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 59 of 529 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Münster now became the focus of millenarian hopes, and Anabaptists started to flood into the town from all over northern Germany and the Low Countries, inspired by the prophecies of the Strasbourg preacher Melchior Hoffman to turn the city into the New Jerusalem, soon forming a sizable group within the original population of around nine thousand townspeople. 17 Up to this point, Münster’s Reformation was rather like the radical phase of the Reformation in Wittenberg, with city council and preachers working together to introduce a godly society, but in September 1534, the charismatic Jan van Leiden took over, establishing a theocracy with him as its head and the old mayor Bernhard Knipperdolling his “swordbearer.” 18 The bishop of Münster besieged the city with a coalition that included not only the archbishop of Cologne and the Catholic duke of Cleve but also the Lutheran Philip of Hesse, who all promised financial aid. Jan van Leiden tried to send out “apostles” to other Anabaptist communities to recruit reinforcements, but Münster was isolated and in a state of military emergency, and few could get through. It mustered its menfolk to defend the town and try to repel the forces of the bishop but many of them were killed in the fighting. The apocalyptic rhetoric of Leiden now became reality, and he took on the role of judge and executioner, going so far as to behead an accused spy himself and introducing polygamy so that the Anabaptists would be able to re-create the twelve tribes of Israel. 19 In June 1535, after a siege that lasted a little over a year, the city fell. Jan van Leiden and two other leaders were brutally tortured and executed in January 1536, their remains put in iron cages that were hung from the tower of St. Lambert’s Church, where the cages can still be seen. It is difficult to know exactly what happened in Münster, since all the reports we have were composed by the victors and are hostile, and the town records were largely destroyed. The episode is usually viewed as an aberration in the history of the Reformation, and this is certainly how Luther regarded it. Most shocking to contemporaries was its introduction of polygamy.

• From Shunned (2018)

  But I wasn’t hungry. I felt neither full nor empty, and oddly disconnected, as if I’d never need to eat again, floating through life, nourishment unnecessary. “Do you want anything?” I asked Ross. “Nope,” he said. He was even-tempered, but I could tell he was nervous by the quick way he sat down. He was ready to call the meeting to order, deliver the news, and get out of there. Who could blame him? I felt the same way. There was a consoling camaraderie in being there together. We were both facing the firing squad. Mom emerged from the basement through the door at the top of the stairs, near one end of the kitchen. She was still in the clothes she’d worn to work—a wool navy skirt, blouse, and button-down vest—but had traded her high heels for house slippers. “Such a nice surprise to see you,” she said. “Dad didn’t say what was bringing you this way on a Monday night.” “Oh, this and that,” I said, turning to look at her as she walked to the sink and washed her hands. I closed the fridge. Dad came in from the garage, washed his hands, and stood next to Mom. I joined Ross at the table. We looked at each other and then at them. As their familial repartee wound down, there was a pause. They realized we were quietly observing them. I could feel my pulse in my throat. “Do you guys want something to snack on,” asked Mom, “or some tea?” Ross was long-faced and forlorn. His lethargy and my pensiveness were beginning to register with them. “No, Mom,” Ross said. Mom and Dad glanced at each other. “We have something to tell you,” I said. “Please sit down.” They both took their usual places at the table. The only sound was the furnace pushing heat through the vent near my feet. I just sat there. I’d rehearsed about five different lead-ins to my news, but everything I’d practiced felt like dust on my tongue. Could I open my mouth and blow it out like a whistle? “What is it, dear?” Mom asked. She reached out and put her warm hand around my wrist. Dad was leaning into the table, looking at me. “Two days ago, I asked him”—I pointed at Ross while looking at Mom—“for a divorce.” Mom pulled her hand away. Dad scowled, and his eyes drooped down at the corners. Ross sat in resignation. “I’ve hired an attorney.” I stanched the fear and went on, though I felt as if someone else were talking. “The papers are being drawn up. The grounds are irreconcilable differences. In the state of Oregon, as long as the petition is not contested— and Ross assures me it won’t be—the divorce will be final within three months of the judge’s favorable ruling.” Dad looked at Ross.

