicholas IV. formally granted the Bolognese doctors the right to lecture everywhere, a right they had exercised before. The promotion to the doctorate was accompanied with much pageantry an involved the candidate in large outlay for gifts and banquets.1279 The class rooms in canon and civil jurisprudence at Bologna became synonymous with traditional opinions. There was no encouragement of originality. With the interpretation of the text-books, which had been handed down, the work of the professor was at an end. This conservatism Dante may have had in mind when he made the complaint that in Bologna only the Decretals were studied. And Roger Bacon exclaimed that "the study of jurisprudence has for forty years destroyed the study of wisdom [that is philosophy, the sciences, and theology], yes, the church itself and all departments."1280 When the Renaissance came, it did not start with Bologna or any of the other Italian universities but in the courts of princes and popes and especially in the city of Florence. The universities produced no Savonarola and encouraged no religious or doctrinal reform. Note. – An account of the brilliant celebration of the eighth centenary of Bologna, 1888, is given by Philip Schaff: The University, etc., in Lit. and Poetry, pp. 265–278. On that occasion Dr. Schaff represented the University of New York. The exercises were honored by the presence of Humbert and the queen of Italy. The ill-fated Frederick III. of Germany sent from his sick-room a letter of congratulation, as in some sense the heir of Frederick Barbarossa. The clergy were conspicuous by their absence from the celebration, although among the visitors was Father Gavazzi, the ex-Barnabite friar, who in 1848 fired the hearts of his fellow-citizens, the Bolognese, for the cause of Italian liberty and unity and afterwards became the eloquent advocate of a new evangelical movement for his native land, abroad as well as at home. A contrast was presented at the five hundredth anniversary of the University of Heidelberg, 1886, which Dr.

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

  The third principle was the importance of preaching and the right of laymen to exercise that function. Peter Waldo and his associates were lay evangelists. All the early documents refer to their practice of preaching as one of the worst heresies of the Waldenses and an evident proof of their arrogance and

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

  In the first place, he proposed to improve the irreclaimable priesthood after the model of the Christian clergy. The priests, as true mediators between the gods and men, should be constantly in the temples, should occupy themselves with holy things, should study no immoral or skeptical books of the school of Epicurus and Pyrrho, but the works of Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Chrysippus, and Zeno; they should visit no taverns nor theatres, should pursue no dishonorable trade, should give alms, practise hospitality, live in strict chastity and temperance, wear simple clothing, but in their official functions always appear in the costliest garments and most imposing dignity. He borrowed almost every feature of the then prevalent idea of the Christian priesthood, and applied it to the polytheistic religion.68 Then, he borrowed from the constitution and worship of the church a hierarchical system of orders, and a sort of penitential discipline, with excommunication, absolution, and restoration, besides a fixed ritual embracing didactic and musical elements. Mitred priests in purple were to edify the people regularly with sermons; that is, with allegorical expositions and practical applications of tasteless and immoral mythological stories! Every temple was to have a well arranged choir, and the congregation its responses. And finally, Julian established in different provinces monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals for the sick, for orphans, and for foreigners without distinction of religion, appropriated to them considerable sums from the public treasury, and at the same time, though fruitlessly, invited voluntary contributions. He made the noteworthy concession, that the heathens did not help even their own brethren in faith; while the Jews never begged, and "the godless Galileans," as he malignantly styled the Christians, supplied not only their own, but even the heathen poor, and thus aided the worst of causes by a good practice. But of course all these attempts to regenerate heathenism by foreign elements were utterly futile. They were like galvanizing a decaying corpse, or grafting fresh scions on a dead trunk, sowing good seed on a rock, or pouring new wine into old bottles, bursting the bottles and wasting the wine. II. The negative side of Julian’s plan was the suppression and final extinction of Christianity.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  For d’Holbach, religion was born of weakness, fear, and superstition; people had created gods to fill the gaps in their knowledge, so religious belief was an act of intellectual cowardice and despair. First, men and women had personified the forces of nature, creating divinities in their own image, but eventually they had merged all these godlings into a massive deity that was simply a projection of their own fears and desires. Their God was “nothing but a gigantic, exaggerated man,” rendered incredible and unintelligible “by dint of keeping together incompatible qualities.”52 God was an incomprehensible chimera, a mere negation of human limitations.53 His infinity, for example, simply meant that he had no spatial boundaries, but such a being was utterly inconceivable. How could you reconcile the goodness of an omnipotent God with human suffering? This incoherent theology was bound to disintegrate in the Age of Reason. Descartes, Newton, Malebranche, and Clarke, who had all tried to save God, were simply atheists in disguise. Clarke, for example, had assumed that matter could not have brought itself into existence, but recent research had proved that he was mistaken. Even the great Newton had succumbed to the prejudices of his infancy. His Dominion was nothing but a deified despot, created in the image of a powerful man.54 If only these philosophers had realized that they need look no higher than Nature, their philosophy would have come out correctly. The System of Nature has been called the bible of the “scientific naturalism” or “scientism” that has continued to fuel the assault on faith. Its central belief is that the natural, material world is the only reality; it needs no external Cause because it is self-originating. There is no God, no soul, and no afterlife, and, although human beings can live useful and creative lives, the world itself has neither point nor purpose of its own. It just is. Science alone can give us a reliable understanding of all reality, including human intelligence and behavior. Because there can be no evidence for God’s existence, all rational, educated individuals must repudiate religion altogether.