Disappointment

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 Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  I believe that if the transgender movement had simply continued to view itself as an alliance of disparate groups working toward a shared goal (like making the world safer for gender-variant folks), it may have avoided such exclusivity while respecting the distinct differences and specific concerns of its various constituents. Instead, by promoting the idea that we must move beyond the supposedly outdated concept of “identity,” the transgender movement has created its own sense of “oneness.” Rather than viewing ourselves as a fragile political coalition of distinct subgroups, some activists instead encourage us to see ourselves as one big homogeneous group of individuals who blur gender boundaries. Rather than learning to respect the very different perspectives and experiences that each transgender subgroup brings to the table, the transgender community has instead become a sort of gender free-for-all, where identities are regularly co-opted by others within the community. These days, many transsexuals assume that they have the right to appropriate the language of, or speak on behalf of, intersex people; similarly, many cissexual genderqueers feel they have the right to do the same for transsexuals. This needlessly erases each group’s unique issues, obstacles, and perspectives. This sort of “gender anarchy”—where individuals are free to adopt or appropriate any identity as they please—might seem very limitless and freeing on the surface, but in practice it resembles gender-libertarianism, where those who are most marginalized become even more vulnerable to the whims of those who are more established. In this case, it leaves those of us who are cross-gender-identified susceptible to negation at the hands of the greater cissexual queer community. Indeed, it has become increasingly common for people who are primarily queer because of their sexual orientation to claim a space for themselves within the transgender movement.7 This is particularly true in the queer women’s community, which has become increasingly involved in transgender politics and discourses due to the recent sharp increase in the number of (1) previously lesbian-identified people transitioning to male, (2) dykes who now take on genderqueer or other FTM spectrum identities, and (3) nontrans queer women who seek a voice in the transgender community because they are partnered to FTM spectrum individuals.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Neither possibility bothered me. Outside on the street we left each other with little more than “Okay, see you around.” Thanks to Mr. Freeman nine years before, I had had no pain of entry to endure, and because of the absence of romantic involvement neither of us felt much had happened. At home I reviewed the failure and tried to evaluate my new position. I had had a man. I had been had. I not only didn't enjoy it, but my normalcy was still a question. What happened to the moonlight-on-the-prairie feeling? Was there something so wrong with me that I couldn't share a sensation that made poets gush out rhyme after rhyme, that made Richard Arlen brave the Arctic wastes and Veronica Lake betray the entire free world? There seems to be no explanation for my private infirmity but being a product (is “victim” a better word?) of the Southern Negro upbringing, I decided that I “would understand it all better by-and-by.” I went to sleep. Three weeks later, having thought very little of the strange and strangely empty night, I found myself pregnant.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (2) Long ago, the Israelites failed to enter into the rest of God. Here, the word rest is being used in the sense of the settlement of the promised land after the wilderness years. The reference is to Numbers 13 and 14. These chapters tell how the children of Israel came to the borders of the promised land, how they sent out scouts to spy out the land, how ten of the twelve scouts came back with the verdict that it was a good land but that the difficulties of entering into it were insuperable, how Caleb and Joshua alone were for going forward in the strength of the Lord, how the people listened to the advice of the cowards, and how the result was that that generation of distrusting cowards was barred forever from entering into the rest and the peace of the promised land. They did not trust God to bring them through the difficulties that lay ahead; and, therefore, they never enjoyed the rest they could have had. (3) Now, the writer switches the meaning of the word rest. It is true that these people long ago missed the rest they might have had; but, although they missed it, the rest remained. Behind this argument lies one of the favourite conceptions of the Rabbis. On the seventh day, the day after creation had been completed, God rested from his labours. In the creation story in Genesis 1 and 2, there is a strange fact. On the first six days of creation, it is said that morning and evening came; that is to say, each day had an end and a beginning. But on the seventh day, the day of God’s rest, there is no mention of evening at all. From this, the Rabbis argued that, while the other days came to an end, the day of God’s rest had no ending; the rest of God was forever. Therefore, although long ago the Israelites may have failed to enter that rest, it still remained. (4) Once again, the writer goes back to the meaning of rest as the promised land. The day came after the forty years of wandering in the wilderness when, under Joshua, the people did enter into the promised land. Now, the promised land was the rest and therefore it could be argued that then the promise was fulfilled. (5) But no, the promise is not fulfilled, because in Psalm 95:7–11 David hears God’s voice saying to the people that if they do not harden their hearts they can enter into his rest. That is to say, hundreds of years after Joshua had led the people into the rest of the promised land, God is still appealing to them to enter into his rest. There is more to this rest than merely entry into the promised land.