• From Shunned (2018)

  As I turned to the last page of that day’s Watchtower lesson, I felt something else nagging at me, another memory sprouting up. These memories stirred a sentimental loyalty. My encounter with Nick was not the first time I’d bristled at the prospect of destruction at God’s hand. I was four or five years old, wide-eyed and trusting. “Hurry and get dressed,” my mother said, as she placed my dress on the bed, next to Woody Woodpecker and a tattered coloring book. Usually she let me choose my own clothes, but circuit assemblies were special. We would spend all day Saturday and Sunday inside the Lincoln High School gymnasium. Members of ten congregations would be there, totaling close to one thousand people. In between prayers, sermons, and singing the kingdom songs, we would be reunited with old friends we hadn’t seen since the previous assembly, three months earlier. I followed instructions. She had selected my favorite dress, made of light green seersucker. I slipped on my white patent leather shoes and pulled a scratchy white wool cardigan from the dresser. From the bookcase I retrieved my Bible and songbook and a half-used spiral tablet and put them into my straw purse. A tube of cherry-flavored lip gloss and a fountain pen rattled against the plastic lining. With my purse in one hand, sweater in the other, I left in search of Randy. I found him in my parents’ room, standing in front of the dressing mirror, struggling to tie his tie. I sat down on my parents’ neatly made bed, just to the left of my brother. The closet door was open, and he had taken a tie from my father’s small collection. “I’ll buckle your shoes in a minute,” he said, his eyes fixed on the mirror. “Did Dad say you could wear his tie?” I asked. “Shut up and mind your own business,” he said. I watched and waited. This was the type of answer I was used to hearing from him. “Maybe Dad will come with us today, or tomorrow,” I mused. Randy sat down on the bed next to me and pulled my legs up across his knees. “You’re such a dreamer,” he said, shaking his head as he buckled my shoes. “Dad doesn’t care about this stuff. He’d rather die at Armageddon than spend a weekend wearing a coat and tie.” “Don’t say terrible things like that!” I pulled my legs up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. In their lighter moments, Mom would joke about Dad’s being a “heathen,” and from her tone I surmised this was not a compliment.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Like other Saxon towns of this period, Wittenberg had been a colonial foundation, founded in Slavic territory as Germans migrated eastward to seek new land in the late tenth century: The town had been designed to suppress the area’s indigenous population. German splendor and cultivation masked the town’s brutal past, and the new building work covered over any remaining traces of earlier habitation. The Wends, a Slavic people, were only allowed to live in the suburbs and could not become citizens; only those who spoke German and had four German grandparents were given citizenship. 5 There were still Wends villages not far from Wittenberg, and Slavic influences lived on in the names of settlements. Luther thought the Slavs to be “the worst nation of all,” their towns and villages full of devils. He shared the colonizers’ fear of those they had dispossessed. If it had not been for the pious Electors, he said in 1540, “the university couldn’t have lasted a year thanks to the Wends; they would starve us out.” 6 The other minority that had been expunged from Wittenberg were the Jews. Myths of the “blood libel” were still current at the time, especially in southern Germany, where Jewish communities were regularly accused of kidnapping Christian children and killing them for their blood to use in religious ceremonies. In Wittenberg, anti-Semitism had a different coloring. The main parish church was situated just behind the town hall, and it was here that the town’s prominent citizens were buried. High up on the outside of the building, there is a stone sculpture of a “Jewish sow” dating probably from the 1280s. It shows a large sow with dangling teats, which are suckled by two Jews, recognizable in their distinctive hats and with the yellow circles on their garments that they, like prostitutes, were forced to wear. Another grips a piglet by the ears and tries to ride it, while a fourth large Jew has his head close to the sow’s backside. The sculpture suggests that the Jews are not only pigs themselves but that they look into the pig’s anus. The statue is supposed to ward them off, placing the Jews like demons and gargoyles on the church’s external face. 7 13. The Jewish sow on the outside of the Wittenberg parish church. The Jews had been expelled from Wittenberg in 1304, but the existence of a “Jews street” in the center of the town—as in so many other German towns—testifies to their former presence. 