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Sometimes it reflects a die-hard belief in the protective coloration of heterosexual relationships, sometimes a self-hate which all women have to fight against, taught us from birth. Although elements of these attitudes exist for all women, there are particular resonances of heterosexism and homophobia among Black women. Despite the fact that woman-bonding has a long and honorable history in the African and African-american communities, and despite the knowledge and accomplishments of many strong and creative women-identified Black women in the political, social and cultural fields, heterosexual Black women often tend to ignore or discount the existence and work of Black lesbians. Part of this attitude has come from an understandable terror of Black male attack within the close confines of Black society, where the punishment for any female self-assertion is still to be accused of being a lesbian and therefore unworthy of the attention or support of the scarce Black male. But part of this need to misname and ignore Black lesbians comes from a very real fear that openly women-identified Black women who are no longer dependent upon men for their self-definition may well reorder our whole concept of social relationships. Black women who once insisted that lesbianism was a white woman’s problem now insist that Black lesbians are a threat to Black nationhood, are consorting with the enemy, are basically un-Black. These accusations, coming from the very women to whom we look for deep and real understanding, have served to keep many Black lesbians in hiding, caught between the racism of white women and the homophobia of their sisters. Often, their work has been ignored, trivialized, or misnamed, as with the work of Angelina Grimke, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Lorraine Hansberry. Yet women-bonded women have always been some part of the power of Black communities, from our unmarried aunts to the amazons of Dahomey. And it is certainly not Black lesbians who are assaulting women and raping children and grandmothers on the streets of our communities. Across this country, as in Boston during the spring of 1979 following the unsolved murders of twelve Black women, Black lesbians are spearheading movements against violence against Black women. What are the particular details within each of our lives that can be scrutinized and altered to help bring about change? How do we redefine difference for all women? It is not our differences which separate women, but our reluctance to recognize those differences and to deal effectively with the distortions which have resulted from the ignoring and misnaming of those differences. As a tool of social control, women have been encouraged to recognize only one area of human difference as legitimate, those differences which exist between women and men. And we have learned to deal across those differences with the urgency of all oppressed subordinates.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  Just six years prior, in 1965, sociologist (and later senator) Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in his now infamous Moynihan Report, illustrated the "erotic life of racism."" In his report, Moynihan posited that the crux of the degeneration of the black family and black community was the black "matriarchal" family structure, which, in turn, implicates not only (a false sense of) black dysfunction and pathology, but also contrived notions of black female promiscuity and hypersexuality. The illegitimacy rate among blacks, comparatively higher than that of whites, putatively functioned as material evidence, though was skewed and illusory, as the disproportionately higher abortion rate among whites was conspicuously neglected from the discourse or his report. Thus, it reinscribed and reified racist/ racialized stereotypes of an always already aberrant, "anormative" black sexuality, resulting in a castigation of blacks-rather than systematic American racism, racist oppression, and a long history of U.S. state and legally sanctioned sexual crimes against black bodies-for cumulative black familial and communal "dysfunction." As literary and sexuality studies scholar Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman cogently notes, historical "sexual aberrance incorporated a logic of racial and corporeal identity by which to make it visible" with "transgressive sexuality" being constituted by conventions predicated on aesthetics and phenotypes, notably "appearance" in the "arena of race, by which to make it known."51 What this brings into stark transparency are the contradictions of American life, deeply paradoxical, of the indeed racially sexualized constructions of American sociosexual character. For, as the individual and aggregate findings of Kinsey and Poussaint had shown, while black people's sexual lives were varied, they were neither as exaggerated nor pathologically anomalous as the stereotypes or The Moynihan Report otherwise suggested. Contrastingly, white sexuality lacked the puritanical character that had historically been attributed to it, as the studies exposed that whites engaged more frequently in clandestine taboo sexual acts and a sexual culture that belied their presumably "normative" sexual character. Three years later, in a 1974 issue of Ebony with a cover featuring the then sex symbol Billy Dee Williams, sociologist Robert Staples, in "Has the Sexual Revolution Bypassed Blacks?," argued that although blacks, unlike their white counterparts, were far less involved in certain sexual behavior, such as pornography, "swinging," and open marriages, college-age blacks were more likely to engage in premarital sex than their white counterparts during the sexual revolution.

