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.

Page 265 of 529 · 20 per page

• 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)

  In his landmark book Milestones , we see the paranoid vision of the fundamentalist who has been pushed too far: Jews, Christians, communists, capitalists, and imperialists were all in league against Islam. Muslims had a duty to fight against the barbarism ( jahiliyyah ) of their day, starting with so-called Muslim rulers like Nasser. This was an entirely new idea. In making jihad , understood as armed conflict, central to the Islamic vision, Qutb had distorted the faith that he was trying to defend. He was not the first to do so; he had been influenced by the writings of the Pakistani journalist and politician Abu Ala Mawdudi (1903–79), who feared the effects of Western imperialism in the Muslim world. 11 In order to survive, Mawdudi believed, Muslims must be prepared for revolutionary struggle. This jihad could take many forms: some would fight with the pen, others would engage in politics, but in the last resort every able-bodied Muslim must be prepared for war. No major Muslim thinker had ever made “holy war” a central tenet of the faith before; Mawdudi was well aware that he was making a highly controversial claim but was convinced that this radical innovation was justified by the present political emergency. Qutb took the same view: when asked how he could reconcile his hard line with the emphatic warning in the Qur’an that there must be no compulsion in matters of religion, 12 he explained that Qur’anic tolerance was impossible when Muslims were subjected to such violence and cruelty. There could be toleration only after the political victory of Islam and the establishment of a truly Muslim ummah. 13 This jihadi ideology was not returning to the “fundamental” ideas of Islam, even though Qutb in particular based his revolutionary program on a distorted version of the life of Muhammad. He was preaching an Islamic liberation theology similar to that adopted by Catholics fighting brutal regimes in Latin America. Because God alone was sovereign, no Muslim was obliged to obey any ruler who contravened the Qur’anic demand for justice and equity. In rather the same way, when the revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–89) declared that only a faqih , a cleric versed in Islamic jurisprudence, should be head of state, he was breaking with centuries of Shiite tradition, which since the eighth century had separated religion and politics as a matter of sacred principle. It was as shocking to some Shiite sensibilities as if the pope should abolish the Mass. But after decades of secularism as interpreted by the shahs, Khomeini believed that this was the only possible way forward. Khomeini also preached a modern third-world theology of liberation. Islam, he declared, was “the religion of militant individuals who are committed to freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism.” 14 Many forms of what we call “fundamentalism” should be seen as essentially political discourse—a religiously articulated form of nationalism or ethnicity.

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

  Naw, he didn't slap me, he didn't slap me, he pulled my dress up and got between my legs. "Think I can't do nothing. Fuck you like a damn whore." Naw, I'm not lying. He said, "Act like a whore, I'll fuck you like a whore." Naw, I'm not lying. I squeezed my legs around his neck.' (original emphasis) This scene makes conspicuous the degree to which interpretability and coherence are suspended. Not only does this occur because of the questionable nature of Eva's recollection, wherein she asserts one version before digressing into another scenario, but also because of the degree to which the scene itself, in both words and actions, resembles Eva's account of other occurrences that cross time and circumstance. Reverberating in this scene, then, is another exchange that Eva witnesses several years prior, at age twelve, between her parents, when a relatively similar scenario unfolds. Eva's father, John, arrives home from work to find his wife, Marie, with her lover, Tyrone, who is ten years her junior. Eva recalls the encounter, particularly how her parents "dealt" with it, as she listens outside the confines of her parents' closed bedroom door: [I]t was like I could hear her clothes ripping. [... N]ow he was tearing that blouse off and those underthings. I didn't hear nothing from her the whole time. [...] "Act like a whore, I'm gonna fuck you like a whore. You act like a whore, I'm gonna fuck you like a whore." He kept saying that over and over. I was so scared. I kept feeling that after he tore all her clothes off, and there wasn't any more to tear, he'd start tearing her flesh. (37) The questionable nature of the narrative, based on Eva's recollections, confounds as much, if not more, than it reveals. The occurrences are imprecise, whether a reflection of the inaccuracy of memory, madness, or an otherwise deliberate obstinacy, as evidenced by the subjective nature of her language. Phrases such as "it was like" and "I kept feeling that," lack authority, concreteness, and definitiveness to the extent that the account is unsubstantiated and, indeed, nebulous. Moreover, they are characterized by relativity ("it was like") versus a delineation of what it actually was, and are described based on the visceral ("I kept feeling that") rather than the rational.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Me sacude. —Quieres tener sexo, entonces ve a conseguirlo en otro lugar. Inhalo y me giro para alejarme de él, empujando su cuerpo. Está en lo correcto. ¿Qué estoy haciendo? ¿Por qué habría de hacer eso? Me siento tan estúpida y me agacho, recogiendo rápidamente mi camiseta y mis zapatos. Pero no me lo estaba imaginando, ¿verdad? Hubo algo entre nosotros y venía tanto de él como de mí. ¿Solo vi lo que quería ver? Quiero gritar. Lágrimas bajan por mi rostro y simplemente se queda ahí parado, fulminándome con la mirada. —Ve a tu habitación —ordena. Se me sale una risa, el sonido es amargo goteando con incredulidad. —¡Vete a la mierda! —Me enderezo, endureciendo mi voz—. Esta noche encontraré otra cama, gracias. Cualquiera lo haría con una puta como yo, ¿verdad? Me giro rápidamente y corro hacia la puerta trasera, pero agarra el interior de mi codo y me arrastra hacia la pared de su pecho. Dejo caer mi camiseta y mis zapatos y nos obliga a movernos hacia adelante contra la pared de la casa. Estiro mis manos rápidamente, chocando contra el revestimiento. Jesús. Tiemblo, respirando entrecortadamente mientras mi corazón se acelera y mi sangre corre caliente bajo mi piel. ¿Qué demo...? Su mano me rodea, tomando mi rostro y su aliento caliente en mi oreja. —No me amenaces con una mierda como esa. Si quieres actuar como una mocosa, entonces tal vez debería castigarte como una, ¿eh? Casi me río a través de las lágrimas secándose en mi rostro. —Por supuesto —me burlo—. Me muero por ver cómo intentas controlarme. Ni siquiera puedes hacer que Cole haga sus quehaceres y ¿cuándo fue la última vez que una mujer consiguió excitarse en tu cama? Ni siquiera eres un hombre. Gruñe y su palma choca contra la casa frente a mí. Salto. Y lo siguiente que sé es que su mano está en mi cabello y mi cabeza está siendo girada hacia el costado mientras sus labios se estrellan contra los míos.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Abro la puerta de un tirón y entro, lanzándole una mirada dura mientras todavía está sentado en el auto. —Vete a casa. Y cierro la puerta de nuevo, girando la cerradura y retrocediendo como si fuera a intentar derribarla. Me quedo allí, respirando con dificultad y temblando. No permitirá que eso pase. No hará nada esta noche, porque hubiera salido del auto más rápido de lo que yo hubiera podido llegar a la puerta del bar si fuera a intentarlo, pero estará lo suficientemente enojado como para no olvidarlo. Fue un error de seis meses que cometí en la escuela secundaria, pero no volveré a ser tan estúpida. Mi guardia está arriba ahora. Y no vino a llevarme a casa esta noche. No directamente, de todos modos. Tal vez después de haber terminado conmigo. Cierro los ojos, tratando de ahogar el recuerdo de él golpeando la ventana de mi auto una noche mientras yo trataba frenéticamente de poner la llave en el contacto. Todavía puedo sentir el fuego en mi cuero cabelludo donde jaló mi cabello. Me doy la vuelta y abro los ojos, alejando los pensamientos. Después de un momento, escucho el rugido del motor más allá de la barra y los neumáticos chirriando por la calle. Se ha ido. Pongo mi bolso en la barra y corro por el pasillo, deslizándome por los baños, revisando las cerraduras de la puerta trasera, abriéndola y volviendo a cerrarla, tirando del mango para asegurarme que no abre, y luego vuelvo a correr al frente y reviso la puerta de entrada nuevamente y las ventanas. Sacando el teléfono de mi bolso, me siento en un taburete de la barra, agarrándolo con mi puño. ¿A quién llamo? Probablemente Jay esté diciendo la verdad. Cole está borracho de nuevo. ¿Por qué haría eso? Sabía que estaba contando con él para que me buscara. Estoy segura que no sabe que Jay fue quien vino en su lugar, pero aun así... podría malditamente matarlo. Trago el dolor que sube por mi garganta. Llamo a mi hermana, pero como siempre, va al correo de voz. Probablemente ya está saliendo del trabajo o está en casa durmiendo. ¿Mi papá? ¿Madrastra?

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  “By this time I was so affected by this inward involution of sentiments, so softened by this sight, that now, betrayed into a sudden transition from extreme fears to extreme desires, I found these last so strong upon me, the heat of the weather too perhaps conspiring to exalt their rage, that nature almost fainted under them. Not that I so much as knew precisely what was wanting to me: my only thought was, that so sweet a creature, as this youth seemed to me, could only make me happy; but then, the little likelihood there was of compassing an acquaintance with him, or perhaps of ever seeing him again, dashed my desires, and turned them into torments. I was still gazing, with all the powers of my sight, on this bewitching object, when, in an instant, down he went. I had heard of such things as a cramp seizing on even the best swimmers, and occasioning their being drowned; and imagining this so sudden eclipse to be owing to it, the inconceivable fondness this unknown lad had given birth to, distracted me with the most killing terrors; insomuch, that my concern giving the wings, I flew to the door, opened it, ran down to the canal, guided thither by the madness of my fears for him, and the intense desire of being an instrument to save him, though I was ignorant how, or by what means to effect it: but was it for fears, and a passion so sudden as mine, to reason! All this took up scarce the space of a few moments. I had then just life enough to reach the green borders of the waterpiece, where wildly looking round for the young man, and missing him still, my fright and concern sunk me down in a deep swoon, which must have lasted me some time; for I did not come to myself, till I was roused out of it by a sense of pain that pierced me to the vitals, and awaked me to the the most surprising circumstance of finding myself not only in the arms of this very young gentleman I had been so solicitous to save; but taken at such an advantage in my unresisting condition, that he had actually completed his entrance into me so far, that weakened as I was by all the preceding conflicts of mind I had suffered, and struck dumb by the violence of my surprise, I had neither the power to cry out, nor the strength to disengage myself from his strenuous embraces, before, urging his point, he had forced his way and completely triumphed over my virginity, as he might now as well see by the streams of blood that followed his drawing out, as he had felt by the difficulties he had met with consummating his penetration. But the sight of the blood, and the sense of my condition, had (as he told me afterwards), since the ungovernable rage of his passion was somewhat appeased, now wrought so far on him, that at all risks, even of the worst consequences, he could not find in his heart to leave me, and make off, which he might easily have done. I still lay all discomposed in bleeding ruin, palpitating, speechless, unable to get off, and frightened, and fluttering like a poor wounded partridge, and ready to faint away again at the sense of what had befallen me. The young gentleman was by me, kneeling, kissing my hand, and with tears in his eyes, beseeching me to forgive him, and offering all the reparation in his power. It is certain that could I, at the instant of regaining my senses, have called out, or taken the bloodiest revenge, I would not be stuck at it; the violation was attended too with such aggravating circumstances, though he was ignorant of them, since it was to my concern for the preservation of his life, that I owed my ruin.

• From Educated (2018)

  If all went well, the car would be impaled on the spike and gasoline would gush from the tank, streaming down the spike and into the flat-bottom container Dad had welded in place to collect it. By noon, they had drained somewhere between thirty and forty cars. Luke had collected the fuel in five-gallon buckets, which he began to haul across the yard to Dad’s flatbed. On one pass he stumbled, drenching his jeans in a gallon of gas. The summer sun dried the denim in a matter of minutes. He finished hauling the buckets, then went home for lunch. I remember that lunch with unsettling clarity. I remember the clammy smell of beef-and-potato casserole, and the jingle of ice cubes tumbling into tall glasses, which sweated in the summer heat. I remember Mother telling me I was on dish duty, because she was leaving for Utah after lunch to consult for another midwife on a complicated pregnancy. She said she might not make it home for dinner but there was hamburger in the freezer. I remember laughing the whole hour. Dad lay on the kitchen floor cracking jokes about an ordinance that had recently passed in our little farming village. A stray dog had bitten a boy and everyone was up in arms. The mayor had decided to limit dog ownership to two dogs per family, even though the attacking dog hadn’t belonged to anybody at all. “These genius socialists,” Dad said. “They’d drown staring up at the rain if you didn’t build a roof over them.” I laughed so hard at that my stomach ached. Luke had forgotten all about the gasoline by the time he and Dad walked back up the mountain and readied the cutting torch, but when he jammed the torch into his hip and struck flint to steel, flames burst from the tiny spark and engulfed his leg. The part we would remember, would tell and retell so many times it became family folklore, was that Luke was unable to get out of his gasoline-soaked jeans. That morning, like every morning, he had hitched up his trousers with a yard of baling twine, which is smooth and slippery, and needs a horseman’s knot to stay in place. His footwear didn’t help, either: bulbous steel-toed boots so tattered that for weeks he’d been duct-taping them on each morning, then cutting them off each night with his pocketknife. Luke might have severed the twine and hacked through the boots in a matter of seconds, but he went mad with panic and took off, dashing like a marked buck, spreading fire through the sagebrush and wheat grass, which were baked and brittle from the parched summer. —I’D STACKED THE DIRTY dishes and was filling the kitchen sink when I heard it—a shrill, strangled cry that began in one key and ended in another. There was no question it was human. I’d never heard an animal bellow like that, with such fluctuations in tone and pitch.

• From Educated (2018)

  The nights they went out, I was grateful. One night, he came home late and in a strange mood. Everyone was asleep except me, and I was on the sofa, reading a chapter of scripture before bed. Shawn plopped down next to me. “Get me a glass of water.” “You break your leg?” I said. “Get it, or I won’t drive you to town tomorrow.” I fetched the water. As I handed it over, I saw the smile on his face and without thinking dumped the whole thing on his head. I made it down the hall and was nearly to my room when he caught me. “Apologize,” he said. Water dripped from his nose onto his T-shirt. “No.” He grabbed a fistful of my hair, a large clump, his grip fixed near the root to give him greater leverage, and dragged me into the bathroom. I groped at the door, catching hold of the frame, but he lifted me off the ground, flattened my arms against my body, then dropped my head into the toilet. “Apologize,” he said again. I said nothing. He stuck my head in further, so my nose scraped the stained porcelain. I closed my eyes, but the smell wouldn’t let me forget where I was. I tried to imagine something else, something that would take me out of myself, but the image that came to mind was of Sadie, crouching, compliant. It pumped me full of bile. He held me there, my nose touching the bowl, for perhaps a minute, then he let me up. The tips of my hair were wet; my scalp was raw. I thought it was over. I’d begun to back away when he seized my wrist and folded it, curling my fingers and palm into a spiral. He continued folding until my body began to coil, then he added more pressure, so that without thinking, without realizing, I twisted myself into a dramatic bow, my back bent, my head nearly touching the floor, my arm behind my back. In the parking lot, when Shawn had shown me this hold, I’d moved only a little, responding more to his description than to any physical necessity. It hadn’t seemed particularly effective at the time, but now I understood the maneuver for what it was: control. I could scarcely move, scarcely breathe, without breaking my own wrist. Shawn held me in position with one hand; the other he dangled loosely at his side, to show me how easy it was. Still harder than if I were Sadie, I thought. As if he could read my mind, he twisted my wrist further; my body was coiled tightly, my face scraping the floor. I’d done all I could do to relieve the pressure in my wrist. If he kept twisting, it would break. “Apologize,” he said. There was a long moment in which fire burned up my arm and into my brain. “I’m sorry,” I said.

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

  Well, what was the suffering that they were experiencing, and who was causing it? It appears that the persecution being discussed in this book started out at the grass-roots level, among friends and neighbors opposed to those who converted to Christianity. This is a phenomenon that we have seen earlier, where it appears that most persecutions were not started by imperial authorities but by the masses. Why would the masses be upset about Christians being Christian? We get some indication here in this book, chapter 4, verses 3 and following: You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do [says the author], living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousings, and lawless idolatry. They are surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation, and so they blaspheme, but they will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. Why were these people being persecuted? Because they used to carouse with their friends and neighbors, and they weren’t doing so any more. Their friends and neighbors were upset about this. They wondered why these people had “gotten religion,” you might say. They were upset about that, and that was starting the ball rolling toward some kind of persecution. The readers were urged to give their persecutors no grounds for opposition. They were, instead, to be ready to give a reasoned defense, an apologia, for their beliefs, and so, chapter 3, verses 14 and following: Even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts, sanctify Christ as word. Always be ready to make your defense, your apologia. Make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness, and with reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ shall be put to shame. 216 People were, then, to defend themselves, to give reasoned defense as to why they believed what they believed. If they suffered, well and good. That was in imitation of Christ, and that would not last long, because Christ was soon to return to vindicate himself and his people. It is therefore possible that the book of 1 Peter could be understood as an early Christian apology, one of the earliest that we have, written sometime during the first century, possibly by Peter, or possibly in his name by somebody who revered Peter’s stature within the Christian community.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 18 3/23/2011 TOMORROW YOUR BEDROOM SAFE SEX EDUCATION NOT Sex Rites Confiscation 1:39:48 PAUL (VO) (CONT’D) So it was a high, high tension debate. 1:39:56 GUY (VO/ON) Since I did sit on the corner for twenty-eight years, I just saw the progression of people. You know, it’s so scary just to-- All of a sudden, you know, they’d be walking down the street, and the next time you see them, they would be walking with a cane, or they’d be in wheelchair. And that was devastating to-- Oh, I remember him. 1:40:26 DANIEL (VO/ON) Here is the gay community, which, for better or for worse, is very concerned with appearances, and here comes this disease that manifests itself and destroys your physical appearance. It’s the first thing it does, whether it’s KS or wasting. I mean, people were just losing uh, many, many pounds, and people-- It looked-- People-- It looked like, you know, we were living in a concentration camp. I mean, people were just losing so much weight in their faces and their bodies, you know, a third of their body weight very, very quickly, mysteriously. They didn’t know what was, you know, what part of the disease was causing it. Um, so it was these very physical manifestations that were horrifying to people, and were very scary to people. And if you, especially if you had AIDS, and then you saw somebody who was much worse off than you, you almost had to turn away. It was just- it was too scary. I was losing all the fat in my face and my butt and everywhere, and I would walk by a store window and see myself in the window and just jump. It’s like, who is that? Um, and I remember my mother saying, couldn’t you stand on your head and make some of the f- stuff f- flow down to your face? (laughs) You’ve got nothing in your-- You know, you’re just- you’re skin and bones. 1:41:54 ED (VO/ON) The AIDS epidemic allowed me to move into the community in a very powerful way. And, in fact, in many ways, I began to thrive, because it was like being in the

• 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

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  In addition to this inscription, the University of Michigan excavations found bits and pieces of the gate’s iconographic and epigraphic scheme. This included scenes from Augustus’s defeat of the hostile Pisidians (similar in many ways to the friezes at Aphrodisias), his birth sign, Capricorn, and those many small fragments from the Latin text of the Acts of the Divine Augustus seen earlier in the Yalvaç Museum. The colony of Pisidian Antioch was initially and primarily settled by Romans, as the names in the predominantly Latin inscriptions make clear, but there were surely intermarriages, and local Celts and Pisidians as well as nearby Isaurians and Lycians who had been conscripted into legionary or auxiliary service also retired in Antioch and the other Galatian colonies. They were consolidated with Romans into a single city, which served as a nodal point to collect and transmit taxes as well as to stabilize and pacify the region. The imperial cult was not restricted to these three urban sites or limited to the time of Augustus. It spread across Galatia and intensified in subsequent decades. It covered that very large province with extraordinary speed. In the north, right after Paphlagonia’s annexation to Galatia in 6/5 B.C.E., those inhabitants took an oath to the divine Augustus, according to an inscription found in 1900 by Franz Cumont and dating to 3 B.C.E. The nearly 6-foot stele, broken in two by late antiquity, stood near ancient Phazimon on the main highway from Ancyra toward the Black Sea. Sworn by all the people of the region, local or Roman, in cities and countryside, at “the command of Caesar Augustus, the son of god,” the covenant reads, I swear by Zeus, the Earth, the Sun, and by all the gods and goddesses including Augustus himself, to be favorable to Caesar Augustus, his sons and his descendants forever, in speech, in actions, and in thoughts, considering as friends those he considers so, and regarding as enemies those he judges so, and to defend their interests I will spare neither body, nor soul, nor life, nor my children…. Later the text specifies that those who break the covenant’s stipulations will suffer with their “body, soul, and life.” Treason against the emperor was a capital crime. The text further says that the oath could be sworn at any number of the local center’s Sebasteia and their altars to Augustus, or at the nearby city formerly called Phazimon but now renamed Neapolis and, even later, Neoclaudiopolis, the “New City of Claudius.” Only three years after its incorporation into the Galatian province, the area was filled with imperial cult sites.

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

  I couldn’t imagine him chatting up cannibals in New Guinea, or scouring Anasazi campsites with a toothbrush, sifting through goat dung for pottery shards. But these, he said, were merely his daytime drudgeries. On weekends he was following his heart, selling shoes. “No!” I said. “Adidas,” he said. “Screw Adidas,” I said, “you should work for me, help me sell these new Japanese running shoes.” I handed him a Tiger flat, told him about my trip to Japan, my meeting with Onitsuka. He bent the shoe, examined the sole. Pretty cool, he said. He was intrigued, but no. “I’m getting married,” he said. “Not sure I can take on a new venture right now.” I didn’t take his rejection to heart. It was the first time I’d heard the word “no” in months. LIFE WAS GOOD. Life was grand. I even had a sort of girlfriend, though I didn’t have much time for her. I was happy, maybe as happy as I’d ever been, and happiness can be dangerous. It dulls the senses. Thus, I wasn’t prepared for that dreadful letter. It was from a high school wrestling coach in some benighted town back east, some little burg on Long Island called Valley Stream or Massapequa or Manhasset. I had to read it twice before I understood. The coach claimed that he was just back from Japan, where he’d met with top executives at Onitsuka, who’d anointed him their exclusive American distributor. Since he’d heard that I was selling Tigers, I was therefore poaching, and he ordered me—ordered me!—to stop. Heart pounding, I phoned my cousin, Doug Houser. He’d graduated from Stanford Law School and was now working at a respected firm in town. I asked him to look into this Mr. Manhasset, find out what he could, then back the guy off with a letter. “Saying what, exactly?” Cousin Houser asked. “That any attempt to interfere with Blue Ribbon will be met with swift legal reprisal,” I said. My “business” was two months old and I was embroiled in a legal battle? Served me right for daring to call myself happy. Next I sat down and dashed off a frantic letter to Onitsuka. Dear Sirs, I was very distressed to receive a letter this morning from a man in Manhasset, New York, who claims...?

• From The Case for God (2009)

  It was experienced most acutely in the sexual act, when our reasoning powers are swamped by passion, God is forgotten, and creatures revel shamelessly in one another. The specter of reason dragged down by the chaos of lawless sensation reflected the tragedy of Rome, source of order, law, and civilization, brought low by the barbarian tribes. Jewish exegetes had never seen the sin of Adam in this catastrophic light, and the Greek Christians, who were not affected by the barbarian scourge, have never accepted the doctrine of Original Sin. Born in grief and fear, this doctrine has left Western Christians with a difficult legacy that linked sexuality indissolubly with sin and helped to alienate men and women from their humanity. Even though the Greeks found his interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve far too literal, Augustine was no die-hard biblical literalist. He took science very seriously, and his “principle of accommodation” would dominate biblical interpretation in the West until well into the early modern period. God had, as it were, adapted revelation to the cultural norms of the people who had first received it. 62 One of the psalms, for example, clearly reflects the ancient view, long outmoded by Augustine’s time, that there was a body of water above the earth that caused rainfall. 63 It would be absurd to interpret this text literally. God had simply accommodated the truths of revelation to the science of the day so that the people of Israel could understand it; today a text like this must be interpreted differently. Whenever the literal meaning of scripture clashed with reliable scientific information, Augustine insisted, the interpreter must respect the integrity of science or he would bring scripture into disrepute. 64 And there must be no unseemly quarreling about the Bible. People who engaged in acrimonious discussion of religious truth were simply in love with their own opinions and had forgotten the cardinal teaching of the Bible, which was the love of God and neighbor. 65 The exegete must not leave a text until he could make it “establish the reign of charity,” and if a literal understanding of any biblical passage seemed to teach hatred, the text must be interpreted allegorically and forced to preach love. 66 Augustine had absorbed the underlying spirit of Greek apophatic theology, but the West did not develop a fully fledged spirituality of silence until the ninth century, when the writings of an unknown Greek author were translated into Latin and achieved near-canonical status in Europe. He used the pseudonym Denys the Areopagite, Saint Paul’s first Athenian convert, 67 but he was almost certainly writing toward the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth centuries.

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

  ©2004 The Teaching Company. 11 II. The vast majority of persons living in the Roman Empire were pagan, that is, polytheists who adhered to various local and state religions, or cults (“forms of worship”). A. The belief in many gods was seen as natural and obvious. 1. These included the “great gods,” known to us through ancient Greek and Roman mythology (Zeus, Apollo, Hera, and Aphrodite and their Roman equivalents). 2. They also included local gods who protected and cared for cities, towns, and villages; even less powerful gods who were localized in forests, rivers, and roads; and family gods who cared for the home. 3. The gods oversaw every human function and activity, including the crops, the cupboard, the hearth, personal health, childbirth, war, love, and most everything else. 4. The divine realm was seen, therefore, as a kind of pyramidal hierarchy, with the few great gods near the top and the less powerful but more immediately relevant gods near the bottom. B. Religion was not a matter of securing an afterlife but of honoring the gods who could protect and assist mortals in need. 1. The “fear of the gods” was a motivating factor in ancient religion. 2. These religions sought, therefore, the “peace of the gods” (pax deorum). C. The gods were worshipped principally through acts of prayer and, especially, sacrifice. 1. For the most part, this was a periodic affair, not a matter of constant devotion. 2. As a result, ethics was not, for the most part, a feature of these religions. 3. Nor, surprisingly enough for modern people, was correct doctrine central to these religious. There was no such thing as orthodoxy or heresy, right belief or wrong belief, in these religions. D. As a partial result, most of these religions were completely tolerant of one another (because there was no sense that only one of them could be “true”). 1. The state gods were expected to be worshipped by all. That only made sense, because these gods had made the state great.

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

  This is principally because the story is told in a way to emphasize the similarities of Polycarp’s death to the death of Jesus in many of its details. For example, Polycarp predicts his death, he is betrayed by one of his own, the officer opposed to him is named Herod, he rides into town ona donkey, and so on. C. Still, there is a historical kernel to this intriguing account, and it can be used to help us understand a bit more about why and how non-Christians opposed the followers of Christ in the early centuries of the church. 1. Zs The account stresses that others were tortured to death before Polycarp. It then goes on to detail the burning desire of the pagan crowds to have the leader of the Christians arrested and put on trial. The arresting officials try to persuade Polycarp to acknowledge the divinity of the Roman gods, but he refuses. When brought into the arena before the Roman proconsul, Polycarp is again urged to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor and to reject the “atheists” (that is, the Christians, who are “atheists” in that they do not accept the worship of the gods). When Polycarp steadfastly refuses, the proconsul urges him to persuade the masses. But Polycarp remains firm, despite threats of torture, because, as he says, the brief sufferings awaiting him pale in comparison with the eternal torments reserved for those who reject Christ. The crowds are incensed and urge his death. Polycarp is then burned at the stake. The narrator indicates that before his 179 death, God worked miracles to demonstrate the truth of the gospel and to validate Polycarp as a true witness to it. III. This account helps to illustrate several important historical facts about why the early Christians were persecuted. 180 A. The religion was not understood to be illegal per se. Polycarp could have been spared had he simply recanted (unlike other crimes, for which expressing regret does not relieve one from punishment). B. Persecutions occurred because the pagan mobs opposed the Christians. 1. Their opposition appears to be rooted in a fear of what the gods would do to communities that harbored their opponents (see 12:2). This coincides with other evidence from early sources, including the famous lines from the Christian apologist (“defender of the faith’) Tertullian: “They [the pagans] think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, ‘Away with the Christians to the lion!*” (Apology 40). This position makes considerable sense when one remembers that pagans saw the gods as their helpers and defenders against disaster; in exchange for their protection, the gods were to be worshipped in proper ways.

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

  Eusebius is an important source for most of our information about the first three centuries. He was writing soon after the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, and Eusebius gives an account of Christianity up to his own day. One of the things most valuable about Eusebius is that he would sometimes quote documents, letters, and reports in his history of early Christianity. He wrote a ten-volume history of the early church. This letter, then, the letter from the churches of Lyons and Vienne is incorporated into his account totally, so that we can extract it, and see what these second- century Christians were saying, even though the writing, now, is preserved in a fourth-century source. The account of the persecution of the Christians in Lyons and Vienne begins by indicating that the driving force behind the persecution was none other than the devil, who inspired the mobs to oppose Christians, and to deprive them of their public privileges and civil rights. Let me read just the very beginning of this letter, so you get a bit of a sense of how it works. It begins by saying: “The servants of Christ at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to our brothers in Asia and Phrygia. The severity of our trials here, the unbridled fury of the heathen against God’s people, the untold sufferings of the blessed martyrs, we are incapable of describing in detail. Indeed, no pen could do them justice,” they say. “The adversary swooped upon us with all his might, giving us, now, foretaste of his advent, which, undoubtedly is imminent.” This is referring to the devil, who has started this persecution against the Christians, and according to these authors, this is showing that they are living at the end of time. Remember, in apocalyptic thought, Jews and Christians who were apocalypticists maintained that the world had been given over to evil forces who were going to increase in power until the end of this age, when literally, all hell would break out, before God would intervene to overthrow the forces of evil. These Christians living in Lyons and Vienne were sensing that this persecution that had happened was a sign that the end was near, so that the devil was pulling out all stops now, and that was an indication that his own demise was imminent. They went on to indicate the devil had left no stone unturned in his efforts to gain adherents, and to equip them to attack the servants of God. Then, they went on to tell exactly what happened in the cities against the Christians: “We were debarred from houses, baths, and the forum. They actually forbade any of us to be seen in any place whatsoever,” meaning that the local pagan townspeople forbade Christians to appear in public. “These charged into the fight, standing up to every kind of abuse [They are referring now to the Christians who were being persecuted] and 168