8 Indeed, one of the four quarters into which the town was divided for military and taxation purposes was still called the “Jews’ quarter” in Luther’s time.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  As a result, the town council banished both preachers, appointing Nikolaus Hausmann, a close follower of Luther and a steadier head, in their place. Müntzer decided to go to Prague in June 1521, and by this time he seems to have been convinced of the imminent end of the world and his own martyrdom. His apocalyptic mood is evident in his Prague Manifesto, a diatribe against the clergy and a statement of mystical theology; one version of it he wrote down on a piece of paper three feet square, as if he intended to publish his own colossal version of the Ninety-five Theses. 23 Returning from Prague in December 1521, he again took a series of temporary posts until he finally managed to find a position as preacher at Allstedt in April 1523. Here, like Karlstadt, he set about introducing a thoroughgoing Reformation, and even established a printing press. Allstedt was a tiny market town some thirty miles northeast of Erfurt, in an enclave of electoral Saxony, controlled by Duke Johann, the Elector’s brother, but surrounded by hostile Catholic territories. Enough was known about Müntzer’s radical views by this time for the duke and Spalatin to take an interest in the new preacher, and in late 1523 they visited the town, staying in the castle. Yet at this juncture the Saxon authorities, always cautious and slow moving, took no further action. It seems that Duke Johann was reluctant to take measures against Müntzer, well aware of his local support and not wishing to repress evangelical preaching. Luther, however, soon became convinced that Müntzer was dangerous, and his writings from the summer on are peppered with references to the “spirit of Allstedt.” In late July 1524, worried that the authorities were not intervening, he published his Letter to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Rebellious Spirit . 24 Luther reminded the worldly rulers that false sects have always attacked Christendom, and linked Müntzer with violence and rebellion. He also proclaimed that all those who destroy images are driven not by the “spirit,” as they claim, but by the Devil—an argument that implicitly bracketed Karlstadt with Müntzer. Luther did not name either man, referring only to the “spirit of Allstedt,” but the term could be seen to include Karlstadt’s theology. After all, both men prized Gelassenheit, although Müntzer, who knew the insecure life of a clerical proletarian, placed far more emphasis on suffering as part of the process through which the believer found God. Both had created godly parishes, removed images, and reformed the liturgy, and they had corresponded with each other.

• From Shunned (2018)

  The vulnerability of my situation hit me with a fresh awareness. I was leaving the safe haven of my known world, and I had no committed companions. While I’d been sincerely enjoying my time with coworkers and cultivating new friendships, much of that provided a convenient distraction from being alone. None of those new relationships had withstood the test of time. To my horror, a coil of pressure released in my chest, and I broke down and started to cry. It was difficult to let them—or anyone—see how upset and afraid I was. Grappling with loneliness was something that would come much later; at this moment, I was struck only by the fear that there was a slim chance I was making a grave mistake, one that I would regret for the rest of my life. My sobs were the only sound in the room. Jerry reached in his jacket and passed me a handkerchief with his short, round fingers. He looked perplexed, his forehead rippled with worry. I accepted the cloth and slowed my breathing as I unfolded it. It seemed an eternity before I was composed enough to speak. “I’ve been very despondent and believe my best chance for happiness is to move on,” I said, then blew my nose. “And what are your plans?” he asked me. “To live,” I said. “To enjoy life. To have free time and the space to ponder the meaning of it all. I