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 The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  To prove the doubters wrong, he decided to test-fly the plane himself. As he flew over the ocean, however, it became painfully clear that the plane did not have nearly enough power for its enormous weight, and after a mile he gently set it down on the water and had it towed back. The plane would never fly again and would be dry-docked in a hangar at a cost of $1 million per year, Hughes refusing to take it apart for scrap. By 1948 the owner of RKO Pictures, Floyd Odlum, was looking to sell. RKO was one of Hollywood’s most profitable and prestigious studios, and Hughes was itching to get back in the limelight by establishing himself in the film business. He bought Odlum’s shares and gained a controlling interest. Within RKO there was panic. Executives there knew of his reputation for meddling. The company had just brought in a new regime, headed by Dore Schary, that was going to transform RKO into the hottest studio for young directors. Schary decided to quit before being humiliated, but he agreed to first meet Hughes, mostly out of curiosity. Hughes was all charm. He took hold of Schary’s hand, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “I want no part of running the studio. You’ll be left alone.” Schary, surprised by his sincerity and agreement with Schary’s proposed transformation of the studio, relented, and for the first few weeks all was as Hughes had promised. But then the phone calls began. Hughes wanted Schary to replace an actress on the latest film in production. Realizing his mistake, Schary immediately resigned, taking with him many of his own staff. Hughes began filling positions with men who followed his orders, hiring exactly the actors and actresses that he himself liked. He bought a screenplay called Jet Pilot and planned on making it the 1949 version of Hell’s Angels . It was to star John Wayne, and the great Josef von Sternberg was to direct. After a few weeks Sternberg could not endure one more phone call and quit. Hughes took over. In a complete repeat of the production of Hell’s Angels , it took nearly three years to finish, mostly because of the aerial photography, and the budget soared to $4 million. Hughes had shot so much footage he could not decide how to cut it down. It took six years before it was ready, and by then the jet scenes were completely out of date and Wayne looked considerably older. The film subsequently fell into complete obscurity. Soon the once-bustling studio was losing substantial sums, and in 1955, with stockholders furious at his mismanagement, Hughes sold RKO to the General Tire Company. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the U.S. military decided to adapt some of its fighting philosophy to the times.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  had followed Johnson’s senatorial campaign and had heard him exclaim numerous times that he was a friend of the farmer. Here was his chance to prove it. The Agriculture Committee would be a perfect fit. Johnson could not hide his displeasure and squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. “And then, Lyndon,” Connally concluded, “after you’ve been in the Senate for a while, then you get on the Foreign Relations or Finance Committee, and render a real public service.” And by “for a while” Connally meant a good twelve to twenty years, the usual time it took for any senator to amass enough influence. It was called seniority and that was how the game was played. It had taken Connally himself nearly twenty years to get his plum committee positions. Over the next few weeks, word quickly spread among senators that Johnson was someone to keep an eye on, a potential hothead. And so it was a pleasant surprise when many of them saw and met him for the first time, after he was officially inaugurated. He was not at all what they had expected. He was the picture of politeness, and very deferential. He would often come to visit them in their offices. He would announce himself to the secretary in the outer office, then patiently wait there until called in, sometimes for an hour. He didn’t seem bothered by this—he busied himself by reading or taking notes. Once inside, he’d ask the senator about his wife and family or his favorite sports team—he had clearly done his homework on the senator in question. He could be quite self-deprecating. He’d often first introduce himself as “Landslide Lyndon,” everyone knowing he had won his Senate seat by the slimmest of margins. Mostly, however, he came to talk business and get advice. He’d ask a question or two about some bill or bit of senatorial procedure and would listen with a focus that was striking and charming, almost like a child. His large brown eyes would stay fixed on the senator in question, and with his chin resting on his hand, he would occasionally nod and every now and then ask another question. The senators could tell he was paying deep attention because invariably he would act on their advice or repeat their very words to someone else, always crediting the senator who had spoken them. He would leave with a gracious thank-you for their time and for the invaluable education they had provided. This was not the spirited hothead they had heard so much about, and the contrast redounded to his credit. The senators saw him most often on the Senate floor, and unlike any other member of the institution, he attended every session and sat almost the whole time at his desk. He took copious notes. He wanted to learn everything about senatorial procedure—a dull affair, but one that seemed to captivate him. He was far, however, from being a dullard. When senators encountered him in the hallway or in