• From City of Night (1963)

  “After a while,” another man told me, “Glen will be out of the hustling ranks. Hell quit going around with the teenage girls he still tries to impress us with—and he’ll have a steady young boyfriend. Watch and see.” “After all,” another man added, “pretending that you never, never, never do this or that is fine—or if you dont now, that you never will. But really never, never, never doing this or that—well, it’s slightly insane. It’s a perversion in itself.” And so, that summer, it was an insistent refrain: the premium on Youth. Often, it was brought up bitchily by scores after the sexscene—but other times it was said from an acute awareness of the life they—we!—lived.... Mr. King had brought it up, but that had been at the beginning of the journey, and its meaning had been remote then. It wasnt how I would live that terrified me. It was, instead, the horror that the youthful cravings would extend into a time when what made them possible of gratification might no longer be. And one of that summer-wave of people who would emphasize that refrain was an evil old auntie—whom I will remember as an impeccably clean dirty old man—whose name is Hubert, but who says self-affectionately: “Call me Hughie, dear—everyone does”—a rabbity-looking, mincing, effeminate, beady-eyed little old man of about 60. As he tried to flash brilliantly before me, confusing T. E. with D. H. Lawrence, I couldnt help—and what the hell?—coming on intellectually, and I corrected him. “Oh, dear me,” he said, “how frightful—an Intellectual! You should have kept your mouth closed, youngman. My oh my—oh!—the mind of an old man and the body of a young boy. Dear, dear me!” And I struck back at him: “Better than the mind of a young boy and the body of an old man!” “Ouch!” he winced, “dear me, dear dear me,” as with rabbity gestures, he cuddled himself on a chair.... Although I had dinner with him several times after that, he indicated no sexual interest in me then. And it was with him, soon after, that I went to the mansion of that famous director whom Skipper had known. Derisively, the old auntie announced to the director: “This youngman is an Intellectual—watch out,” and the director had immediately sneered: “The last time I even talked to one—a writer,” he said, “I ended up in Confidential magazine.” “Oh, dear, oh, my—listen to that, will you?” the little auntie fluttered: “Oh, the wages of Fame—tsk-tsk!” The director commanded the youngman living with him at that time: “Go tell Mattie we’ll have lunch outside”—with a coldness and an undisguised contempt—a paid owningness—that made me cringe. The youngman moved away obediently—after having fixed our drinks. That whole evening turned into progressively less veiled hostility between myself and the director, as—throughout his brutal imitation of a star then involved in a frontpage sex scandal—the face of Skipper—somewhere drunk in downtown Los Angeles—scorched my thoughts.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I offered him a position opening our second retail store, in Eugene, off the campus, at a monthly salary of four hundred dollars. He didn’t negotiate, thank goodness. If he’d asked for four thousand a month, I might have found a way. “Deal?” I said. “Deal,” he said. He reached out, shook my hand. He still had the strong grip of an athlete. The waitress brought the check and I told Woodell grandly that lunch was on me. I pulled out my wallet and found that it was empty. I asked Blue Ribbon’s Full-time Employee Number Four if he could float me. Just till payday. WHEN HE WASN ’ T sending me new employees, Bowerman was sending me the results of his latest experiments. In 1966 he’d noticed that the Spring Up’s outer sole melted like butter, whereas the midsole remained solid. So he’d urged Onitsuka to take Spring Up’s midsole and fuse it with the Limber Up’s outer sole, thus creating the ultimate distance training shoe. Now, in 1967, Onitsuka sent us the prototype, and it was astonishing. With its luxurious cushioning and its sleek lines, it looked like the future. Onitsuka asked what we thought it should be called. Bowerman liked “Aztec,” in homage to the 1968 