don’t know if Ross has already told you this, but I’ve found an apartment close to the city and plan to move in a few weeks.” “Have you completely forgotten Jehovah?” asked Vince. “If Jehovah is the loving God we talk about, I think he’ll cut me some slack. I plan to take a break from meetings, service, everything. I’ve been questioning many things I believe, not taking anything for granted, and am looking for the space to sort it all out. You can’t imagine how much I’ve thought about this.” All three men were looking at me in a stunned stupor. The tearful crack in my armor may have given them hope of reaching me, but I already had enough sense to trust the small voice inside me that said, Trust it, you got this, keep going. “You won’t be seeing me around here for a while,” I said. “If at all.” “You’re playing with fire, my dear,” said Jerry. “Your husband can’t be expected to wait around and put his life on hold while you follow the whims of your heart.” That comment tripped a wire inside me, and suddenly my sadness flared into anger.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  There could hardly have been any comment more calculated to rattle a young man’s sense of spiritual vocation and certainty, and Luther’s shock was still evident in the way he told the story years later, stressing that the comment was made in front of the other guests at the table. 53 Luther recalled in a letter to Melanchthon in 1521 that it “took such deep root in my heart that I have never heard anything from his mouth which I remembered more persistently.” 54 Luther’s antagonists, too, first Cochlaeus and later Johannes Nas, would see the importance of trying to query the role of the storm. The thunder, Nas mocked, was not divine sanction. It was proof of God’s anger. 55 The Luther biographer and psychologist Erik Erikson was no doubt right when he argued that Luther’s difficult relationship with his father was reflected in his theology: God became Luther’s father, far more powerful than Hans Luder could ever be. 56 But there was more to it than this. Luther’s understanding of God grasped the distance that separates humans from Him, stressing the essential unknowability of God, and his hiddenness in suffering on the Cross. He emphasized the whole gamut of the fatherly aspects of God’s nature; not for him the cozy evangelical view of Jesus as one’s friend. Luther’s notions of manhood and fathers were forged by the rough world of Mansfeld as well as in his relationship with his father. Nor was Luder the only person to shape his son: His mother was profoundly important, as were his siblings. Nonetheless, Luther’s revolt would inevitably bring him up against authorities, including the Pope and the emperor, which at the time were understood as forms of paternal authority. His ability to speak out against such figures had to come from within, and the first step was the rebellion against his father. A T 7 A.M. on August 22, 1524, Luther preached in the main church of Jena. It was a memorable sermon, lasting an hour and a half. Luther was at his most pugilistic and roundly attacked those who questioned the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He also condemned the radicals who insisted on removing all images from churches. Such people, Luther said, were driven by the spirit of Satan, and though they were few in number, their presence as sectaries was a sign that the Devil was raging. 1 Jena was not territory hospitable to Luther, who was on a Visitation of the Saxon churches. Karlstadt now had his own parish in the small nearby town of Orlamünde, where he had begun to introduce the kind of Reformation he had failed to establish in Wittenberg.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  50 With his health weakened by excessive asceticism, he had never expected to live long, and this belief had stamped his religiosity. The prospect of martyrdom now intensified that streak in his spirituality, and increased the conviction of election that had marked him ever since St. Anna had saved him from the storm. From Augsburg on October 11, he had written to Melanchthon who, to his delight, had just been made professor of Greek at Wittenberg, telling him that there was no news “except that the whole town is full of rumors of my name and everyone desires to see the man of such fires of Herostratus.” In classical mythology, Herostratus burned the temple of Artemis to the ground, but it seems that Luther was using the reference in a double sense, suggesting that not only was he, like Herostratus, destroying the “temple” of the papacy, but also that he himself was also likely to be burned. “I will be burned for you and them, if it pleases God,” Luther continued. “I would prefer to perish, and which upsets me most gravely, I would prefer to lose your most sweet conversation in all eternity than that I should revoke.” 51 It is almost as if he were admonishing Melanchthon not to join him in martyrdom, while he “burned for you and them,” sacrificed himself for their sake. Indeed, Luther was not just thinking about himself. As he wrote to Spalatin from Augsburg soon after October 14, if he were to be oppressed by force, then Karlstadt and the whole Wittenberg faculty, which had been supporting Luther’s theological position, would find itself under threat. The survival of the university, so recently founded, would be imperiled. 52 Convinced he was destined for martyrdom, Luther increasingly began to compare himself to Christ. In a letter from Nuremberg to his Wittenberg friends as he journeyed to Augsburg, he wrote, “May God’s will be done….May Christ live, may Martin and every sinner die (Psalm 17, v. 47), as it is written, praise be to God for my salvation.” 53 In the Acta Augustana, he was even more explicit: “my writings are in the house of Caiaphas, where they seek false testimony against me and have not yet found it,” so that the papists are “seiz[ing] Christ first, and then look[ing] for a charge against him.” Like Christ, he had kept silent when Cajetan told him where he had erred; like Christ, he would be put to death. 54 But he did not actively seek martyrdom. His correspondence veered between elevated spirituality and hard-nosed practicality, as he tried to maneuver the Elector into protecting him.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  As a result, army officers would often become the natural leaders and rulers, and modernity would acquire a military emphasis that was different—again—from that of the West. The army was Muhammad Ali’s chief concern. He needed it if he was to achieve his objectives, since throughout his career he had to hold his own against the British on the one hand and the Ottoman Turks on the other. The only way the Turks could tolerate Muhammad Ali’s creation of a semi- autonomous state was by calling on his superior fighting machine in Ottoman campaigns: against the Wahhabis in Arabia, or to quell the Greek revolt (1825–28). But in 1832, his son Ibrahim Pasha invaded the Ottoman provinces of Syria and Palestine, inflicting crushing defeats on the Turkish army and creating for his father an impressive imperium in imperio. The Egyptian army had, of course, been built on the French model. Muhammad Ali had tried to imitate the discipline and efficiency he had observed in Napoleon’s army, and he had indeed created a force that was able to cut through a numerically superior army with ease. But this achievement also involved a brutal assault upon his subjects. At first, Muhammad Ali had recruited and trained some 20,000 conscripts from the Sudan, whom he had housed in a vast barracks in Aswan. But the Sudanese simply could not adapt. Many turned their faces to the wall and died, despite the best efforts of the army doctors (trained in Muhammad Ali’s medical school in Abou Zabel) to save them. The pasha was thus forced to conscript the fellahin, dragging them from their homes, families, and fields. They usually had no time to make adequate arrangements, and their families were often left destitute, the women forced into prostitution. The possibility of conscription to an utterly alien military life filled many of the fellahin with such terror that they frequently resorted to self-mutilation, cutting off their own fingers, pulling out teeth, and even blinding themselves. 41 An efficient fighting force was created, but at a terrible human cost. Not only were the fellahin themselves damaged by conscription, but agriculture suffered when the men were torn away from the land. Every positive reform had a downside. Muhammad Ali’s economic policies encouraged European trade to penetrate Egypt, but at the expense of local industry. By becoming the sole monopolist in Egypt, the pasha virtually destroyed the indigenous merchant class. 42 He invested a great deal on much- needed irrigation works and water communications, but the working conditions of the laborers in the corvée were so bad that 23,000 are said to have died.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Modern pursuits, such as medicine or landscape gardening, taught people to eliminate things that were harmful, inelegant, or useless. At a time when nationalism was becoming the chief ideology of the European states, Jews seemed inherently and irredeemably cosmopolitan. The scientific theories that were evolved to define the essential biological and genetic characteristics of the Volk were too narrow to include the Jews. As the new nations redefined themselves, they needed an “other” against whom they could determine their new selves, and “the Jew” was conveniently at hand. This modern racism, which yearned to eliminate Jews from society as a gardener would root out weeds or a surgeon cut out a cancer, was a form of social engineering, which sprang from a conviction that some people could not be improved or controlled. It drew upon centuries of Christian religious prejudice, and gave it a scientific rationale. At the same time, however, “the Jew” also became a symbol upon which people could fasten their fears and reservations about the social upheaval of modernization. As Jews moved out of the ghettoes into Christian neighborhoods, and enjoyed extraordinary success in the capitalist economy, they seemed to epitomize the destruction of the old order. Europeans also experienced modernity as a frightening “melting pot.” The new industrialized world was breaking down old barriers and some experienced this now apparently formless society, which had no clear boundaries, as anarchic and annihilating. Those Jews who had assimilated to the mainstream seemed especially disturbing. Had they now become “non-Jews” and overcome what many still felt to be an impassable divide? 33 Modern anti-Semitism gave those who were disturbed by the turmoil of modernization and the awesome scale of social confusion a target for their distress and resentment. To “define” was to set limits on these frightening changes; as some Protestants sought certainty by stringent doctrinal definitions, others kept the void at bay by trying to re-erect old social boundaries. By the 1880s, the tolerance of the Enlightenment was shown to be tragically skin-deep. In Russia, after the assassination of the liberal Tsar Alexander II in 1881, there were fresh restrictions on Jewish entry into the professions. In 1891, over ten thousand Jews were expelled from Moscow, and there were massive expulsions from other regions between 1893 and 1895. There were also pogroms, condoned or even orchestrated by the Ministry of the Interior, in which Jews were robbed and killed, and which culminated in the pogrom at Kishinev (1905) where fifty Jews died and five hundred were injured. 34 Jews began to flee westward, at an average of fifty thousand a year, settling in western Europe, the United States, and Palestine. But the arrival in western Europe of these eastern Jews, with their strange clothes and outlandish customs, stirred old prejudices.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὑπείροχος, ov, poet. and Ion. for ᾿ὑπέροχος. ὑπ- είρω, to draw underneath, τοὺς δακτύλους Hipp. Art. 799. ὑπείσας, Jon. part. aor. I act. of ὑφεῖσα. ὑπεισδύομαι, Med. with aor. 2 act. ὑπεισέδυν, to get in secretly, to slip or steal in, Hdt. 1.12: tocome or goin gradually, Arist. Gen. et Corr. I 8, ,9. Δὴ act. pres. ὑπεισδύνω, in E. M. 290. 13, ὑπείσειμι, (εἶμι ibo) to enter secretly upon, κληρονομίαν Eccl. 11. to enter imperceptibly or gradually, ἔρως ὑπ. τινά Greg. Naz.; δάκρυον ὑπ. μοι Id. ; ὑπ. τί τινα comes into one’s mind, Ach. Tat. 8. 17. ὑπεισέρχομαι, Dep. to enter upon secretly, γῆρας ὑπεισῆλθέ μοι λαθόν came on me unawares, Plat. Ax. 367 B; ὑπεισέρχεταί με δέος, ἔλεος, etc., fear, pity steals over me, Schaf. Greg. p. 375. 2. to come into one’s mind, Luc. Merc. Cond. 11. 11. to slip into, assume, πρᾶον σχῆμ᾽ ὑπεισελθών Menand. Incert. 67. ὑπεισρέω, fut. -δυήσομαι, to flow in gradually, Longus I, 1. ὑπειστρέχω, to run secretly into, Eccl. ὑπεισφέρω, to bear secretly into, Eccl. ὑπέι,, before a vowel ὑπέξ, (ὑπό, ἐκ) poét. Prep. with gen., out from under, from beneath, away from, ὑπὲις κακοῦ, θανάτοιο, etc., Il. 13. 89., 16. 628, al. ὑπεκβαίνω, fut. -- βΑήσομαι, to go out from below, Anon, ap. Suid., Galen., etc. ὑπεκβάλλω, fo cast out secretly, reject, Plut. 2.530 Ὁ, Anth. P. 5. 66. ὑπεκδέχομαι, Dep. to have under oneself, of a cow, πόρτιν μαστῷ ὑπ. to have a calf under her at the udder, Anth. P. 9. 722. ὑπεκδιδράσκω, aor. ὑπεξέδραν, to run out, escape secretly oe: τινός Plut. 2. 642 Β; ἐκ Καρχηδόνος Id. Flam. 20; absol., Dio C. 36. 7. ὑπεκδρομέω, = ὑπεκτρέχω, Greg. Naz. ὑπεκδρομή, ἢ, a sally, Eccl, ὑπεκδύομαι, