Fear

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 Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  Tea over, the commoding old lady pleady urgent business (which indeed was true) to go out, and earnestly desired me to entertain her cousin kindly till she came back, both for my own sake and her; and then, with a “Pray, sir, be very good, be very tender to the sweet child,” she went out of the room, leaving me staring, with my mouth open, and unprepared by the suddenness of her departure, to oppose it. We were now alone; and on that idea a sudden fit of trembling seized me. I was so afraid, without a precise notion of why, and what I had to fear, that I sat on the settee, by the fire side, motionless and petrified, without life or spirit, not knowing how to look or how to stir. But long I was not suffered to remain in this state of stupefaction: the monster squatted down by me on the settee, and without farther ceremony or preamble, flings his arms about my neck, and drawing me pretty forcibly towards him, obliged me to receive, in spite of my struggles to disengage from him, his pestilential kisses, which quite overcame me. Finding me then next to senseless, and unresisting, he tears off my neck handkerchief, and laid all open there, to his eyes and hands: still I endured all without flinching, till emboldened by my sufferance and silence, for I had not the power to speak or cry out, he attempted to lay me down on the settee, and I felt his hand on the lower part of my naked thighs, which were crossed, and which he endeavoured to unlock. Oh then! I was roused out of my passive endurance, and springing from him with an activity he was not prepared for, threw myself at his feet, and begged him, in the most moving tone, not to be rude, and that he would not hurt me. “Hurt you, my dear?” says the brute, “I intend you no harm. Has not the old lady told you that I love you? that I shall do handsomely by you?”

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Let me return to the story. When the poor widow and her two daughters heard the crying and confusion of the hens, they rushed into the yard. They were just in time to see the fox racing back to the wood with Chanticleer in his grip. So they called out: ‘Harrow! Harrow! The fox! The fox! Havoc! Havoc!’ They ran after him, and they were joined in the pursuit by the whole village. There was Talbot and Garland and Malkyn, still with her distaff in her hand. The dog, Colin, sprinted beside them with his tail up. The cows and the calves, even the pigs, were roused by all the shouting and all the barking. They were all running as if their hearts would break. They were yelling as loudly as the fiends in hell. The ducks were quacking up a storm. The geese flew backwards and forwards. The bees came out of the hive in a wild swarm. The noise was so great that no London mob or riot over the price of wheat could equal it. They screamed after the fox. They blew their trumpets and beat their drums. They sounded their horns. They shrieked and whooped. They made so much din that it seemed that the heavens might fall. Now, good pilgrims, I ask you to pay attention. See how Dame Fortune can ruin the hopes and expectations of her enemies. Chanticleer, caught in the jaws of the fox, trembling with fear, spoke out. ‘If I were you, sir,’ he said to his captor, ‘I would turn upon my pursuers now and taunt them. I would tell them to go back from where they had come. For good measure, I would damn them to hell. I would tell them that you are safely on the margins of the wood, and that I will never escape from your jaws. I would tell them that I am dead meat.’ ‘That’s a very good idea,’ the fox replied. And at that moment, as soon as he had opened his mouth, Chanticleer leaped out and flew up into a tree. ‘Alas,’ the fox cried, looking up at him. ‘Alas, dear Chanticleer. I am embarrassed. I am afraid that I have given you the wrong impression. I must have frightened you when I grabbed you and ran out of the yard. But I had the best intentions. I meant you no harm. Come down from that tree, and we can talk about it. I will tell you the truth and nothing but the truth.’ ‘You must be joking,’ the cock replied. ‘I’ll be damned if I am fooled again. Your flattery won’t work any more. I am not going to close my eyes and sing for you. He who keeps his eyes shut deserves his misfortunes. That is the lesson I have learned.’ ‘There is another lesson,’ the fox said. ‘Bad luck will come to one who opens his big mouth at the wrong moment.’

• From The Case for God (2009)

  In Israel, an aggressively religious form of Zionism (which had originally been a defiantly secular movement) had risen to political prominence, and the ultra-Orthodox parties, which David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), Israel’s first prime minister, had confidently predicted would fade away once the Jewish people had their own secular state, were gathering strength. In the United States, Jerry Falwell (1933–2007) founded the Moral Majority in 1979, urging Protestant fundamentalists to get involved in politics and to challenge any state or federal legislation that pushed a “secular humanist” agenda. This militant religiosity, which would emerge in every region where a secular, Western-style government had separated religion and politics, is determined to drag God and/or religion from the sidelines to which they have been relegated in modern culture and back to center field. It reveals a widespread disappointment in modernity. Whatever the pundits, intellectuals, or politicians thought, people all over the world were demonstrating that they wanted to see religion more clearly reflected in public life. This new form of piety is popularly known as “fundamentalism,” but many object to having this Christian term foisted on their reform movements. They do not in fact represent an atavistic return to the past. These are essentially innovative movements and could have taken root at no time other than our own. Fundamentalisms too can be seen as part of the postmodern rejection of modernity. They are not orthodox and conservative; indeed, many are actually anti-orthodox and regard the more conventional faithful as part of the problem. 6 These movements have mushroomed independently, and even those that have emerged within the same tradition do not have an identical vision. However, they bear what has been called a “family resemblance,” and seem instinctively to follow the pattern set by American Protestant fundamentalism, the earliest of these movements. All are initially defensive movements rooted in a profound fear of annihilation, which causes them to develop a paranoid vision of the “enemy.” They begin as intrafaith movements, and only at a secondary stage, if at all, do they direct their attention to a foreign foe. Protestant fundamentalism was chiefly exercised by theological questions that had been challenged by the new scientific discoveries. Fundamentalisms in other traditions have been sparked by entirely different problems and are not preoccupied with “belief” in the same way.