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  The gospels are of course so dense, so full of splendid and vivid detail, that preachers, on the one hand, have quite enough to do with this week’s parable or miracle, and scholars, on the other, have quite enough to do with figuring out which source the passage comes from. Neither the preachers nor the scholars have bothered too much about what the story in question actually does within the longer and larger narrative the evangelist has constructed. (This is of course an overstatement. Many have done and continue to do this. I am talking about the large generality of preachers and teachers in the church and a fair proportion of scholars as well.) In part this may stem from personality. For a long time it has been much easier to get a Ph.D. in biblical studies if you’re a “details person” rather than a “big-picture person.” This has attracted into the field people with sharp eyes for small details; such an ability is a great asset for a scholar, but it needs to be balanced with the vision and imagination that will ask the big questions too, if scholarly study of the gospels is not to become seriously distorted. The meaning of a word is its use in a sentence; the meaning of a sentence is its use in a paragraph; and the meaning of a paragraph is its use in the larger document to which it contributes. Details are vitally important, but they are important as part of the overall picture. And the burden of my song in this book is that we’ve all forgotten what the big picture actually is. 2 The Opposite Problem All Body, No Cloak GRANTED all we have said so far, we should not be surprised that many devout readers of the gospels have tried to redress the balance. Actually, many nondevout readers have tried to do so as well. Let’s take the nondevout (perhaps, for charity’s sake, we should say the less devout) first. Jesus Without the Creeds? Ever since the eighteenth century it has been fashionable to come at the gospels by asking the historical question: Did it really happen? And the answer that the intellectual fashions of our skeptical age have demanded has been something like this. Yes, Jesus really existed, but all that material around the edge— his miraculous birth, the saving meaning of his death, and above all his resurrection and ascension—never happened. That’s what the later church added to express its own faith. But when we take that away, the bit in the middle that we’re left with—the body without the cloak, if you like—is a very different story from the one the church has told. Take away the beginning and the ending, the bits you find in the creeds, the bits that people refer to today when they talk about “preaching the gospel,” and the Jesus you’re left with is one of three things.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I had chosen drama simply because I liked Hamlet's soliloquy beginning, “To be, or not to be.” I had never seen a play and did not connect movies with the theater. In fact, the only times I had heard the soliloquy had been when I had melodramatically recited to myself. In front of a mirror. It was hard to curb my love for the exaggerated gesture and the emotive voice. When Bailey and I read poems together, he sounded like a fierce Basil Rathbone and I like a maddened Bette Davis. At the California Labor School a forceful and perceptive teacher quickly and unceremoniously separated me from melodrama. She made me do six months of pantomime. Bailey and Mother encouraged me to take dance, and he privately told me that the exercise would make my legs big and widen my hips. I needed no greater inducement. My shyness at moving clad in black tights around a large empty room did not last long. Of course, at first, I thought everyone would be staring at my cucumber-shaped body with its knobs for knees, knobs for elbows and, alas, knobs for breasts. But they really did not notice me, and when the teacher floated across the floor and finished in an arabesque my fancy was taken. I would learn to move like that. I would learn to, in her words, “occupy space.” My days angled off Miss Kirwin's class, dinner with Bailey and Mother, and drama and dance. The allegiances I owed at this time in my life would have made very strange bedfellows: Momma with her solemn determination, Mrs. Flowers and her books, Bailey with his love, my mother and her gaiety, Miss Kirwin and her information, my evening classes of drama and dance.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  How did this magnificent theory work out in practice? What happened to the radical vision of the historical Paul in those letters written in his name but after his death? Next, then, with regard to Colossians: on one hand, this letter speaks directly to both slaves and masters, mentioning reciprocal responsibilities that a Roman householder might find offensive. On the other hand, it is now taken for granted in this letter that Christian householders will have Christian slaves: Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven. (3:22–4:1; see Eph. 6:5–9) What has happened is that a post-Pauline, pseudo-Pauline, and even or especially an anti- Pauline vision has quietly contradicted the vision of the historical Paul. But notice, of course, that all this is done in the name of Paul himself. In other words, Paul’s vision of the radicality of God has been co-opted by the Roman normalcy of civilization . In summary, then, from these two experimental probes (explored more fully later in the book), we see that as in the Old Testament so in the New, as with Torah so with Paul, a rhythm of assertion-and-subversion is emphatically present. A vision of the radicality of God is put forth, and then later, we see that vision domesticated and integrated into the normalcy of civilization so that the established order of life is maintained. Furthermore, both elements are cited from, in one case, the mouth of God and, in the other, the pen of Paul. These two probes