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  The first fifty of us filled out applications and were told to return the next night at midnight. There was a snow squall during the day while we slept, but Jan and I were determined to get to work anyway. We wandered through the plant as though we had just landed on this rusty corrugated planet. Sounds, muffled and loud, startled us. The blast furnace lit up the sky orange and red. We gave the foreman our work assignment slips. He looked us up and down. “Come with me,” he said, and led us outside. The wind whipped the top layer of powdery snow into tiny tornadoes. The foreman took one of two shovels and he dug until we heard a clank of metal against metal. “Hear that? Railroad tracks.” He handed us each a shovel. “Clear ’em off.” He looked at my left hand. I had wrapped a scarf around my injured hand. The cold made the metal brace burn against my skin. “You gonna be able to work?” he nodded toward my hand. “Sure,” I said. “Hey, how far down do the tracks gor” He answered over his shoulder, ““You can shovel all night long and never get to the end.” Jan and I stared at the snowdrifts. Jan threw her shovel down. It thumped softly in the snow. I braced myself, but she spoke quietly. “I’m too old for this horseshit,” she said. “They’re gonna make it hell for us until we quit.” I knew she was right. “C’mon,” she told me. “T’ll drive you home.” I sat up until dawn watching the snow fall. I knew I'd been fired the day before when I didn’t punch in for the first shift after the strike officially ended. When light glowed on the horizon I walked to the bindery so I'd be there when Duffy arrived. I came out from behind the gate as soon as his car pulled in. I couldn’t read the look on his face when he saw me. “What do you want?” He asked it gently, but the words were cold. “You were right.” I nearly choked on the words. He shook his head. “I’m not glad I was right.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, really. I just came to tell you I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Related to this is a gradual disconnect from history itself, as people tend to view present events as if they were isolated in time. Understand: Any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, to D, and beyond. Other actors will be pulled into the drama and it is hard to predict their motivations and responses. You cannot possibly map out these chains or get a complete handle on consequences. But by making your thinking more consequential you can at least become aware of the more obvious negative consequences that could ensue, and this often spells the difference between success and disaster. You want depth of thinking, to go to several degrees in imagining the permutations, as far as your mind can go. Often, going through this process will convince you of the wisdom of doing nothing, of waiting. Who knows what would have resulted in history if the conspirators had thought this out and chosen to wait until Caesar died naturally or in battle? While this mode of thinking is important for individuals, it can be even more crucial for large organizations, where there is a lot at stake for many people. In any group or team, put at least one person in charge of gaming out all of the possible consequences of a strategy or line of action, preferably someone with a skeptical and prudent frame of mind. You can never go too far in this process, and the time and money spent will be well rewarded as you avoid potential catastrophes and develop more solid plans. 2. Tactical hell. You find yourself embroiled in several struggles or battles. You seem to get nowhere but you feel like you have invested so much time and energy already that it would be a tremendous waste to give up. You have actually lost sight of your long-term goals, what you’re really fighting for. Instead it has become a question of asserting your ego and proving you are right. Often we see this dynamic in marital spats: it is no longer about repairing the relationship but about imposing one’s point of view. At times, caught in these battles, you feel defensive and petty, your spirit drawn downward. This is almost a sure sign that you have descended into tactical hell. Our minds are designed for strategic thinking— calculating several moves in advance toward our goals. In tactical hell you can never raise your perspective high enough to think in that manner. You are constantly reacting to the moves of this or that person, embroiled in their dramas and emotions, going around in circles. The only solution is to back out temporarily or permanently from these battles, particularly if they are occurring on several fronts.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  He preferred not to know and to go on writing and practicing medicine without worrying about the future. But as he became increasingly famous for his plays and short stories, he began to experience a new kind of discomfort—the envy and petty criticisms of his fellow writers. They formed various political cliques and endlessly attacked one another, including Anton himself, who had refused to ally himself with any revolutionary cause. All of this made Anton feel increasingly disenchanted with the literary world. The elevated mood he had so carefully crafted in Taganrog was dissipating. He became depressed and considered giving up writing entirely. Then, toward the end of 1889, he thought of a way to free himself from his growing depression. Since his days in Taganrog, the poorest and most abject members of society had fascinated him. He liked to write about thieves and con artists, and get inside their minds. The lowliest members of Russian society were its prisoners, who lived in ghastly conditions. And the most notorious prison in Russia was on Sakhalin Island, just north of Japan. It housed five penal colonies with hundreds of thousands of prisoners and their families. It was like a shadow state—nobody in Russia had any idea what really went on on the island. This could be the answer to his present misery. He would make the arduous trek across Siberia to the island. He would interview the most hardened criminals. He would write a detailed book on the conditions there. Far from the pretentious literary world, he would connect to something very real and reignite the generous mood he had crafted in Taganrog. His friends and family tried to dissuade him. His health had gotten worse; the travel could kill him. But the more they tried to dissuade him, the more he felt certain it was the only way to save himself. After a three-month journey he finally arrived at the island in July of 1890, and he immediately immersed himself in this new world. His task was to interview every possible prisoner, including the most vicious murderers. He investigated every aspect of their lives. He witnessed the most gruesome torture sessions of prisoners and followed convicts as they worked in the local mines, chained to wheelbarrows. Prisoners who completed their sentences would often have to stay on the island in labor camps, and so Sakhalin was full of wives waiting to join them in these camps. These women and their daughters would resort to prostitution to stay alive. Everything was designed to degrade people’s spirits and drain them of every ounce of dignity. It reminded him of his family dynamic, on a much larger scale. This was certainly the lowest rung of hell he could have visited, and it affected him deeply. He now longed to return to Moscow and write about what he had seen. His sense of proportion had been restored.