• From City of Night (1963)

  I noticed a door slightly ajar, in a small house with a narrow porch. The door opens. A gaudily braceleted hand summons me to the porch. Swarthy-skinned, about 40, a gypsy woman stood there, a flowered bandanna around her head; dangling gleaming earrings, at least five bracelets tawdrily rainbowing each hand; rings—which she exhibits by holding her fingers open. “Come in.” I hesitated. Her eyes are so light they look impossible in the dark skin, as if whoever made her had used too much color on her face and had to compensate with the colorless eyes. “I have an Important Message for you,” she persisted. “Youve got me confused with someone else.” “No. It’s for You. Come in,” she coaxed. Impulsively I walked into a littered room. Although the day is warm, a fire is burning in a sooty fireplace. The room is excessively hot, closed. “Just got into town, didn’t you, boy?” she asked me. I nodded. “See!” she exclaimed proudly. “I know!” There are several couches about the room—all upholstered noticeably amateurishly in bright flowered prints. On the dirty peeling wall was a spiritualist chart—the words LOVE, DEATH, DESIRE, HATE, WEALTH prominent in the beehive map of life. In the center of the room is a table, draped in a screamingly bright serape. “I been waiting for you,” she said mysteriously, pressing her spangled hands to her forehead, posing at intense concentration. Now she takes my hand. I pulled it away instinctively. “I aint gonna charge you nothin,” she says. She reaches again for my hand. “Whatsamatter? Afraid of The Unknown?” She fixes the bizarre eyes on me. Feeling challenged, I relaxed my hand. Truthfully, she did frighten me, but I watch her coolly as she studies my palm. “You can get Lost mighty bad,” she warned, staring into my hand. “I dont mean lost in the streets or in the Quarter. I mean: Lost deep down. Inside. In your Soul.... This is an evil city, boy.” She smells rotten. The heat, the odor of stale food, imprisoned for days in this airless room, the closeness to this filthy woman, nauseate me. An urchin-boy was standing by the door, picking pecans out of a sticky praline. Now he moves next to me, peering into my palm too. He smells like the woman—his mother, Im convinced: He has the same colorless eyes in the extravagantly brown face. With sugargrimy hands he took my palm. I feel the sticky substance gluing our hands together. “Evil city, boy,” he echoes the woman. And the woman: “He got Powers too. See, he know!” “Thanks for warning me,” I said, forcing my hand away. I walked to the door—the rancid air is choking me. “You wanna stay here?” she asked me. “Lotsa space—see?” She indicates the cluttered room. She can tell Im not interested. “New Orleans is Evil, boy,” she warns me again coaxingly. “I got Powers. They can protect you. You wanna stay here?” “Im staying with a friend,” I lied.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  For Marx the death of God had been a project—something to be achieved in the future; for Nietzsche it had already occurred: it was only a matter of time before “God” would cease to be a presence in the scientific civilization of the West. Unless a new absolute could be found to take its place, everything would become unhinged and relative: “What were we about when we uncoupled this earth from the sun?” the madman demanded. “Where is the earth moving to now? Are we falling continuously? And backwards and sideways and forwards in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as though through an infinite nothingness?” 82 Nietzsche was, of course, familiar with the philosophical and scientific arguments for the denial of God, but he did not bother to rehearse them. God had not died because of the critique of Feuerbach, Marx, Vogt, and Buchner. There had simply been a change of mood. Like the ancient Sky God, the remote modern God was retreating from the consciousness of his former worshippers. The century that had begun with a conviction of boundless possibility was giving way to a nameless dread. But, Nietzsche believed, human beings could counter the danger of nihilism by making themselves divine. They must become the new absolute and take the place of God. The God they had projected outside themselves could be born within the human spirit as the Übermensch (“Superman”) who would provide the universe with ultimate meaning. To achieve this, we had to rebel against the Christian God who had marked the limit of human aspiration, estranged us from our bodies and passions, and enfeebled us with the ideal of compassion. As an incarnation of its will to power, the Übermensch would push the evolution of the species into a new phase so that humanity would finally become supreme. But what would happen when human beings did indeed imagine that they were the highest reality and a law unto themselves? What if the ideal of kenosis was replaced by the naked lust for empowerment, backed by the immense capacity of scientific technology? Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), founder of the science of psychoanalysis, illustrates the shift in mood that Nietzsche had diagnosed. 83 Although he grew up in a Jewish household that took religion very seriously—or, perhaps, because of his religious upbringing—God was indeed dead for Freud. He did not become an atheist as a result of his study of psychology; he was a psychoanalyst because he was an atheist. For Freud, the idea of God was simply untenable. In 1875, he had discovered the writings of Feuerbach, who had fallen into eclipse since the 1840s, and believed implicitly in the “warfare” myth: in this seemingly interminable conflict, religion must be eliminated. 84 Science alone could ensure the physical and mental health of humanity, and, in fact, its victory was inevitable.

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

  But the first pope, in the proper sense of the word, is Leo I., who justly bears the title of "the Great" in the history of the Latin hierarchy. In him the idea of the Papacy, as it were, became flesh and blood. He conceived it in great energy and clearness, and carried it out with the Roman spirit of dominion, so far as the circumstances of the time at all allowed. He marks the same relative epoch in the development of the papacy, as Cyprian in the history of the episcopate. He had even a higher idea of the prerogatives of the see of Rome than Gregory the Great, who, though he reigned a hundred and fifty years later, represents rather the patriarchal idea than the papal. Leo was at the same time the first important theologian in the chair of Rome, surpassing in acuteness and depth of thought all his predecessors, and all his successors down to Gregory I. Benedict XIV. placed him (A.D. 1744) in the small class of doctores ecclesiae, or authoritative teachers of the catholic faith. He battled with the Manichaean, the Priscillianist, the Pelagian, and other heresies, and won an immortal name as the finisher of the orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ. The time and place of the birth and earlier life of Leo are unknown. His letters, which are the chief source of information, commence not before the year 442. Probably a Roman585—if not one by birth, he was certainly a Roman in the proud dignity of his spirit and bearing, the high order of his legislative and administrative talent, and the strength and energy of his will—he distinguished himself first under Coelestine (423–432) and Sixtus III. (432–440) as archdeacon and legate of the Roman church. After the death of the latter, and while himself absent in Gaul, he was elected pope by the united voice of clergy, senate, and people, and continued in that office one-and-twenty years (440–461). His feelings at the assumption of this high office, he himself thus describes in one of his sermons: "Lord, I have beard your voice calling me, and I was afraid: I considered the work which was enjoined on me, and I trembled. For what proportion is there between the burden assigned to me and my weakness, this elevation and my nothingness? What is more to be feared than exaltation without merit, the exercise of the most holy functions being intrusted to one who is buried in sin? Oh, you have laid upon me this heavy burden, bear it with me, I beseech you be you my guide and my support."

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 22 3/23/2011 1:51:06 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on obituaries) Queer Nation SF co-founder dies at 37 Sylvester AIDS Claims Disco Diva Leon H. McKusick, Ph.D. S.F. AIDS Doctor, Dies at 43 1:51:06 GUY (VO/ON) (CONT’D) And they were still dying, and they were still dying and not even just my friends, my relatives. You know, my- my cousin, he died of AIDS. You know, and it was like the whole family kept it, you know, zips the lip. Nobody wanted to say that people were gay, you know, and we didn’t speak about it. We just said Romeo was sick, and um, he just succumbed to AIDS and he died very quietly. 1:52:07 DANIEL (VO/ON) I think my biggest fears around getting sick was blindness. There was a lot in the early days of AIDS of CMV, cytomegalovirus, which attacked the eyes, and people were losing their eyesight in a short period of time. And, you know, I could deal with pain, or they could, you know, they could manage pain and all that, but the idea of losing my eyesight was really-- I think it really, really scared me. 1:52:40 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper headline clip) FDA Expands Availability of AIDS Blindness Drug 1:52:41 EILEEN (VO/ON) We worked on this trial for CMV retinitis. It uh, it affected, infected people’s eyes. We wanted to do research, so we would ask them if we could take their eyes when they died. And (sighs) you know, that was a hard conversation to have, but people were into it. They were going, this awful thing is happening, and, you know, if I can give my eyes to advance this, I’m willing to do that. Any time anybody is ill, you’re meeting them at a very vulnerable place in their life, and these relationships can grow very intensely, very quickly. So it was my job to go into the autopsy room um, when the pathologist would come and remove the eyes, and uh, I would have to put them in this little like urine container, and then put them in a paper bag and take them to the lab. And that was really, really hard. I mean, these were people I really knew and uh, loved, liked, whatever you want to say, and it was really hard to um, watch this. And something that I’ll never

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 8 3/23/2011 there were these little Polaroid photographs uh, that this young man had made of himself. There were at least three, maybe four of them. Uh, the first one was like this. (gestures, mouth open) And inside... these big, purple splotches. And then there was another picture, and he had taken his shirt and pulled it up like this. It was of his chest. These big purple splotches. And they were just on the window, and underneath it was a handwritten note that said something like, watch out, guys. There’s something out there. Something like that. And uh, oh my God, it made this huge impact on me. And then like I was really stoned, and I went and watched the movie, and with the whole movie, I was just thinking about that. It really made an impact on me. I went to see the movies with my- a friend of mine named Michael, and he and I worked together, and he had woken up kind of recently with this like red splotch in his eye. And he kept going like, what is this? What is this? And um, he um, he had been going to the eye doctor, and they hadn’t been able to figure out what it was, and-- (sighs) You know, uh-- Um, it turned out to be KS. He had KS in his eye. So it was right there in the movie lying with us, like already. Like it was already there. 1:17:57 REPORTER (VO) The pictures show the progression of how a few red bumps turn into the mark of Kaposi’s Sarcoma. It’s a rare cancer normally found in the elderly, but now it’s striking young men, most of whom are gay, like Bobby Campbell. After one month, tests are still being done on the red bumps on his foot. 1:18:13 BOBBY CAMPBELL I don’t know how I got it. I fit the profile, kind of the typical Kaposi’s patient in my age in that I’m gay and-- But I don’t know how I got it. 1:18:26 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper and headline clip) Gay Men’s Strange Diseases Mysterious gay cancer 1:18:26 DANIEL (VO/ON) The first time I heard about AIDS, I think it was called the gay cancer. It was KS. It was terrifying. And we had friends who were dying r- r- right at the beginning of the epidemic. I mean, this one person who helped my career greatly, who was a curator of the Brooklyn Museum, gave me a show at the Brooklyn Museum, and he died before the show happened. And that was bef- we-- Now,

• From The Case for God (2009)

  But these were only temporary conglomerations; eventually these objects would disintegrate, and the atoms of which they were made would mill around in the void until they formed another object. Even though the naturalists could not prove their theories, some of their insights were remarkable. In attempting to find a simple, first principle as an explanation for the cosmos, Thales and Anaximenes had already started to think like scientists. Parmenides realized that the moon reflects the light of the sun; Democritus’s atomism would be revived to great effect during the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. But some of their contemporaries were doubtful about the new philosophy, fearing that in seeking to know the mysteries of the cosmos, the phusikoi were dangerously guilty of hubris. They were like the Titan Prometheus, who had stolen fire from the gods and given it to men so that they could develop technology. But Zeus had retaliated by having the divine craftsman Hephaestus fashion the first woman, Pandora, who was beautiful but evil, the source of the world’s sorrow. The mathematician Pythagoras (570–500), however, took science in a different direction. 7 He had been born and educated on the island of Samos, off the Ionian coast, where he became famous for his asceticism and mystical insight, and had studied in Mesopotamia and Egypt before settling in southern Italy. There he established a religious community, dedicated to the cult of Apollo and the Muses, where the study of mathematics, astronomy, geometry, and music were not merely tools for the exploration of the physical world but also spiritual exercises. Apart from his famous theorem of the right-angled triangle, we know very little about Pythagoras himself—later Pythagoreans tended to attribute their own discoveries to the Master—but it may have been he who coined the term philosophia, the “love of wisdom.” Philosophy was not a coldly rational discipline but an ardent spiritual quest that would transform the seeker. This was the kind of philosophy that would develop in Athens during the fourth century; the rationalism of classical Greece would not consist of abstract speculation for its own sake. It was rather rooted in a search for transcendence and a dedicated practical lifestyle. Pythagoras’s vision was in part shaped by religious changes in Greece during the sixth century. The Greeks had a uniquely tragic vision of the world. Their rituals were designed to teach participants to come to terms with the sorrow of life by making them face up squarely to the unspeakable. Every year at the festival of Thesmophoria, for example, they reenacted the story of Demeter, goddess of the grain that provided the economic basis of civilization. 8 She had borne Zeus a beautiful daughter called Persephone. Even though he knew that Demeter would never agree to the match, Zeus had betrothed the girl to his brother Hades, lord of the underworld, and helped him to abduct her.

• From City of Night (1963)

  Then, in that unexpected way, he said this: “If I told you, right now, that I love you—and you believed it—what would you do?” I laughed, but Im sure hes aware that it’s a forced laugh—much like the laughter outside.... I had never stayed around anyone long enough to hear those words, except during the sex-scenes: words spoken over and over by hundreds of people, meaning the same thing each time—nothing.... I remembered that night in New York when I had made the decision that it would be with many, many people—through many rooms, through many parks, through many streets and bars—that I would explore that world. And what, really, had prompted that decision? An attempt to shred the falsely lulling, sheltered innocence of my childhood, yes. But had it also been, at least in part, fear?—a corrosive fear of vulnerability with which the world, with its early manifested coldness, had indoctrinated me; imbued in others: a world which you soon come to see as an emotional jungle; in which you learn very early that you are the sum-total of yourself, nothing more. I laughed again. “Im not sure what I’d do—if you told me that—and I believed it,” I said. “Maybe youre right: Maybe I would run away.... I mean: that word—... ‘love,’” and I had to pause before I could even bring myself to say it, and I smiled in order to emphasize that I wasnt taking the word seriously, “if such a thing exists as other than some sort of way-off thing, Way Out There, somewhere—if it exists more than as merely four letters—like ‘fuck,’” I said, trying to destroy the expected gravity of his answering words, to thwart it by anticipating it, “well, I dont really believe it.” The fact that with this man I can no longer resort to the street act of unconcern—and the intense sobriety after neardrunkenness—make me speak much more easily than I have before. “I guess the whole screwed-up world would have to change before I could feel that there was such a thing.” Laughing purposely now, I said: “And if there is such a thing as what you call ‘love,’ just the mention of it should send rockets into the sky.” “Be careful,” he warned, also laughing. “They may begin to do that outside at any moment. Then where would you be?” He added seriously: “But it doesnt have to be like that. No rockets. Just the absence of loneliness. Thats love enough. In fact, that can be the strongest kind of love.... When you dont believe it’s even possible, then you substitute sex. Life becomes what you fill in with between orgasms. And how long does an orgasm last? People—... people hunting different people every night—even someone they dont really want: They close their eyes, pretend it’s someone else.... The furtive, anonymous dumbshows in public toilets, in parks....”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I said then. ‘Who would offer us a spot?’ ‘The manager here would. Tonight. I’ve already spoken with him -’ ‘Tonight!’ ‘Just one song. He’ll find space for you in his programme; and if they like you, he’ll keep you there.’ ‘Tonight...’ I looked at Walter in dismay. His face was very kind, and his eyes seemed bluer and more earnest than ever. But what he said made me tremble. I thought of the hall, hot and bright and filled with jeering faces. I thought of that stage, so wide and empty. I thought: I cannot do it, not even for Walter’s sake. Not even for Kitty’s. I made to shake my head. He saw, and quickly spoke again - spoke, perhaps for the first time in all the months that I had known him, with something that was almost guile. He said: ‘You know, of course, that we cannot throw over the idea of the double act, now that we have hit upon it. If you don’t wish to partner Kitty, there’ll be some other girl who does. We can spread the word, place notices, audition. You mustn’t feel that you are letting Kitty down...’ I looked from him to the stage, where Kitty herself sat on the edge of a beam of limelight, sipping at her cup, swinging her legs, and smiling at some word of the conductor’s. The thought that she might take another partner - might stroll before the footlights with another girl’s arm through hers, another girl’s voice rising and blending with her own - had not occurred to me. It was more ghastly than the image of the jeering hall; more ghastly than the prospect of being laughed and hissed off a thousand, thousand stages... So when Kitty stood in the wing of the theatre that night, waiting for the chairman’s cry, I stood beside her, sweating beneath a layer of grease-paint, biting my lips so hard I thought they would bleed. My heart had beat fast for Kitty before, in apprehension and passion; but it had never thudded as it thudded now - I thought it would burst right out of my breast, I thought I should be killed with fright. When Walter came to whisper to us, and to fill our pockets with coins, I could not answer him. There was a juggling turn upon the stage.

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

  The account is preserved for us in a letter written by the Christians who survived the persecution to Christians in Asia Minor and preserved for us in the writings of the fourth-century church historian Eusebius. The account indicates that the driving force behind the persecution was the devil, who inspired the mobs to oppose Christians and deprive them of public privileges and civil rights. The anger of the mobs against the Christians increased, and they physically assaulted the Christians and finally urged the authorities to have those professing faith in Christ to be arrested. The general unacceptability of the Christians was heightened by the claims of some of their slaves that Christians engaged in highly immoral and illegal activities, including cannibalistic practices and incestuous orgies. We then have an account of the arrest, trials, torture, and martyrdom of several Christians, including a church leader named Sanctus and a woman named Blandina. 1. The narrative provides graphic details of the public torments that these Christians endured (beatings, floggings, the rack, the iron seat). 2. It also stresses their absolute refusal to abandon their Christian faith, despite such horrible suffering. 3. Eventually, these Christians were put to death by being thrown to wild beasts; their bodies were left on display as an act of further humiliation, until they were burned and their ashes cast into the river. ILI. This account raises a number of disturbing questions about the early persecution of the Christians. IV. 164 A. B. G. What motivated the pagan opponents to treat Christians in this way? How involved were the civil authorities? Why did they go along with the mob mentality? Was the religion seen as illegal? If so, for what reasons? What were the actual charges against the Christians, and could any of them have been true? How often did this sort of thing happen? Was it going on all the time, all over the empire? How did Christians react? Did they all willingly face torture and martyrdom for their faith? Or did some recant to save their skins? What drove those Christians who willingly underwent such public humiliation, torment, and death? Why were they so willing to die for their faith? These and similar questions go on and on. | will try to address them in what remains of this lecture and the ones to follow. To begin our reflections, | would like to dispel some common myths about early Christian persecution. A. Myth |: Christianity was an illegal religion in the empire, constantly opposed by the Roman emperors. In point of fact, it was never declared illegal by an emperor until the middle of the third century. The emperors almost never were involved with Christian persecution. Myth 2: During the first three centuries, Christians were everywhere hunted down and martyred for their faith. In fact, in most times and places, Christianity was tolerated, just as other religions were.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  By bringing the goals of these diverse groups together, the Revolution became even more threatening to the U.S. To the average Grenadian, the United States is a large but dim presence where some dear relative now lives. Until the information campaigns of the PRG, the lack of international news coverage and commentary kept Grenadians largely unaware of the U.S. position in world politics and its history of institutionalized racism and classism. Ronald Reagan was seen as a fatherly movie star unconnected to policies of systematic economic and military oppression of people of Color throughout the developing countries of the world. But the average Grenadian is also extremely involved with the political affairs of his and her own country, wherever there is room beyond survival concerns for such involvement. Facets of the October events surface in every conversation, guarded or unguarded, casual or otherwise. The conflicts in the New Jewel Movement, Bishop’s house arrest, the subsequent demonstration of ten thousand Grenadians, the second smaller march which resulted in Bishop’s liberation and murder along with other Ministers and hundreds of Grenadians on Richmond Hill, and the four-day military curfew that followed these events left terror in the hearts of all Grenadians. Any ending seemed preferable at the time. The U.S.-operated Spice Island Radio went into operation the afternoon of the invasion, and most Grenadians obtained whatever information they got about events from posters and handbills put up around the countryside by P.S.Y.O.P.S. Rumors have been rife among the people, attempting to explain the inexplicable. One shopgirl in St. Georges told me she had heard the reason why the army fired upon the people at Fort Rupert was because “the Russians had put tablets into their milk that would make them shoot anybody on sight.” It remains to be seen if the future plans of the U.S. for Grenada will justify the vision of many Grenadians of the United States as savior. Even now this view is not nearly as widespread as the american media would have us believe. Says a newly unemployed nineteen-year-old laborer in St. Georges, “They can call it a rescue mission all they want, but I haven’t been rescued yet.” There is much pain beneath the veneer of gratitude: too many fathers and uncles and brothers and daughters injured and killed because “the americans thought there were Cubans living in there.” All over Grenada I felt the deadening effect of horror and disbelief in every conversation about the war, often beneath a surface animation. I came to Grenada my second time six weeks after the invasion, wanting to know she was still alive, wanting to examine what my legitimate position as a concerned Grenadian-american was toward the military invasion of this tiny Black nation by the mighty U.S. I looked around me, talked with Grenadians on the street, the shops, the beaches, on porches in the solstice twilight.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Today, with the defeat of ERA, the tightening economy, and increased conservatism, it is easier once again for white women to believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace, at least until a man needs your job or the neighborhood rapist happens along. And true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless. But Black women and our children know the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and with hatred, that there is no rest. We do not deal with it only on the picket lines, or in dark midnight alleys, or in the places where we dare to verbalize our resistance. For us, increasingly, violence weaves through the daily tissues of our living — in the supermarket, in the classroom, in the elevator, in the clinic and the schoolyard, from the plumber, the baker, the saleswoman, the bus driver, the bank teller, the waitress who does not serve us. Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying. The threat of difference has been no less blinding to people of Color. Those of us who are Black must see that the reality of our lives and our struggle does not make us immune to the errors of ignoring and misnaming difference. Within Black communities where racism is a living reality, differences among us often seem dangerous and suspect. The need for unity is often misnamed as a need for homogeneity, and a Black feminist vision mistaken for betrayal of our common interests as a people. Because of the continuous battle against racial erasure that Black women and Black men share, some Black women still refuse to recognize that we are also oppressed as women, and that sexual hostility against Black women is practiced not only by the white racist society, but implemented within our Black communities as well. It is a disease striking the heart of Black nationhood, and silence will not make it disappear. Exacerbated by racism and the pressures of powerlessness, violence against Black women and children often becomes a standard within our communities, one by which manliness can be measured. But these woman-hating acts are rarely discussed as crimes against Black women. As a group, women of Color are the lowest paid wage earners in america.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 9 3/23/2011 looking back, I know he died of AIDS, but back then there was no name for it. 1:19:02 EILEEN (VO/ON) I was hanging blood one day in the hospital, and this was the, you know, before the times that you wore gloves, and the infectious disease fellow came in and said, “Eileen, why don’t you put gloves on. We don’t know what this is.” 1:19:22 GUY (VO/ON) I was selling flowers at that time, and there was a guy down the street. Five days. One day, he went to the hospital. Five days later, he was dead. 1:19:36 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper and headline clip) The Mystery Maladies Who Can I Turn To...? Disease That Hits Gays 1:19:38 PAUL (VO/ON) I’m looking through the gay periodicals, and in one of them, new cancer described. And so I’m aware something has occurred. And I note it. I think everybody who was paying attention to the community noted, well, this could be something to pay attention to. And so we-- I did. 1:19:56 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper and headline clip) [text obscured by time code] Shorts “GAY MEN’S” PNEUMONIA” Two diseases hit state’s gays 1:20:01 PATIENT (breathes heavily) 1:20:06 EILEEN (VO/ON) People were coming in with pneumocystis pneumonia who were quite well, you know, one day. You know, uh, out there swimming, playing tennis, you know, buffed, coming in and were dying. I mean, were dead ten days later. 1:20:25 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on magazine cover) bluboy A KILLER Kaposi’s Sarcoma

• From The Case for God (2009)

  You left that out of your confession.” 25 In the past, the monastic life had encouraged a spirituality that was essentially communal. Monks had listened to the scriptures together during the liturgy. Lectio divina had been a ruminative, unanxious, and even enjoyable method of appropriating the truths of religion. But the new emphasis on the individual made Luther so obsessed with his own spiritual performance that he had become mired in the ego that he was supposed to transcend. None of the medieval rites and practices could touch what he called the tristitia (“sorrow”) that filled him with an acute terror of death and a conviction of abject impotence. 26 In addition, he had expressed the yearning for absolute certainty that would also characterize religion in the modern period. Luther found salvation in the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Human beings could not save themselves by performing meritorious deeds and rituals; if we had faith, Christ would clothe us in his own righteousness. Our good deeds were, therefore, the result rather than the cause of God’s favor. This was not an original idea; it was already a perfectly respectable Catholic position. 27 But while he was studying Paul’s letter to the Romans, it broke upon Luther with the overwhelming power of a new revelation when he came across the words: “The just man lives by faith.” 28 They “made me feel as though I had been born again, and as though I had entered through the open gates of paradise itself,” he would recall later. 29 The precise conclusion that Luther drew from this one sentence would probably have surprised Paul, but it spoke to the unconscious needs of a generation that found traditional practices empty and unproductive. 30 The profound societal changes of early modernity caused many to feel disoriented and lost. Living in medias res, they could not see the direction that their society was taking but experienced its slow transformation in isolated, incoherent ways. As the old mythology that had given structure and significance to their ancestors crumbled in this new situation, many seem to have experienced the sense of powerlessness that had afflicted Luther. Before their own conversions to fresh religious vision, Zwingli and Calvin had also experienced a paralyzing helplessness before the trials of human existence and were convinced that they could contribute nothing toward their own salvation. Consequently, all the reformers emphasized the unqualified divine sovereignty that would not only characterize the modern God but also help to shape the Scientific Revolution. 31 The emphasis on God’s absolute power meant that God alone could change the course of events, so human beings, who were essentially impotent, must rely on his unconditional might.

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

  The extent to which Eva is inundated by sexually aggressive and inappropriate circumstances, especially to the point that they seem almost monolithic, is also evident in other instances. Beyond her early violation with a "dirty popsicle stick" and later rape by Tyrone, even Eva's cousin Alfonso is relentless in his solicitation of sex that ranges from wanting to "feel her up" to a desire to actually "get her started." Even blood ties or familial relations do not protect her from male sexual aggression. While she runs away, escaping Alfonso, her interactions with Moses Tripp-whom she meets at a bar and stabs in the hand in selfdefense from sexual violation-make evident her subsequent refusals to tolerate inappropriate sexual advances. Because she does not delineate to the authorities what circumstances led to her committing the crime, she, at age seventeen, serves time in prison, where, ironically, she meets and later marries her husband, James Hunn: a fifty-two-year-old man whose initial gestures of "tenderness" toward her later evolve into masculine power and domination. The incident with Moses Tripp foreshadows what happens with Davis Carter, whom she later meets at a bar and "shacks up" with briefly, before killing him with poison and then castrating him. And while she never explicates what exactly led to her horrendous crime-his confining her to his apartment, her discovery that he is married, and/or his sexual dehumanization of her-what does become evident is that Davis embodies the cumulative sexualized aggression and male sexual hegemony that she has experienced throughout her lifetime. "`You know what I think,"' the psychiatrist asserts to Eva during a session, "`I think [Davis] came to represent all the men you'd known in your life"' (81).

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

  This speaks to the larger issues governing black women's sexuality, especially when read within the context of the sociopolitical juncture in which Walker's novel was produced: during the black nationalist era when women were encouraged to "make babies for the revolution"; during the feminist movement when women fought the tyranny of patriarchal and gender oppression; and, even more fittingly in this instance, during the sexual revolution, with its expressed interest in sexual liberation. In this scene reverberates my previous discussion of blacks and the sexual revolution, particularly had it bypassed blacks. Walker demonstrates the deleterious effects of an entrenched communal silence, coupled with a racialized Victorian disposition, that contributes to a lack of sexual knowledge and preventive measures that result in unwanted/compulsory pregnancy-the reproductive consequence of sex. This sensibility and the devastating effects are literalized in the novel by the sexual casualities, the overwhelming number of female characters (Meridian, Nelda, Wile Child, Fast Mary, among others) who have sex and, consequently, end up pregnant (with stunted lives, literally, since two of these characters die). This also reflects black women's exigencies of the time, as evidenced in the larger treatment of black female sexuality and black sexual politics in black general-interest periodicals. In 1976, the same year as the publication of Meridian, Essence magazine featured a monthly question-and-answer column entitled "Your Sexual Health." Joanne H.Tyson, the then codirector of the Institute for Marriage Enrichment and Sexual Studies, responded to the personal, often detailed and explicit questions on topics ranging from birth control pills usage and mishaps, sexual arousal, orgasms, oral sex, and sexually transmitted diseases to pregnancy prevention and the existence of home brews to terminate an unwanted pregnancy to avoid a medical abortion. Alongside such discussions, in the July 1976 issue, an excerpt of Alice Walker's Meridian appeared (see Figure 3.1), accompanied by an epigraphic quote: "She had been spasmodic with fear," it read. "Fear because sex was always fraught with ugly consequences for her, and fear because if she did not make out with him she might lose him, and if she did make love with him he might lose interest."23

• From The Case for God (2009)

  21 But the meteoric explosion of this type of faith indicated widespread unhappiness with the modern rational ethos. It developed at a time when people were beginning to have doubts about science and technology, which had shown their lethal potential during the Great War. Pentecostalists were also reacting against the more conservative Christians who were trying to make their Biblebased religion entirely reasonable and scientific. As A. C. Dixon, one of the founding fathers of Protestant fundamentalism, explained in 1920, “I am a Christian because I am a Thinker, a Rationalist, a Scientist.” His faith depended upon “exact observation and correct thinking.” Doctrines were not theological speculations but facts. 22 Evangelical Christians still aspired to the early modern ideal of absolute certainty based on scientific verification. Yet fundamentalists would also see their faith experiences— born-again conversions, faith healing, and strongly felt emotional conviction—as positive verification of their beliefs. Dixon’s almost defiant rationalism indicates, perhaps, a hidden fear. With the Great War, an element of terror had entered conservative Protestantism in the United States. Many believed that the catastrophic encounters at the Somme and Passchendaele were the battles that, according to scripture, would usher in the Last Days; many Christians were now convinced that they were on the front line of an apocalyptic war against Satan. The wild propaganda stories of German atrocities seemed proof positive that they had been right to fight the nation that had spawned the Higher Criticism. 23 But they were equally mistrustful of democracy, which carried overtones of the “mob rule” and “red republic” that had erupted in the atheistic Bolshevik revolution (1917). 24 These American Christians no longer saw Jesus as a loving savior; rather, as the leading conservative Isaac M. Haldeman proclaimed, the Christ of Revelation “comes forth as one who no longer seeks either friendship or love. … He descends that he may shed the blood of men.” 25 Every single fundamentalist movement that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is rooted in profound fear. 26 For Dixon and his conservative Protestant colleagues, who were about to establish the first fundamentalist movement of modern times, it was a religious variation of the widespread malaise that followed the Great War, and it made them distort the tradition they were trying to defend. They were ready for a fight, but the conflict might have remained in their own troubled minds had not the more liberal Protestants chosen this moment to launch an offensive against them. The liberals were appalled by the apocalyptic fantasies of the conservatives. But instead of criticizing them on biblical and doctrinal grounds, they hit quite unjustifiably below the belt. Their assault reflected the acute anxieties of the postwar period and, at this time of national trauma, was calculated to elicit outrage, fury, and a determination to retaliate. Fundamentalism—be it Jewish, Christian, or Muslim—nearly always begins as a defensive movement; it is usually a response to a campaign of coreligionists or fellow countrymen that is experienced as inimical and invasive.

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

  ©2004 The Teaching Company. 54 D. In this lecture and the three that follow, we will consider the persecution of Christians throughout the empire during the first three centuries. E. We have numerous accounts of Christian persecution, some by Christian authors who celebrated the torture and martyrdom of the faithful as signs of divine favor, others by Roman authors who considered the Christians’ refusal to give up their religion in the face of torture and death to be reprehensible and idiotic. II. We can begin our reflections by considering one of the most graphic and significant firsthand reports of a significant persecution against Christians, which occurred in the towns of Vienne and Lyons in Gaul (modern-day France) in the middle of the second century. A. The account is preserved for us in a letter written by the Christians who survived the persecution to Christians in Asia Minor and preserved for us in the writings of the fourth-century church historian Eusebius. B. The account indicates that the driving force behind the persecution was the devil, who inspired the mobs to oppose Christians and deprive them of public privileges and civil rights. C. The anger of the mobs against the Christians increased, and they physically assaulted the Christians and finally urged the authorities to have those professing faith in Christ to be arrested. D. The general unacceptability of the Christians was heightened by the claims of some of their slaves that Christians engaged in highly immoral and illegal activities, including cannibalistic practices and incestuous orgies. E. We then have an account of the arrest, trials, torture, and martyrdom of several Christians, including a church leader named Sanctus and a woman named Blandina. 1. The narrative provides graphic details of the public torments that these Christians endured (beatings, floggings, the rack, the iron seat). 2. It also stresses their absolute refusal to abandon their Christian faith, despite such horrible suffering. 3. Eventually, these Christians were put to death by being thrown to wild beasts; their bodies were left on display as an