are admittedly limited to two traditions—the Priestly tradition in the Old Testament and the Pauline tradition in the New Testament. But they are scarcely unimportant ones. What they have in common is a pattern of yes-and-no, declaration-and-invalidation, pronouncement-and-annulment, assertion-and-subversion. Hold on, for the rest of this book, to that pattern of assertion-and-subversion. A Rhythm of Assertion-and-SubversionALREADY IN CHAPTER 1 I specified the disjunction between nonviolence and violence—be it for God or Jesus—as being between two different visions or ideals, one about nonviolent distributive justice and the other about violent retributive justice. My next step is to combine that with the two other just-seen disjunctions: both radicality and normalcy with assertion and subversion. As we have already seen, even a superficial reading of the Christian Bible reveals God and Christ to be both violent and nonviolent in a somewhat bipolar if not schizophrenic fashion. It is as if the Biblical Express Train runs on twin parallel but very dissimilar rails.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Usually the dots are numbered, and the child can see the order in which they must be joined. But suppose they are not, and the child has to join the dots and make whatever picture seems right? There are some Christians who manage to join the dots all right, to connect all the doctrinal boxes that the great early creeds and definitions have given them—but to do so in such a way that the picture turns out to be an elephant instead of a donkey. Or vice versa. Only when the story the gospels are telling is fully integrated with the dogmas the creeds are teaching can we be sure we are on track. Displacement Activities The result of all this has been, I believe, that though the gospels are so rich in material of all sorts, their underlying emphasis has been quietly but thoroughly overlooked. All those parables, moral teachings, remarkable deeds, and so on—one can easily make all kinds of perfectly good theological and practical points out of them. But one may be so busy with that exercise that the main point goes unnoticed. This is what, I believe, has actually happened. The result has been a series of displacement activities. The church has said, in effect: (a) we know the gospels are important, because they are the inspired apostolic witness to Jesus; and (b) we know what is important in Christian theology, namely, the divinity of Jesus and his saving death or, as it may be, his moral teaching and example; so (c) we assume that that is the primary message of the gospels. In fact, to sum up the proposal toward which I have been working, the four gospels are trying to say that this is how God became king. We have, partly deliberately and partly accidentally, forgotten this massive claim almost entirely. Since we cannot stop reading the gospels without ceasing to be proper Christians, we have developed all kinds of strategies for making alternative sense of the gospels and so screening out the dangerous and challenging picture they are actually sketching. That is at the heart of the problem I have been trying to identify. It has been a salutary exercise, I believe, to review in this way the different things that people have said as they face the question of why the gospels included all that material between Jesus’s birth and his death. All these proposals have been advanced quite seriously, and I have tried to take them in the same serious spirit. But it is clear to me that none of them have actually taken the gospels seriously as they stand. They have gone to them with the wrong questions and have found answers, of a sort, to those questions. The challenge now is to accept that we have all misunderstood the gospels and to set about finding ways in which we can put this right.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Once I had settled on getting a job, all that remained was to decide which kind of job I was most fitted for. My intellectual pride had kept me from selecting typing, shorthand or filing as subjects in school, so office work was ruled out. War plants and shipyards demanded birth certificates, and mine would reveal me to be fifteen, and ineligible for work. So the well-paying defense jobs were also out. Women had replaced men on the streetcars as conductors and motor-men, and the thought of sailing up and down the hills of San Francisco in a dark-blue uniform, with a money changer at my belt, caught my fancy. Mother was as easy as I had anticipated. The world was moving so fast, so much money was being made, so many people were dying in Guam, and Germany, that hordes of strangers became good friends overnight. Life was cheap and death entirely free. How could she have the time to think about my academic career? To her question of what I planned to do, I replied that I would get a job on the streetcars. She rejected the proposal with: “They don't accept colored people on the streetcars.” I would like to claim an immediate fury which was followed by the noble determination to break the restricting tradition. But the truth is, my first reaction was one of disappointment. I'd pictured myself, dressed in a neat blue serge suit, my money changer swinging jauntily at my waist, and a cheery smile for the passengers which would make their own work day brighter. From disappointment, I gradually ascended the emotional ladder to haughty indignation, and finally to that state of stubbornness where the mind is locked like the jaws of an enraged bulldog. I would go to work on the streetcars and wear a blue serge suit. Mother gave me her support with one of her usual terse asides, “That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got. I've told you many times, ‘Can't do is like Don't Care.’ Neither of them have a home.” Translated, that meant there was nothing a person can't do, and there should be nothing a human being didn't care about. It was the most positive encouragement I could have hoped for. In the offices of the Market Street Railway Company, the receptionist seemed as surprised to see me there as I was surprised to find the interior dingy and the décor drab. Somehow I had expected waxed surfaces and carpeted floors. If I had met no resistance, I might have decided against working for such a poor-mouth-looking concern. As it was, I explained that I had come to see about a job. She asked, was I sent by an agency, and when I replied that I was not, she told me they were only accepting applicants from agencies.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  He kindly, not in the least condescendingly, bent to speak to the guard, and the three men walked into the hut. Within easy minutes, laughter burst from the shack and the crisis was over, but so was the enjoyment. Dad shook hands with all the men, patted the children and smiled winsomely at the women. Then, and without looking at the damaged cars, he eased himself behind the steering wheel. He called me to get in, and as if he had not been helplessly drunk a half hour earlier, he drove unerringly toward home. He said he didn't know I could drive, and how did I like his car? I was angry that he had recovered so quickly and felt let down that he didn't appreciate the greatness of my achievement. So I answered yes to both the statement and the question. Before we reached the border he rolled down the window, and the fresh air, which was welcome, was uncomfortably cold. He told me to get his jacket from the backseat and put it on. We drove into the city in a cold and private silence.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  At the encouragement of Dr. Jude, Brianne had been going online since last year to meet men. The websites she chose were Match.com and Millionaire Match, and she repeated them as though reciting a mantra: “Match and Millionaire Match, Match and Millionaire Match.” She seemed to be having a rough go of it on both sites, as the men kept disappearing. She would find someone who seemed promising, message with him for a few weeks, and then he would just vanish. On the rare occasion that one of the men didn’t disappear and actually asked her for a date, he would suddenly seem strangely repulsive to her. But mostly, they absconded. The most recent disappearance was a man who claimed to be a retired fighter pilot. She said she liked that, as she liked military men, and he seemed handsome. For two weeks he had sent her messages every day: never saying anything uncouth or sending a picture of his penis. Then, one day, she asked if he might like to meet in person. He deleted his account. “But if it’s meant for me, it’s meant for me. And if it’s not, it’s not,” she said quietly, adjusting the strap on her babydoll dress. She was wearing knee socks and Mary Janes too. “I have a very full life. Very full. I don’t even know if I really want anyone else in it.” Then she sighed. The only person I liked was a woman named Claire. She was British, crass, and irate, with long fiery-red curls. Claire kept saying “Fuck this bullshit” over and over. She had left her husband two years ago when she met a younger man at a juice bar and realized, as she put it, that she hadn’t had a proper dick inside of her in twelve years. The younger man was happy to fuck her, but he never encouraged her to leave her husband. It was she who assumed they would have a life together. For six months they were off and on, until finally, she threw a plate of pesto kelp noodles at him at Café Gratitude and broke it off for good. Clean and sober for nine years, she was afraid the drama would make her drink. Most recently, though, she was hurt and enraged again by a man named Brad. He sounded pretty bad—bald, baseball capped, and litigation lawyery—but she really liked him. She said that they had begun to get really intimate around his mother’s death, then he just disappeared. She wasn’t drinking, but she was taking up a lot of bad behaviors again to cope with her depression. “I left my children with a friend and rented a hotel room, where I could go self-harm in peace,” she said. “But then I got scared I would off myself. I didn’t know what else to do. So I’ve come back to this bloody hellhole.”

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Many movements of social reform at various points in the nineteenth century bear witness to this spirit, not least of course the pressure that led to the abolition of slavery. And then, around the start of the twentieth century, the movement known as the “social gospel” made its mark, not exactly by ignoring the “cloak” of ancient dogma, but by concentrating instead on the actions of Jesus and the command to his followers to behave in the same way. Matthew 25:31–46 has regularly been highlighted in this connection: “When you did it to one of the least significant of my brothers and sisters here,” declares Jesus about the hungry who need feeding, the prisoners who need visiting, and so on, “you did it to me.” And “When you didn’t do it…, you didn’t do it for me.” The Achilles heel of the “social gospel” movement, however, was that many of its enthusiasts were, like the critical scholars of the time, focusing on the center rather than the edges, and so misreading the center itself. In trying to have a Jesus who cared for the poor without needing to be the incarnate son of God or to die for the sins of the world and be raised bodily thereafter, they falsified (so we could argue) even the bits they were highlighting. The problem with all this, however, is not merely at the level of theory (“How come you’ve taken some bits of the gospel story, but left out other bits?”). The problem is that, a century after the “social gospel” was at its high-water mark, the world, including the Western world, still seems to be a place of great wickedness. Greed and corruption, oppression of the poor, violence and degradation, war and genocide continue unchecked. It isn’t only the Jesus of popular imagination, then, who expected something dramatic to happen and was disappointed. The “social gospel” may have helped to clean up some slums, to reduce working hours for women and children in factories, and so on. Wonderful. But homelessness and virtual slave labor are still realities in the modern Western world, never mind elsewhere. Has anything really changed? Faced with this puzzle, it is fair to ask: What difference might it make if the “middle” of the gospels was integrated with the “outer” bits? What would it be like if the cloak was no longer empty? Did Jesus Talk About Himself? One of the now standard comments from within “liberal” readings of the gospels goes like this. Jesus, it seems, went around speaking about God; but his followers, the early church, went around speaking about Jesus. This has in fact formed a central plank in the case for a liberal rereading of the gospels over against the creeds.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  The final question is whether that Sanction -heavy vision in the book of Deuteronomy actually works in practice as the Deuteronomic tradition seeks to interpret biblical history in terms of blessings and rewards for covenantal fidelity and curses and punishments for covenantal infidelity. Furthermore, does the Bible elsewhere always agree with that Deuteronomic vision of the relationship between God and the world or God and Israel? CHAPTER 6Blessing and CurseYou realize by now the part you played To stultify the Deuteronomist And change the tenor of religious thought. ROBERT FROST , “God to Job,” A Masque of Reason (1945) IN 931 BCE THE united monarchy of David and Solomon split, over the issue of excessive taxation, into the divided monarchy that separated the northern Kingdom of Israel from the southern Kingdom of Judah. When that northern Kingdom was destroyed by the ascendant Assyrian Empire in 722–721 BCE , refugees, fleeing to relative safety in the more isolated south, took with them their own traditions, such as that of the Elohist and the Deuteronomist (recall them from Chapter 4). About one hundred years later, in 621 BCE , the high priest Hilkiah informed King Josiah of Judah that he had found the book of Deuteronomy, which he called the “book of the law,” in the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kings 22:8). Thus began what today is called the Deuteronomic Reform under the slogan “one God in one Temple—at Jerusalem” (note, for example, Deut. 12:13–14). Sanction: Curses over BlessingsWHAT IS MOST STRIKING and even startling about the book of Deuteronomy is how it is dominated by covenant, with covenant dominated by Sanction, and with Sanction dominated by curses over blessings. To put it another way: this book’s God of distributive justice is dominated by its God of retributive justice. Watch, for example, how the book climaxes with this multiple Sanction section in Deuteronomy 27–30. First is a ritual and antiphonal renewal of the covenant to be performed with representatives invoking blessings for fidelity and curses for infidelity to which all the people must answer “Amen”: “When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim for the blessing of the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali” (27:12–13). Yet in what follows there is no sixfold invocation of both blessings and curses but only a twelvefold invocation of curses (27:14–36): “‘Cursed be anyone who makes an idol or casts an image, anything abhorrent to the Lord, the work of an artisan, and sets it up in secret.’ All the people shall respond, saying, ‘Amen!’” (27:15); and, “‘Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen!’” (27:19). Curses predominate over blessings.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  The writer to the Hebrews did not seek to avoid the duty of bringing his message, even if it was difficult and the minds of his hearers were slow. He regarded it as his supreme responsibility to pass on the truth he knew. His complaint is that his hearers have been Christians for many years and are still babes no nearer maturity. The contrast between the immature Christian and the child, between milk and solid food, often occurs in the New Testament (1 Peter 2:2; 1 Corinthians 2:6, 3:2, 14:20; Ephesians 4:13ff.). Hebrews says that by now they should be teachers. It is not necessary to take that literally. To say that someone was able to teach was the Greek way of saying that that person had a mature grasp of a subject. The writer says that they still need someone to teach them the simple elements ( stoicheia ) of Christianity . This word has a variety of meanings. In grammar, it means the letters of the alphabet, the A B C; in physics, it means the four basic elements of which the world is composed; in geometry, it means the elements of proof, like the point and the straight line; in philosophy, it means the first elementary principles with which the students begin. It is the sorrow of the writer to the Hebrews that, after many years of Christianity, his people have never got past the basics; they are like children who do not know the difference between right and wrong. Here, he is face to face with a problem which confronts the Church in every generation – that of Christians who refuse to grow up . (1) Christians can refuse to grow up in knowledge. They can be guilty of failure to take the opportunities that broaden horizons and develop ideas. There are people who keep on saying that what was good enough for people in the past is good enough for them. There are Christians in whose faith there has been no development for thirty or forty or fifty or sixty years. There are Christians who have deliberately refused to try to understand the advances that biblical scholarship and theological thought have made. They are grown men and women, and yet they insist on remaining content with the religious development of children. They are like surgeons who refuse to use the new techniques of surgery, refuse to use the new anaesthetics, refuse to use any new equipment and say: ‘What was good enough for Lister in the nineteenth century is good enough for me.’ They are like a physician who refuses to use any of the new drugs and says: ‘What I learned as a student fifty years ago is good enough for me.’