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Up to that point I thought I had, if nothing else, a tether to this country, a grandfather, one with a face, an identity, a man who could read and write, one who called me on my birthdays, whom I was a part of, whose American name ran inside my blood. Now that cord was cut. Your face and hair a mess, you got up to flick the Marlboro into the sink. “Everything good is somewhere else, baby. I’m telling you. Everything.” Leaning into the table now, the photo safely tucked in his shirt pocket, Paul starts to tell me what I already know. “Hey,” he says, eyes glazed with reefer. “I’m not who I am. I mean . . .” He dabs the joint into his half-full glass of water. It hisses. My Raisin Bran, untouched, crackles in its red clay bowl. “I’m not what your mamma says I am.” His gaze is lowered as he tells it, his rhythm cut with odd pauses, at times slipping into near-whisper, like a man cleaning his rifle at daybreak and talking to himself. And I let him run his mind. I let him empty. I didn’t stop him because you don’t stop nothing when you’re nine. — One evening, during his final tour in Vietnam, Earl Woods found himself pinned down by enemy fire. The American fire base he was stationed at was about to be overrun by a large North Vietnamese and Viet Cong contingent. Most of the American GIs had already evacuated. Woods was not alone—beside him, hunkered down in their two-jeep caravan, was Lieutenant Colonel Vuong Dang Phong. Phong, as Woods described him, was a ferocious pilot and commander, with a ruthless eye for detail. He was also a dear friend. As the enemy poured in around the abandoned base, Phong turned to Woods, assuring him they’ll live through it. For the next four hours, the two friends sat in their jeeps, their olive uniforms darkened with sweat. Woods clutched his M-79 grenade launcher as Phong held the jeeps’ machine-gun turret. In this way, they survived the night. After, the two would share a drink in Phong’s room back at base camp—and laugh, discussing baseball, jazz, and philosophy. All through his time in Vietnam, Phong was Woods’s confidant. Perhaps such strong bonds are inevitable between men who trust each other with their lives. Perhaps it was their mutual otherness that drew them close, Woods being both black and Native American, growing up in the segregated American South, and Phong, a sworn enemy to half of his countrymen in an army run, at its core, by white American generals. Whatever the case, before Woods left Vietnam, the two swore to find each other after the helicopters, bombers, and napalm had lifted. Neither of them knew it would be the last time they saw each other.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  When we bridge this distance from within, our attitude toward the opposite sex changes as well. We feel a deeper connection. We can talk and relate to them as if relating to parts of ourselves. The polarity between the sexes still exists and still causes us to be attracted and fall in love, but now it includes the desire to get closer to the feminine or the masculine. This is much different from the polarization between the genders, in which distance and hostility eventually come to the fore in the relationship and push people further away. The inner connection will vastly improve the outer connection and should be the ideal we aim for. Gender Projection—Types Although there are infinite variations, below you will find six of the more common types of gender projections. You must use this knowledge in three ways: First, you must recognize in yourself any tendency toward one of these forms of projection. This will help you understand something profound about your earliest years and make it much easier for you to withdraw your projections on other people. Second, you must use this as an invaluable tool for gaining access to the unconscious of other people, to seeing their anima and animus in action. And finally, you must be attentive to how others will project onto you their needs and fantasies. Keep in mind that when you are the target of other people’s projections, the temptation is to want to live up to their idealization of you, to be their fantasy. You get caught up in their excitement and you want to believe you are as great, strong, or empathetic as they imagine. Without realizing it, you begin to play the role they want you to play. You become the mother or father figure they crave. Inevitably, however, you will come to resent this— you cannot be yourself; you are not appreciated for your true qualities. Better to be aware of this dynamic before it entraps you. The Devilish Romantic: For the woman in this scenario, the man who fascinates her—often older and successful—might seem like a rake, the type who cannot help but chase after young women. But he is also romantic. When he’s in love, he showers the woman with attention. She decides she will seduce him and become the target of his attention. She will play to his fantasies. How can he not want to settle down with her and reform himself? She will bask in his love. But somehow he is not as strong, masculine, or romantic as she had imagined. He is a bit self-absorbed. She does not get the desired attention, or it does not last very long. He cannot be reformed, and leaves her.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I shrugged and nodded. The lunch whistle blew. I panicked. “What do I tell Jack now?” Jack came around the corner as I spoke. “You ready?” he asked me. I took a deep breath. “I don’t feel good, Jack. I’m punching out and going home.” Jack glared at Duffy. “Suit yourself.” Duffy whistled as Jack left. “You’re alright, Goldberg.” I smiled grudgingly. “Call me Jess.” 88 Leslie Feinberg The next morning when the whistle blew I took my place at the collating machine, ready to feed the pockets. I could see Duffy and Leroy talking to Jack. Duffy was waving his arms and yelling over the din of the machinery. Jack had his hands on his hips and his face was all red and blustery. When I looked over a few minutes later, Leroy was working on a machine with Jack’s assistant. I had to hand it to Leroy, these guys weren’t going to make life easy for him. As it turned out, they weren’t too pleased with me, either. “You son-of-a-bitch,” Jack yelled in my ear as he walked past me. Jim Boney was glaring at me from across the room. Jan was on the other end of the collating line, watching everything. The hardest part was telling the butches at lunchtime that I was back to Grade Four. “Tt ain’t right,” Grant said sullenly. Johnny and Frankie glanced at each other and shook their heads. Jan just watched the situation unfolding, I told everybody about the promise Duffy made to get all the butches into the union meetings. “Big deal,” Grant laughed. “This kid’s like Jack and the Beanstalk, you know? She trades a cow for a magic bean. Fuck that shit. I don’t want to be part of no union that doesn’t want me.” My face burned. “We can’t just say ‘fuck the union, we’re in it. The contract’s up in October. What are we gonna do, go into the plant manager’s office one at a time and negotiate? We don’t have a choice. We’ve gotta make the guys see that they need us too.” Grant thumped her fist on the table. “I got a choice,” she said. “I don’t want no part of this union. You sold out, kid. Fuck you.” The whistle blew. Lunch was over. Everyone got up and went back to work. I stayed at the table for a moment, trying to remember what it was like to feel so good the day before. I would have done almost anything to get back the respect I lost. Jan was still at the table. She stood up and put her hand on my shoulder, “C’mon, kid, we’re late.” I stood up and sighed. I felt defeated and raw. Jan looked me in the face. “Life’s complicated, ain’t it, kid?” I nodded, unable to look her in the eye. She gently touched my cheek with her calloused hand. “I think you did the right thing,”

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

  71Lecture 8—Puritans, Kings, and Theology in Practice õ The most important bit was this: The Puritans asked the king to support a new English translation of the Bible. They argued that older translations got the Hebrew or the Greek meaning of certain verses wrong. õ The king was leery of radicals who might tweak scripture for their own purposes. So James agreed, but the new translation has to be done by the best scholars and approved by the bishops and the king’s counselors. James wanted this new translation to justify the English system— bishops and kings—as the true Christian way. õ About 50 translators, divided into several teams, got to work. The first complete editions of the new translation, the King James Bible, rolled off the press seven years later, in 1611. õ Over the long term, no other work of literature except the plays of Shakespeare would have as much influence on the English language. This was partly because James wanted this translation to use familiar, Anglo-Saxon words. Phrases like “He’s the salt of the earth” and “Don’t put words in my mouth” can be traced back to King James’s translators. NEW ZION IN THE NEW WORLD õ Puritans did not get everything they wanted at Hampton Court. James proved adept at outfoxing them. His son, Charles I, was far friendlier to the Catholic perspective than James had been, and far less politically savvy. He ordered his archbishop to crack down on people who didn’t follow all the rules of the Church of England. õ By the late 1620s, England was starting to feel like a pretty miserable place for Protestants who still thought the English Reformation didn’t go far enough. They started thinking it might be time to leave. This led to the radical experiment in Christian community that the Puritans built in New England in the early 17 th century.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  This side of Danton was what made him so relatable and compelling to the public. In a way that made him quite unique, Danton was able before anyone else to connect the meaning behind all of these signs and foresee a mass revolution on its way. An avid swimmer, he compared all of this to the tide in a river. Nothing in human life is ever static. There is always discontent below the surface, and hunger for change. Sometimes this is rather subtle, and the river seems somewhat placid but still moving. At other times it is like a rush, a rising tide that no one, not even a king with absolute power, can hold back. Where was this tide carrying the French? That was the key question. To Danton it soon became clear it was heading toward the formation of a republic. The monarchy was now just a façade. Its show of majesty no longer stirred the masses. They now saw that the actions of the king were all about holding on to power; they saw the aristocracy as a bunch of thieves, doing little work and sucking up the wealth of France. With such levels of disenchantment, there could be no turning back, no middle ground, no constitutional monarchy. As part of his unusual perspicacity and sensitivity to the spirit of the times, before any of the other revolutionary leaders, Danton understood that the Terror he had unleashed was a mistake and that it was time to stop it. In this one instance, his sense of timing was off, as he moved on this intuition at least several months in advance of the public, giving his enemies and rivals an opening to get rid of him. Understand: You might see King Louis XVI as an extreme example of someone out of tune with the times, not particularly relevant to your own life, but in fact he is much closer to you than you think. Like him, you are probably looking at the present through the lens of the past. When you look at the world around you, it seems pretty much as it appeared a day or a week or a month or even a year ago. People act more or less the same. The institutions that hold power remain in place and are not going anywhere. People’s ways of thinking have not really changed; the conventions that govern behavior in your field are still followed religiously. Yes, there might be some new styles and trends in culture, but they are not critical factors or signs of deep change. Lulled by these appearances, it seems to you that life simply goes on as it always has.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Ambitio n She takes you to Harvard’s campus, which you’d never seen, and you find yourself engaging in some kind of weird retrospective fantasy. When she shows you the undergraduate dining hall, which basically looks like Hogwarts, you keep thinking to yourself: Maybe I should have gone to Harvard? Maybe I should have applied? You keep thinking back to why you applied to the colleges you did, and you remember—for the first time in years—that you chose your college list almost completely at random. You wanted to go to a city and you wanted to get out of Pennsylvania; those were the only two criteria. You wish you could accurately describe the bone-deep ache of walking on that campus, the too-late realization that you’d fucked up your whole life by not having sufficient ambition. Who are you? You are nobody. You are nothing. She takes your arm as you walk among the buildings, as if you would have belonged there, as if you belong there, like she does.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Word ProblemOkay, so, there’s this woman, and she lives in Iowa City, and then she moves to Bloomington, Indiana, 408 miles away. And her girlfriend, who loves her very much, agrees to do the whole long-distance thing. She doesn’t even pause, it’s what she would call a no-brainer. (The pun is lost on her, in the moment.) She spends the entire second year of her graduate school experience shuttling back and forth to Bloomington. She does it gladly. In one trip, she can listen to 75 percent of an audiobook. If she is driving at sixty-five miles per hour, and the average length of an audiobook is ten hours, how many months will it take for her to realize she has wasted half of her MFA program driving to her girlfriend’s house to be yelled at for five days? How many months will it take her to come to terms with the fact that she functionally did this to herself? IIIAnd because you are of a kind, the house knows you. When you cry out, the lights flicker, ghostly blue and ragged. When she says you are shut off, the light switches nod their white tiny heads. Tiles creak yes beneath her edicts—something bad must have happened to make you this way, the way where you don’t want her. But the windows rattle, disagree. In their honeyed, blindless light, they see it—something bad is happening. —Leah Horlick, “Ghost House” Dream House as Man vs. SelfYour mother once owned a tiny, trembling schnoodle named Greta, whom she rescued when you were in college. Greta was rotund and gray and the most neurotic dog you’d ever met, prone to fits of ennui and anxiety. When Gibby, your family’s cockapoo, died from choking on a plastic bag, Greta mourned by moving elaborate piles of stuffed animals—some of them bigger than she was—around the house. “She just keeps doing that,” your mother said mildly when you asked her about the behavior. You once dogsat Greta when your mother was out of town and you were profoundly unnerved by her malaise; she spent most of the day lying in a particular spot on top of the couch, her face flattened into the fabric—except she wasn’t sleeping: her dark eyes were open and fixed on nothing. She looked dead. Every time you moved her, she dangled limply, not extending her feet when you put her on the ground. When you took her outside to use the bathroom, she went to the closest spot, keeping her eyes on you the whole time, and peed with more lassitude than you experienced in the entirety of your teenage years. When you were out walking her on a leash she would lie on the ground and refuse to move, and more than once you had to carry her home.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  We didn’t grow much, to be honest. We stayed at about thirty or so, all Christians who had moved to Imago from other churches. I know that numbers shouldn’t matter very much, but to be honest I kind of wanted Imago to grow because I wanted my friends at my old church to know we were successful; but we didn’t grow, we stayed at about thirty. We’d meet on Sunday nights and then again on Wednesday nights for prayer. A lot less people showed up for prayer. There were only about ten of us, and it was pretty boring. It felt like an AA meeting gone bad. We’d sit around and talk about the crap in our lives, and then we’d pray for a little while, and then we would go home. One night Rick showed up sort of beaten-looking. He had been to some sort of pastors reception where a guy spoke about how the church has lost touch with people who didn’t know about Jesus. Rick said he was really convicted about this and asked us if we thought we needed to repent and start loving people who were very different from us. We all told him yes, we did, but I don’t think any of us knew what that meant. Rick said he thought it meant we should live missional lives, that we should intentionally befriend people who are different from us. I didn’t like the sound of that, to be honest. I didn’t want to befriend somebody just to trick them into going to my church. Rick said that was not what he was talking about. He said he was talking about loving people just because they exist—homeless people and Gothic people and gays and fruit nuts. And then I liked the sound of it. I liked the idea of loving people just to love them, not to get them to come to church. If the subject of church came up, I could tell them about Imago, but until then, who cared. So we started praying every week that God would teach us to live missional lives, to notice people who needed to be loved.

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

  SECULARIZATION õ Factors like declining church attendance numbers and the shrinking role of professional clergy in public life have many Christians, particularly in the Western world, wondering what to do. Some evangelical Christians in America have gone from calling themselves the moral majority to saying they must accept their role as a moral minority in a pagan culture. õ Some conservatives have blamed all these things on the Social Gospel. For more than a century, they have called the Social Gospel a dangerous shift in the church’s focus from personal salvation and the life hereafter toward, instead, trying to save the world in the here and now. õ It’s not really the job of historians to call a faith a success or failure. But Christians themselves think in these terms all the time. And often, they’re very focused on numbers: baptism rates, the percentage of tithing members, and so on. This is true for liberal Christians as well as for conservatives. õ But to take the attitude that success is a numbers game is to adopt what the historian David Hollinger calls a “Christian survivalist” mentality. What if, instead, we ask the question from a historian’s perspective: Which Christian groups have had great historical significance? Which have changed the course of history? We see that many of the Christian traditions that are dwindling today, like the liberal Protestant denominations in North America, had an incredible role in shaping modern Western society. õ Hollinger points out that many of them took that uncomfortable, humbling experience they had in the mission field, where they learned to respect other cultures and skin colors, and brought it home, where they helped lead the civil rights movement, encouraged their fellow citizens to embrace more freedoms for women, urged them to view non-Christian religions with curiosity and compassion, and generally laid the groundwork for a more tolerant, peaceful, pluralist society. 356 The History of Christianity II õ These churches are now shrinking; perhaps their historical moment is in its twilight. But judging by the Christian principle of the incarnation, the notion of making God’s presence real in the human world, these churches can’t be considered a failure. õ From another angle, many people call secular modernity, not religion, the big failure: It has not brought peace, happiness, or material comfort to billions of people. War and terrorism rage in some areas. Drug addiction epidemics have destroyed families and communities in countries that are supposedly the wealthiest and most modern on earth. õ Perhaps disappointment with the promises of modernity is a major reason for the global explosion of Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity during the 20th century. These are faith traditions that boldly rebel against the claims of modern reason; they say people can speak in strange tongues and claim the gifts of prophecy and healing. Lecture 36—The Challenge of 21st-Century Christianity 357

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

  õ Luther wasn’t allowed to come because he was an outlaw. Another person had to take charge of getting everyone to agree and drafting the core beliefs of this new Lutheran faith. That person was Philipp Melanchthon, a professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg who was younger than Luther and his close collaborator. õ He consulted with other Protestants, read over Luther’s writings, and drafted a document that became one of the landmarks of the Reformation: the Augsburg Confession. It laid out the core beliefs of Lutheranism, including justification by faith alone and the importance of the sacraments, even if they are not agents of salvation. It asserted the right of priests to marry and denied that a man can purify his soul through isolation in a monastery. õ Luther’s sympathizers among the German leaders signed onto the Augsburg Confession and demanded a public reading. Despite all this, Luther wasn’t thrilled with the final document. He thought the tone was too polite. Charles V hardly felt that way. In fact, the Confession paved the way for the Protestant princes of Germany to form an alliance against the emperor called the Schmalkaldic League, and they would go to war against him in the 1540s. õ The Augsburg Confession had influence well beyond the Holy Roman Empire. In 1536 it was translated into English, just as Protestant sentiments were beginning to spread throughout England. And Melanchthon’s work helped crystalize the ideas of early English reformers. õ That same year in Scandinavia, the king Christian III marched on Copenhagen, arrested the Catholic bishops, and declared that the Reformation had come to Denmark and Norway. He wanted to bring the churches into line with Lutheran beliefs, and now he also had a handy excuse to confiscate bishops’ valuable properties, which he needed to help pay the cost of the civil war he had just won. Lecture 2—Luther and the Dawn of Protestantism 19

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  If she senses a man might be like this, based on his appearance, she will project fantasies that are charged and sexual. Oftentimes she chooses a man who is relatively young because this makes him less threatening, less of a patriarch. But his youth and immaturity make it almost impossible to form a stable relationship, and her angry side will come out as she grows disenchanted. Once a woman recognizes she is prone to this projection, she must come to terms with a simple fact: what she really wants is to develop the independence, assertiveness, and power to disobey in herself. It is never too late to do so, but these qualities must be built up and developed in small steps, everyday challenges in which she practices saying no, breaking some rules, et cetera. Becoming more assertive, she can begin to have relationships that are more equal and satisfying. The Fallen Woman: To the man in question, the woman who fascinates him seems so different from those he has known. Perhaps she comes from a different culture or social class. Perhaps she is not as educated as he is. There might be something dubious about her character and her past; she is certainly less physically restrained than most women. He thinks she’s earthy. She seems to be in need of protection, education, and money. He will be the one to rescue and elevate her. But somehow the closer he gets to her, the less it turns out as he had expected. In Swann’s Way , volume 1 of the novel In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, the protagonist, Charles Swann—based on a real person—is an aesthete, a connoisseur of art. He is also a Don Juan who is deathly afraid of any relationship or form of commitment. He has seduced many women of his class. But then he meets a woman named Odette, who is from a decidedly different social circle. She is uneducated, a bit vulgar, and some would say she is a courtesan. She intrigues him. Then one day, while staring at a reproduction of a biblical scene from a Botticelli fresco, he decides she resembles a woman in the painting. Now he is fascinated and begins to idealize her. Odette must have had a hard life, and she deserves better. Despite his fear of commitment, he will marry her and educate her in the finer things of life. What he doesn’t realize is that she does not at all resemble the woman he fantasizes about. She is extremely clever and strong willed, much stronger than he is. She will end up making him her passive slave, as she continues to have affairs with other men and women. Men of this type often had strong mother figures in their childhood.

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

  Additional y, Matthew demonstrates a danger of insisting upon difference in the absolute terms of rigid stereotypes. There are historical as well as social psychological reasons why he cast things in this way. These explanations may or may not be helpful for modern readers when it comes to rendering a moral verdict against this ancient writer and his community. How might one determine “guilt” or “innocence” in a case like this? Perhaps we might do this by using a pragmatic measurement of success? How successful was Matthew in the use of the Pharisees in his gospel? If success is measured by the number of people who profoundly identified with a group so that that group’s identity and their own self-concept became fused, at least in part, then Matthew’s construction of collective identity was successful. On the other hand, if success is measured by the ethical treatment of the other that this collective identity justified, then Matthew’s construction of identity was unsuccessful. Perhaps Matthew’s own standard can be used to evaluate success in this latter sense: did Matthew’s constructed collective identity develop a habit of characteristical y loving the group’s enemies (Matthew 5:38–42)? Matthew’s animosity toward the Pharisees suggests that he did not do so personal y, and subsequent Christian history suggests that, by and large, the Christian church did not do so either. 130 130 131 8 From Tamar and Mary to Perpetua: Women and the Word in Matthew Catherine Sider Hamilton And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” Luke 1:46–47 In Luke’s gospel, famously, Mary speaks—and speaks stil , in my own Anglican tradition, every time the Magnificat is sung at Evensong. In Matthew, by contrast, she is silent. “In Matthew,” Andries van Aarde and Yolanda Dreyer say, “Mary quickly recedes into the background.” 1 As commentators universal y note, in Matthew’s birth narrative it is Joseph and not Mary who is the main actor. 2 In Dreyer and van Aarde’s judgment, the Gospel of Matthew as a whole “relegates women to being supporting characters. ”3 Indeed, P. J. J. Botha concludes, in Matthew’s gospel “women characters are demeaned … The gender inflection of the Matthean text is implicitly and explicitly male and it reflects a symbolic universe characterised by this androcentric bias.” 4 And yet from the outset Matthew’s text places a question-mark against this reading.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  disappeared from the scene, apparently having a nervous breakdown. By the end of the war, not a single reconnaissance plane had been produced, and the air force canceled the contract. Perelle himself, broken by the experience, quit his job in December of that year. Hughes, trying to salvage something from the war years, could point to the completion of one of the flying boats, later known as the Spruce Goose. It was a marvel, he claimed, a brilliant piece of engineering on a massive scale. To prove the doubters wrong, he decided to test-fly the plane himself. As he flew over the ocean, however, it became painfully clear that the plane did not have nearly enough power for its enormous weight, and after a mile he gently set it down on the water and had it towed back. The plane would never fly again and would be dry-docked in a hangar at a cost of $1 million per year, Hughes refusing to take it apart for scrap. By 1948 the owner of RKO Pictures, Floyd Odlum, was looking to sell. RKO was one of Hollywood’s most profitable and prestigious studios, and Hughes was itching to get back in the limelight by establishing himself in the film business. He bought Odlum’s shares and gained a controlling interest. Within RKO there was panic. Executives there knew of his reputation for meddling. The company had just brought in a new regime, headed by Dore Schary, that was going to transform RKO into the hottest studio for young directors. Schary decided to quit before being humiliated, but he agreed to first meet Hughes, mostly out of curiosity. Hughes was all charm. He took hold of Schary’s hand, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “I want no part of running the studio. You’ll be left alone.” Schary, surprised by his sincerity and agreement with Schary’s proposed transformation of the studio, relented, and for the first few weeks all was as Hughes had promised. But then the phone calls began. Hughes wanted Schary to replace an actress on the latest film in production. Realizing his mistake, Schary immediately resigned, taking with him many of his own staff. Hughes began filling positions with men who followed his orders, hiring exactly the actors and actresses that he himself liked. He bought a screenplay called Jet Pilot and planned on making it the 1949 version of Hell’s Angels . It was to star John Wayne, and the great Josef von Sternberg was to direct. After a few weeks Sternberg could not endure one more phone call and quit. Hughes took over. In a complete repeat of the production of Hell’s Angels , it took nearly three years to finish, mostly because of the aerial photography, and the budget soared to $4 million. Hughes had shot so much footage he could not decide how to cut it down. It took six years before it was ready, and by then the jet scenes were completely out of date and

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Learn to tame your own stubborn nature and free your mind from its defensive and closed positions, unleashing your creative powers. The Influence Game In December 1948, Senator Tom Connally of Texas received a visit from the newly elected second senator of the state, Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973). Johnson had previously served as a Democratic congressman in the House of Representatives for twelve years, and had earned a reputation as a politician with high ambitions who was quite impatient to realize them. He could be brash, opinionated, and even a bit pushy. Connally knew all of this, but he was willing to judge Johnson for himself. He studied the young man closely (Connally was thirty-one years older). He had met him before and thought him rather astute. But after exchanging a few pleasantries, Johnson revealed his true motives: he was hoping to get a seat on one of the three most prestigious committees in the Senate—Appropriations, Finance, or Foreign Relations. Connally served on two of them as a senior member. Johnson seemed to suggest that as a fellow Texan Connally could help him get what he wanted. Connally felt that Johnson clearly did not understand how the senatorial system worked, and he decided to put him in his place right then and there. Acting as if he were doing Johnson a great favor, he offered to help him get a seat on the Agriculture Committee, knowing full well Johnson would find this insulting—it was among the least coveted of all committees. Thrusting the knife in deeper, Connally said that he had followed Johnson’s senatorial campaign and had heard him exclaim numerous times that he was a friend of the farmer. Here was his chance to prove it. The Agriculture Committee would be a perfect fit. Johnson could not hide his displeasure and squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. “And then, Lyndon,” Connally concluded, “after you’ve been in the Senate for a while, then you get on the Foreign Relations or Finance Committee, and render a real public service.” And by “for a while” Connally meant a good twelve to twenty years, the usual time it took for any senator to amass enough influence. It was called seniority and that was how the game was played. It had taken Connally himself nearly twenty years to get his plum committee positions. Over the next few weeks, word quickly spread among senators that Johnson was someone to keep an eye on, a potential hothead. And so it was a pleasant surprise when many of them saw and met him for the first time, after he was officially inaugurated. He was not at all what they had expected. He was the picture of politeness, and very deferential. He would often come to visit them in their offices.

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

  õ Another bishop stood up and said there was a huge gap between church doctrine and the contrary practice of the immense majority of Christian couples. Maybe, he said, the church should seek the advice of “married Christians” as well as theologians and other experts. õ The pope who had followed John XXIII and wrapped up the council was Paul VI. Some people thought of him as a progressive, so liberals were hopeful that he would reform the church’s teachings, especially after the papal commission came back and recommended that the church permit Catholics to use contraception. õ But Paul VI was unnerved by how quickly the church was changing, and he rejected the recommendation. In 1968, he issued an encyclical called Humanae Vitae, or On Human Life. He affirmed that the only birth control Catholic women could use was the so-called rhythm method based on keeping track of a woman’s monthly cycle. This had a devastating effect on progressive Catholics. THE CHURCH IN POST-COLONIAL POLITICS õ These debates were unfolding in an era when Catholic leaders found themselves thrust into the middle of complicated and violent political revolutions all around the world, particularly in places formerly ruled by European powers. õ Vatican II encouraged many liberal reformers in Latin America, Africa, and Asia because the council seemed to place the church firmly on the side of democracy and dignity for oppressed peoples. It seemed to give reformers theological tools to use in criticizing the economic and social policies that ground down the poor. 278 The History of Christianity II