Olympics, which were being held in Mexico City. I liked that, too. Fine, Onitsuka said. The Aztec was born. And then Adidas threatened to sue. Adidas already had a new shoe named the “Azteca Gold,” a track spike they were planning to introduce at the same Olympics. No one had ever heard of it, but that didn’t stop Adidas from kicking up a fuss. Aggravated, I drove up the mountain to Bowerman’s house to talk it all over. We sat on the wide porch, looking down at the river. It sparkled that day like a silver shoelace. He took off his ball cap, put it on again, rubbed his face. “Who was that guy who kicked the shit out of the Aztecs?” he asked. “Cortez,” I said. He grunted. “Okay. Let’s call it the Cortez.” I WAS DEVELOPING an unhealthy contempt for Adidas. Or maybe it was healthy. That one German company had dominated the shoe market for a couple of decades, and they possessed all the arrogance of unchallenged dominance. Of course it’s possible that they weren’t arrogant at all, that to motivate myself I needed to see them as a monster. In any event, I despised them. I was tired of looking up every day and seeing them far, far ahead. I couldn’t bear the thought that it was my fate to do so forever. The situation put me in mind of Jim Grelle. In high school, Grelle—pronounced Grella , or sometimes Gorilla —had been the fastest runner in Oregon, and I had been the second-fastest, which meant four years of staring at Grelle’s back. Then Grelle and I both went to the University of Oregon, where his tyranny over me continued.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Standing up—again reciting as if from memory, his voice welling with authority—Neil began: “Yes I do consider myself something of a Saint. The leader of a movement. Ive made Enormous strides here in Oakland and in San Francisco. Why, I practically organized the Stirrup Club—and that coffee shop nearby where all the cyclists go. And Im advancing rapidly in Los Angeles. Just look at all the leather bars there!... Yes, a magnificent movement! Previous such movements have failed. Mine wont—because I know The Secret. Youll watch this movement grow—the only truly militant current the world has ever known—and it will carry everything before it.” He swept his hand across the air, frightening the cat who at that moment had been approaching him again. “Hitler failed,” he said, pronouncing the inevitable name. Chin thrust forward, bowlegs spread, planted firmly like the hands on his flaring hips, he went on: “Yes, Hitler failed. But We will succeed. And women? Women will be out! They represent weakness!—but still they want to dominate their Masters—The Male!” He closes his eyes as if to contain the sudden hatred. “Women are vampires! Vicious, draining blood-suckers!” Carl shakes his head: “Listen... listen.” Neil: “Women will have but one purpose: to give birth to more of Us. That Is All! They say the great civilizations collapsed when We threatened to take over. Theyve missed the point. They collapsed because We didnt go to the inevitable limit: which is complete—...” Carl finishes for him again, as if hes heard it so often he can tell it himself; he barks mockingly: “Complete acceptance—right, honeypie? And not only acceptance!—but a rejection of the other!” “Exactly!” Neil boomed. “And Im not, of course, talking about the ordinary world of simpering faggots and lisping queens that exists now: Theyre weak! Sentimental! They disgust me!... Im talking about Power!... About a movement that has had a glorious history. Why, the Marquis de Sade (the Great! French! Nobleman!)—he and Dr Masoch used to have some exquisite experiments with each other.” His eyes glimmer relishingly. Carl comes in killingly: “Neil, Neil, Neil—youve been wrong all these years: The Marquis de Sade and Masoch didnt even live at the same time. Youve thrown history together for your own purposes—something like the way youve done with the furniture in this house!... Masoch wasnt even a masochist, sugarheart.” He spills some wine on his chin, pushes it with a finger into his mouth in a babyish gesture. He sucks the finger loudly. “As a matter of fact, Saint Nick, they lived in diff—diffrunt cunt—countries!”

• From City of Night (1963)

  Then quickly, diverting attention from Pauline and putting Chuck down with a look, Miss Destiny asked me abruptly do I know anyone in Hollywood who has a beautiful home with a beautiful Winding Staircase where she can come down—“to marry,” she explains, “my new husband and spend my life blissfully (thats very happily, dear) on unemployment with him forever.” Darling Dolly Dane returned suddenly very angrily lisping the man had offered her two bucks, after such a show of buying drinks. “And do you know what the sonuvabitch wants for two miserable goddam bucks?” “To marry you,” said Destiny aloofly. Skipper had a plan to clip the score. “I dont have my husband picked out yet,” Miss Destiny went on as if there had been no interruption. “That part isnt too important yet—I’ll wait until I fall in love again (dont look at Pauline, shes looking over here)—the important thing now is the Winding Staircase.” Darling Dolly Dane: “Two miserable bucks!” Lola: “Youve gone for less, dear.” Darling Dolly Dane, wiggling: “This aint no change-machine, Mae.” Chuck: “Hey, sweetie, you light up with a nickel?” Skipper: “Darling Dolly, you go with the cholly, and I’ll cool it by the parking lot—” Tiger: “Stomp the shit out of him.” Trudi, sighing as if no one but she really understands: “My dears, I tell you it’s the goddam beads.” Buddy: “Darling Dolly, tell him ten so you can get your drag clothes out of hock.” Miss Destiny sighs: “Oh! this! is! too! depressing!—really, my dears, you talk like common thieves and muggers—and what am I doing here?... Now as I was saying—what?—oh, yes—...” Now the score—checking the looks and mean sounds—starts to leave, and Darling Dolly rushes after him, leaving Skipper plotting, and she whispers something to the score (on tiptoes; she is very short), and as they went out togetner, Buddy laughs and laughs: “Two bucks!” And Lola said, “Youve gone for less, dear.” I promised Destiny to tell her if I met anyone with a beautiful home and a winding staircase. “Baby,” she said abruptly, unexpectedly moodily, “dont you think I look real? ” And before anyone can answer, possibly afraid of the answer, she went on hurriedly, “Oh, but you should have seen me when I first came out.” “Here it comes, dears, the goddam Miss Destiny beads,” said Trudi, recognizing Miss Destiny’s cue and looking over the crowd for her “daddy,” who is to meet her here tonight and take her—she says—to Chasen’s—Beverly Hills’ exclusive restaurant.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  When Bryan toured the United States, his lecture “The Menace of Darwinism” drew large crowds and got extensive media coverage. But an unexpected development in the South threw the campaign into even greater prominence. At this date, the fundamentalist movement was chiefly confined to the northern states, but southerners had become concerned about evolution. In 1925, the state legislatures of Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana passed laws to prohibit the teaching of evolution in the public schools. In response, John Scopes, a young teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, decided to strike a blow for free speech, confessed that he had broken the law, and in July 1925 was brought to trial. The new American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a team of lawyers to defend him, headed by the rationalist campaigner Clarence Darrow (1857–1938). When Bryan agreed to speak in defense of the anti-evolution law, the trial ceased to be about civil liberties and became a contest between religion and science. Like many fundamentalist disputes, the Scopes trial was a clash between two incompatible points of view. 33 Both Darrow and Bryan represented core American values: Darrow, of course, stood for intellectual liberty and Bryan for the rights of the ordinary folk, who were traditionally leery of learned experts, had no real understanding of science, and felt that sophisticated elites were imposing their own values on small-town America. In the event, Bryan was a disaster on the stand and Darrow was able to argue brilliantly for the freedom that was essential to the scientific enterprise. At the end of the trial, Darrow emerged as the hero of lucid rational thought, while Bryan was seen as a bumbling, incompetent anachronism who was hopelessly out of touch with the modern world: he compounded the symbolism by dying a few days later. Scopes was convicted, the ACLU paid his fine, but Darrow and science were the real victors at Dayton. The press had a field day. Most notably, the journalist H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) denounced the fundamentalists as the scourge of the nation. How appropriate it was, he crowed, that Bryan, who loved simple country people, including the “gaping primates of the upland villages,” had ended his days in a “one-horse, Tennessee village.” Fundamentalists were everywhere: they are “thick in the mean streets behind the gas works. They are everywhere learning is too heavy a burden for mortal minds to carry, even the vague pathetic learning on tap in the little red schoolhouse.” They were the enemies of science and freedom and had no legitimate place in the modern world.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  Christians were also thought, sometimes, to be morally reprehensible, in that they were thought to perform acts of incest, infanticide, and cannibalism during their worship services on a weekly basis. Remember, they would meet early before the sun came up, they would call one another “brother” and “sister,” and they would greet one another with a kiss, so that outsiders who didn’t understand the ritual would assume that there were some acts of incest going on. Moreover, they were known to “eat the flesh” and “drink the blood” of the Son of God, and so people assumed that they were performing acts of infanticide and cannibalism. Christians were thought, then, to be socially dangerous. Christians, of course, denied that they were dangerous, and many of them refused to recant their beliefs, even in the face of violent opposition, and concerted official efforts. In this lecture, we will shift from considering persecution from the pagan perspective; that is, we won't now be asking: Why did pagans act this way? We will now look at the Christian perspective: How did Christians react to their Opposition by pagans? How did they react to the persecutions and threats? First, as you might expect, we do have record of some Christians recanting of their faith in Christ in the face of violent opposition. This can be seen in some of the literature that we’ve looked at already. In the previous lecture, we considered the case of the Christians of Vienne