• From How God Became King (2012)

  Many Christians, sustained by prayer, the sacraments, and the fellowship of the church, have given themselves energetically to these and other causes in their own day. Sometimes they have integrated, at least, the doctrine of the incarnation into what they have been attempting. In Jesus, they have said, God came and got his hands dirty in the real world, and we are called to do the same. The movement that called itself “Christian socialism” at the end of the nineteenth century worked on exactly that basis, often with a rich blend of spirituality, sacramental practice, and biblical theology, and with remarkable effect. I think, for instance, of the great biblical scholar and Bishop of Durham Brooke Fosse Westcott, who combined ferociously detailed and exact textual scholarship with zealous commitment to the poorest of the poor in the northeast of England. Many movements of social reform at various points in the nineteenth century bear witness to this spirit, not least of course the pressure that led to the abolition of slavery. And then, around the start of the twentieth century, the movement known as the “social gospel” made its mark, not exactly by ignoring the “cloak” of ancient dogma, but by concentrating instead on the actions of Jesus and the command to his followers to behave in the same way. Matthew 25:31–46 has regularly been highlighted in this connection: “When you did it to one of the least significant of my brothers and sisters here,” declares Jesus about the hungry who need feeding, the prisoners who need visiting, and so on, “you did it to me.” And “When you didn’t do it..., you didn’t do it for me.” The Achilles heel of the “social gospel” movement, however, was that many of its enthusiasts were, like the critical scholars of the time, focusing on the center rather than the edges, and so misreading the center itself. In trying to have a Jesus who cared for the poor without needing to be the incarnate son of God or to die for the sins of the world and be raised bodily thereafter, they falsified (so we could argue) even the bits they were highlighting. The problem with all this, however, is not merely at the level of theory (“How come you’ve taken some bits of the gospel story, but left out other bits?”). The problem is that, a century after the “social gospel” was at its high-water mark, the world, including the Western world, still seems to be a place of great wickedness. Greed and corruption, oppression of the poor, violence and degradation, war and genocide continue unchecked. It isn’t only the Jesus of popular imagination, then, who expected something dramatic to happen and was disappointed. The “social gospel” may have helped to clean up some slums, to reduce working hours for women and children in factories, and so on.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  That, indeed, was the intention. And the churches have, by and large, gone along for the ride. Meanwhile—to continue the picture—the philosophy that had driven God upstairs out of sight, and so produced the modernist “problem of evil,” had also produced a new kind of politics. The democracies that were born at that time were tending, with varied success, toward the same kind of Deism that was all the rage in science; now that God was no longer involved, the world would get on and develop under its own steam. The divine right of kings went out with the guillotine, and the new slogan, vox populi vox Dei (“The voice of the people is the voice of God”), was truncated; God was away with the fairies doing his own thing, and vox pop, by itself, was all that was now needed. Like all new movements, this one called itself “justice” and “freedom,” however many injustices it then colluded with and however many new slaveries it introduced. Our own present rhetoric about democracy and legitimacy, about systems of voting and reforms of institutions, still sloshes around in the muddy waters left behind by the receding tsunami of the eighteenth-century revolutions. We would do better, philosophically speaking, to clear the whole area and rebuild from scratch. Christian Reactions So what has been the Christian reaction to all this? How have those who habitually read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John responded to the challenge of modernity? In very mixed fashion. There have of course been great and powerful moments and movements, from that of William Wilberforce two centuries ago to Desmond Tutu’s two decades ago, and many more besides. There have been great Christian thinkers who have wrestled mightily with the gospel, on the one hand, and the ambiguities of the modern Western world, on the other. William Temple comes to mind, as do Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer continues to stand out as someone who read the Bible quite differently from most of his tradition and had the courage to take it seriously. But by and large the churches have lapsed into one of four (to my mind) unhelpful reactions. The first is to say that all this doesn’t matter, because we’re going to heaven and we’ll leave this old world behind once and for all. That stance, interestingly, became increasingly popular throughout the nineteenth century, when “heaven” became the ultimate home and “resurrection”—with all its political overtones of new creation and new society—was quietly shelved or reduced to the status of an ineffective dogma or even metaphor. I have written about this extensively elsewhere ( Surprised by Hope ), * and I trust it is becoming increasingly clear to people now that such a position simply won’t do.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  34 Later, my room had all the cheeriness of a dungeon and the appeal of a tomb. It was going to be impossible to stay there, but leaving held no attraction for me, either. Running away from home would be anticlimactic after Mexico, and a dull story after my month in the car lot. But the need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. I had it. The answer came to me with the suddenness of a collision. I would go to work. Mother wouldn't be difficult to convince; after all, in school I was a year ahead of my grade and Mother was a firm believer in self-sufficiency. In fact, she'd be pleased to think that I had that much gumption, that much of her in my character. (She liked to speak of herself as the original “do-it-yourself girl.”) Once I had settled on getting a job, all that remained was to decide which kind of job I was most fitted for. My intellectual pride had kept me from selecting typing, shorthand or filing as subjects in school, so office work was ruled out. War plants and shipyards demanded birth certificates, and mine would reveal me to be fifteen, and ineligible for work. So the well-paying defense jobs were also out. Women had replaced men on the streetcars as conductors and motor-men, and the thought of sailing up and down the hills of San Francisco in a dark-blue uniform, with a money changer at my belt, caught my fancy. Mother was as easy as I had anticipated. The world was moving so fast, so much money was being made, so many people were dying in Guam, and Germany, that hordes of strangers became good friends overnight. Life was cheap and death entirely free. How could she have the time to think about my academic career? To her question of what I planned to do, I replied that I would get a job on the streetcars. She rejected the proposal with: “They don't accept colored people on the streetcars.” I would like to claim an immediate fury which was followed by the noble determination to break the restricting tradition. But the truth is, my first reaction was one of disappointment. I'd pictured myself, dressed in a neat blue serge suit, my money changer swinging jauntily at my waist, and a cheery smile for the passengers which would make their own work day brighter. From disappointment, I gradually ascended the emotional ladder to haughty indignation, and finally to that state of stubbornness where the mind is locked like the jaws of an enraged bulldog. I would go to work on the streetcars and wear a blue serge suit. Mother gave me her support with one of her usual terse asides, “That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “The voice of critical omniscience wasn’t your strong suit,” said the nose. “Or perhaps, you didn’t believe what you were saying before and that’s where the thesis faltered. After all, if you couldn’t convince yourself, then how could you convince the reader?” “I don’t know,” I said. “The new thematic scaffolding creates a much more sound dialectic,” said the chick. “Great,” I said. “Having said that, we regret to inform you that the departments will no longer be able to fund this project,” said the nose. I was stunned. “What? Why?” “To be frank, with this new infusion of personal thoughts and feelings, it can no longer be considered a scholarly text,” said the nose. “This sort of personalized narrative just isn’t what we do around here.” “The truth is, as readers, we are genuinely glad you’ve pivoted,” said the chick. “Your prior thesis clearly wasn’t working.” “But unfortunately, the departments only receive funding for projects that further scholarship—not hybrids of scholarship and creative writing,” said the nose. What was I going to do for money? How was I going to live? “Can I reapply for it somehow?” I asked. “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to instate it,” said the nose. “Can’t or won’t? Don’t you decide what gets funded?” “To some extent, yes,” said the chick. “But we can’t deviate too much from what the university has traditionally focused on,” said the nose. “We have to retain a tonal continuity.” “So what you’re telling me is that this version is much better than the last version. But you were willing to fund the last version and not this one?” I said. “That’s right,” said the nose. “Well, what if I just go back to the old version? Hammer away on that?” “Unfortunately, that isn’t going to work,” said the chick. “Why?” “We were always skeptical of the original premise of the thesis and now you’ve convinced us that the reasoning was faulty.” “Plus, we want to encourage your creative breakthrough.” “Great,” I said. “We suggest that you seek out a mainstream trade publisher, or reapply to a program with a more creative bent than Southwest State,” said the chick. “But you won’t pay for it?” “No,” they said at the same time.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  He was talking about Booker T. Washington, our “late great leader,” who said we can be as close as the fingers on the hand, etc. … Then he said a few vague things about friendship and the friendship of kindly people to those less fortunate than themselves. With that his voice nearly faded, thin, away. Like a river diminishing to a stream and then to a trickle. But he cleared his throat and said, “Our speaker tonight, who is also our friend, came from Texarkana to deliver the commencement address, but due to the irregularity of the train schedule, he's going to, as they say, ‘speak and run.’” He said that we understood and wanted the man to know that we were most grateful for the time he was able to give us and then something about how we were willing always to adjust to another's program, and without more ado—“I give you Mr. Edward Donleavy.” Not one but two white men came through the door offstage. The shorter one walked to the speaker's platform, and the tall one moved over to the center seat and sat down. But that was our principal's seat, and already occupied. The dislodged gentleman bounced around for a long breath or two before the Baptist minister gave him his chair, then with more dignity than the situation deserved, the minister walked off the stage. Donleavy looked at the audience once (on reflection, I'm sure that he wanted only to reassure himself that we were really there), adjusted his glasses and began to read from a sheaf of papers. He was glad “to be here and to see the work going on just as it was in the other schools.” At the first “Amen” from the audience I willed the offender to immediate death by choking on the word. But Amens and Yes, sir's began to fall around the room like rain through a ragged umbrella. He told us of the wonderful changes we children in Stamps had in store. The Central School (naturally, the white school was Central) had already been granted improvements that would be in use in the fall. A well-known artist was coming from Little Rock to teach art to them. They were going to have the newest microscopes and chemistry equipment for their laboratory. Mr. Donleavy didn't leave us long in the dark over who made these improvements available to Central High. Nor were we to be ignored in the general betterment scheme he had in mind. He said that he had pointed out to people at a very high level that one of the first-line football tacklers at Arkansas Agricultural and Mechanical College had graduated from good old Lafayette County Training School. Here fewer Amen's were heard. Those few that did break through lay dully in the air with the heaviness of habit.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  34 Later, my room had all the cheeriness of a dungeon and the appeal of a tomb. It was going to be impossible to stay there, but leaving held no attraction for me, either. Running away from home would be anticlimactic after Mexico, and a dull story after my month in the car lot. But the need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. I had it. The answer came to me with the suddenness of a collision. I would go to work. Mother wouldn't be difficult to convince; after all, in school I was a year ahead of my grade and Mother was a firm believer in self-sufficiency. In fact, she'd be pleased to think that I had that much gumption, that much of her in my character. (She liked to speak of herself as the original “do-it-yourself girl.”) Once I had settled on getting a job, all that remained was to decide which kind of job I was most fitted for. My intellectual pride had kept me from selecting typing, shorthand or filing as subjects in school, so office work was ruled out. War plants and shipyards demanded birth certificates, and mine would reveal me to be fifteen, and ineligible for work. So the well-paying defense jobs were also out. Women had replaced men on the streetcars as conductors and motor-men, and the thought of sailing up and down the hills of San Francisco in a dark-blue uniform, with a money changer at my belt, caught my fancy. Mother was as easy as I had anticipated. The world was moving so fast, so much money was being made, so many people were dying in Guam, and Germany, that hordes of strangers became good friends overnight. Life was cheap and death entirely free. How could she have the time to think about my academic career? To her question of what I planned to do, I replied that I would get a job on the streetcars. She rejected the proposal with: “They don't accept colored people on the streetcars.” I would like to claim an immediate fury which was followed by the noble determination to break the restricting tradition. But the truth is, my first reaction was one of disappointment. I'd pictured myself, dressed in a neat blue serge suit, my money changer swinging jauntily at my waist, and a cheery smile for the passengers which would make their own work day brighter. From disappointment, I gradually ascended the emotional ladder to haughty indignation, and finally to that state of stubbornness where the mind is locked like the jaws of an enraged bulldog. I would go to work on the streetcars and wear a blue serge suit. Mother gave me her support with one of her usual terse asides, “That's what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you've got.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Perhaps the only thing more ironic than the fact that the transgender movement’s “shatter the gender binary” slogan is now being used to enforce a new subversive/conservative gender binary is the fact that the queer/trans community’s growing sense of “oneness” evolved out of a well-meaning attempt to prevent exclusivity. From the outset, many early transgender activists feared that one particular transgender subgroup might come to dominate the transgender community, that they would begin to police the movement’s borders and enforce their own sense of “oneness.” Because the exclusivity of cultural feminism and the mainstream “gay rights” movement seemed to center on disputes over identity—who counts as a “woman” or who is legitimately “gay”—many activists advocated the idea that the transgender coalition should be borderless, one where there was no set criteria for an individual to join. Many also worked to play down or blur the distinctiveness of individual transgender subgroups in order to prevent any kind of hierarchy from developing. The transgender movement, in effect, became an anti-identity movement. In retrospect, I would say that the assumption that distinct identities would automatically lead to exclusivity was entirely misplaced. After all, an identity is merely a label, a descriptive noun to express one particular facet of a person’s experiences. And if we look beyond gender and sexual identity politics, we can find many examples of flexible and fluid identities. For example, if I were to identify myself as a “cat person,” nobody would be outraged or confused if I said I also loved dogs. Further, when I tell people that I’m a “musician,” no one makes unwarranted assumptions about what instruments I play or what styles of music I prefer. Nonpoliticized identities like “musician” and “cat person” allow us to see that the recurring problems in gender and sexual identity politics arise not from identity per se, but rather from opposite-think (e.g., that a cat person cannot be a dog person, and vice versa) and from a sense of “oneness” (e.g., the assumption that all musicians are or should be punk rock guitarists.)