and Lyons, in a letter written by the survivors of the persecution that happened around the year 177. Christians in Vienne and Lyons were persecuted first by the mobs, then by officials, and underwent horrible torments and tortures, with some of them actually martyred. We find in this 198 letter written by the survivors, though, recorded for us by the church historian Eusebius, that not everybody who was a Christian decided to go through with persecution. Some, in fact, apparently recanting of their belief SO as to avoid persecution. Thus, the authors tell us: The rest of the Christians fell into two groups. It was clear [says the author] that some were ready to be the first Gaelic martyrs [In other words, the first martyrs in Gaul, ancient France]. These people, these Christians, made a full confession of the testimony with the greatest eagerness, but it was equally clear that others were not ready, that they had not been trained, and were still flabby [This is a reference to the Christians who were willing to be persecuted as great warriors, and were in good shape, and trained, but that these others who were not willing to be martyrs were not trained, and were still flabby.]; in no fit condition to face the strain of a struggle to the death. Of these, some ten proved stillborn, causing us great distress, and inexpressible grief, and dampening the enthusiasm of those who were not yet arrested.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  She was about forty six years old, tall, meagre, red-haired, with one of those trivial ordinary faces you meet with every where, and go about unheeded and un-mentioned. In her youth she had been kept by a gentleman, who, dying, left her forty pounds a year during her life, in consideration of a daughter he had by her: which daughter, at the age of seventeen, she sold, for not a very considerable sum neither, to a gentleman who was going on envoy abroad, and took his purchase with him, where he used her with the utmost tenderness, and it is thought, was secretly married to her: but had constantly made a point of her not keeping up the least correspondence with a mother base enough to make a market of her own flesh and blood. However, as she had not nature, nor, indeed, any passion but that of money, this gave her no further uneasiness, then, as she thereby lost a handle of squeezing presents, or other after advantages, out of the bargain. Indifferent then, by nature of constitution, to every other pleasure but that of increasing the lump, by any means whatever, she commenced a kind of private procuress, for which she was not amiss fitted, by her grave decent appearance, and sometimes did a job in the match-making way; in short, there was, nothing that appeared to her under the shape of gain, that she would not have undertaken. She knew most of the ways of the town, having not only herself been upon, but kept up constant intelligences in promoting a harmony between the two sexes, in private pawn-broking, and other profitable secrets. She rented the house she lived in, and made the most of it, by letting it out in lodgings; though she was worth, at least, near three or four thousand pounds, she would not allow herself even the necessaries, of life, and pinned her subsistence entirely on what she could squeeze out of her lodgers. When she saw such a young pair come under her roof, her immediate notions, doubtless, were how she should make the most money of us, by every means that money might be made, and which, she rightly judged, our situations and inexperience would soon beget her occasions of. In this hopeful sanctuary, and under the clutches of this harpy, did we pitch our residence. It will not be might material to you, or very pleasant to me, to enter into a detail of all the petty cut-throat ways and means with which she used to fleece us; all which Charles indolently chose to bear with, rather than take the trouble of removing, the difference of expense being scarce attended to by a young gentleman who had no ideas of stint, or even economy, and a raw country girl who knew nothing of the matter.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  God was the author of both the Book of Nature and the Bible, and “two truths cannot contradict one another.” 72 If scientists made statements about religion and if the devout claimed that scripture gave infallible information about the hidden structures of nature, there could only be the worst kind of confusion. 73 Copernicus had understood this perfectly: he had always limited his remarks to “physical conclusions based above all on sensory experience and very accurate observations.” 74 But in cases where there was no conclusive proof, Galileo argued that we should bow to the authority of the Bible: “I have no doubt at all that, where human reason cannot reach, and where consequently one cannot have a science, but only opinion and faith, it is appropriate piously to conform absolutely to the literal meaning of scripture.” 75 What Galileo did not seem to have realized was that the political climate had changed. The Vatican no longer regarded theology as a speculative science but was systematically reducing the teachings of Aristotle and Aquinas to an inflexible set of propositions formulated in such a way as to end all discussion and maximize certainty. 76 In 1605, the Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), who epitomized this new attitude, had become papal theologian. For Bellarmine, the task of theology was simply to organize doctrines into neat systems that could be marshaled effectively against the enemies of the Church. The execution of Bruno had made it horribly clear that papal officials were ready to enforce the new orthodoxy using the same coercive methods as any early modern monarchy. Galileo was not a lone voice; he belonged to a “family” of Catholic progressives who supported his Copernican ideas but constantly advised him not to tangle with the Vatican authorities. 77 And yet despite his conviction that theology and science were entirely separate disciplines, he seemed perversely intent on reconciling his discoveries with scripture. In his Letters on Sunspots (1612), he produced biblical quotations proving that his theory was “most agreeable to the truths of holy writ” 78 and was furious when the papal censors insisted that he delete them. When opposed, Galileo could be just as scornful and impatiently self-righteous as any cardinal. But why, given his clearly stated views, had he included the quotations in the first place? Hypothetical thinking had been acceptable to Copernicus and would continue to be essential to scientific procedure. Was Galileo’s insistence on absolute certainty another sign of the dogmatism of the age?

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  What’s that? Well, there was a law adopted in some circles that 40 lashes were excessive as a punishment, and therefore, if you wanted to get the full extent, you had 39 lashes. Paul said that he received this from the hands of the Jews, which must indicate that within the synagogues Paul preached in, he was sometimes taken out and fogged for his blasphemous views, views considered blasphemous. The point is, that is a synagogue form of punishment, according to Paul, so that Jews are actively trying to stamp out these people, these Jews who were saying that Jesus was the Messiah. This is an internal Jewish conflict at this point. It’s Jews who believe in Jesus, and Jews who don’t believe in Jesus. Those who do believe in Jesus are the small minority, being persecuted by the majority, who find the claims of these Christian Jews to be ludicrous. In any event, this statement of Paul’s in 2 Corinthians coincides well with the view found throughout the Book of Acts about early Christian persecution. The earliest persecutions always happened at the hands of Jews. It’s not difficult to understand why this happened. Christianity started off as a Jewish sect, with Judaism, which saw Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, sent from the Jewish God, to the Jewish people, in fulfillment of the Jewish Law. These Christians remained within the Jewish synagogues for their worship, because they considered themselves still to be... They were, as they would call themselves, the “true” Jews, and they would try to convince others that they, too, should accept Jesus as the Messiah. But these views about Jesus were rejected by the vast majority of Jews. Those who were propounding these views of the Messiahship of Jesus were often seen as a troublesome and rabble-rousing group, an outspoken minority with completely unacceptable views. Up until about the middle of the first century, before the books of the New Testament themselves had been written, Christianity was still viewed as a 123 Jewish sect, not just by Jews. This is something many people don’t understand. They tend to think that once Christianity started, it was immediately separate from Judaism. In fact, it started out as Jewish, and continued as a Jewish sect up through a good part of the first century.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  One of these protagonists was beneficial to humanity; the other, evil and dangerous. Ever since Augustine had insisted on the “absolute authority of scripture,” all theologians “without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses of error and sorrow.” 70 In reality, the relations between science and faith had been more complex and nuanced. But this overblown polemic has remained the stock-in-trade of the atheist critique of religion and is widely accepted as a matter of fact. White’s misrepresentation of Augustine’s view of scripture is just one example of his bias. One of the most persistent of the apocryphal tales that developed at this time is the story of Huxley’s encounter with Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford (1805–73). In June 1860, shortly after the publication of Origin , they took part in a debate at a meeting of the British Association. Wilberforce is said to have played to the gallery and, having shown that he had absolutely no understanding of evolution, concluded by facetiously asking Huxley whether he claimed descent from a monkey through his grandmother or grandfather. Huxley retorted that he would rather be descended from an ape than a man like Wilberforce, who used his great talents to obscure the truth. It is a story that brilliantly encapsulates the “warfare” myth in its depiction of intrepid science victoriously triumphing over complacent, ignorant religion. But, as scholars have repeatedly demonstrated, there is no record of this exchange until the 1890s. It is not mentioned in contemporary accounts of the meeting. In fact, Wilberforce was entirely conversant with Darwinian theory; his speech at the British Institution summarized the recent review that he had written of Origin , which Darwin himself, acknowledging that Wilberforce had pointed out serious omissions in his argument that he would have to address, had considered “uncommonly clever.” 71 Closely allied to the “warfare” myth in atheistic polemic was the view that belief in itself was immoral, which has also become an essential ingredient of atheist ideology. It dates from the publication of Ethics of Belief (1871) by William Kingdon Clifford (1845–79), professor of mathematics at University College, London, who argued that it was not only intellectually but morally perverse to accept any opinion—religious, scientific, or ethical—without sufficient evidence. He illustrated his thesis with the story of a shipowner who knew that his ship needed extensive repairs but decided to spare himself the expense, reflecting that it had survived many voyages and that God would not allow it to sink with so many passengers on board.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  “Deal?” I said. “Deal,” he said. He reached out, shook my hand. He still had the strong grip of an athlete. The waitress brought the check and I told Woodell grandly that lunch was on me. I pulled out my wallet and found that it was empty. I asked Blue Ribbon’s Full-time Employee Number Four if he could float me. Just till payday. WHEN HE WASN’T sending me new employees, Bowerman was sending me the results of his latest experiments. In 1966 he’d noticed that the Spring Up’s outer sole melted like butter, whereas the midsole remained solid. So he’d urged Onitsuka to take Spring Up’s midsole and fuse it with the Limber Up’s outer sole, thus creating the ultimate distance training shoe. Now, in 1967, Onitsuka sent us the prototype, and it was astonishing. With its luxurious cushioning and its sleek lines, it looked like the future. Onitsuka asked what we thought it should be called. Bowerman liked “Aztec,” in homage to the 1968 Olympics, which were being held in Mexico City. I liked that, too. Fine, Onitsuka said. The Aztec was born. And then Adidas threatened to sue. Adidas already had a new shoe named the “Azteca Gold,” a track spike they were planning to introduce at the same Olympics. No one had ever heard of it, but that didn’t stop Adidas from kicking up a fuss. Aggravated, I drove up the mountain to Bowerman’s house to talk it all over. We sat on the wide porch, looking down at the river. It sparkled that day like a silver shoelace. He took off his ball cap, put it on again, rubbed his face. “Who was that guy who kicked the shit out of the Aztecs?” he asked. “Cortez,” I said. He grunted. “Okay. Let’s call it the Cortez.” I WAS DEVELOPING an unhealthy contempt for Adidas. Or maybe it was healthy. That one German company had dominated the shoe market for a couple of decades, and they possessed all the arrogance of unchallenged dominance. Of course it’s possible that they weren’t arrogant at all, that to motivate myself I needed to see them as a monster. In any event, I despised them. I was tired of looking up every day and seeing them far, far ahead. I couldn’t bear the thought that it was my fate to do so forever. The situation put me in mind of Jim Grelle. In high school, Grelle—pronounced Grella, or sometimes Gorilla—had been the fastest runner in Oregon, and I had been the second-fastest, which meant four years of staring at Grelle’s back. Then Grelle and I both went to the University of Oregon, where his tyranny over me continued. By the time I graduated I hoped never again to see Grelle’s back. Years later, when Grelle won the 1,500 in Moscow’s Lenin Stadium, I was wearing an army uniform, sitting on a couch in the day room at Fort Lewis.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Squarely built, with a thuggish face and Nixonian five o’clock shadow, Wallace was ten years my senior, but somehow thought himself the bank’s boy wonder. He was also determined to become the bank’s next president, and he viewed all bad credit risks as the main roadblock between him and that goal. He didn’t like giving credit to anyone, for anything, but with my balance hovering always around zero, he saw me as a disaster waiting to happen. One slow season, one downturn in sales, I’d be out of business, the lobby of Wallace’s bank would be filled with my unsold shoes, and the holy grail of bank president would slip from his grasp. Like Sarah atop Mount Fuji, Wallace saw me as a rebel, but he didn’t think of this as a compliment. Nor, in the end, come to think of it, had she. Of course, Wallace didn’t always say all this directly to me. It was often conveyed by his middleman, White. White believed in me, and in Blue Ribbon, but he’d tell me all the time, with a sad head shake, that Wallace made the decisions, Wallace signed the checks, and Wallace was no fan of Phil Knight. I thought it was fitting, and telling, and hopeful, that White would use that word—“fan.” He was tall, lean, a former athlete who loved to talk sports. No wonder we saw eye to eye. Wallace, on the other hand, looked as if he’d never set foot on a ball field. Unless maybe to repossess the equipment. What sweet satisfaction it would have been to tell Wallace where he could shove his equity, then storm out and take my business elsewhere. But in 1965 there was no elsewhere. First National Bank was the only game in town and Wallace knew it. Oregon was smaller back then, and it had just two banks, First National and U.S. Bank. The latter had already turned me down. If I got thrown out of the former, I’d be done. (Today you can live in one state and bank in another, no problem, but banking regulations were much tighter in those days.) Also, there was no such thing as venture capital. An aspiring young entrepreneur had very few places to turn, and those places were all guarded by risk-averse gatekeepers with zero imagination. In other words, bankers. Wallace was the rule, not the exception. To make everything more difficult, Onitsuka was always late shipping my shoes, which meant less time to sell, which meant less time to make enough money to cover my loan. When I complained, Onitsuka didn’t answer. When they did answer, they failed to appreciate my quandary. Time and again I’d send them a frantic telex, inquiring about the whereabouts of the latest shipment, and in response I’d typically get a telex that was maddeningly obtuse. Little more days. It was like dialing 911 and hearing someone on the other end yawn.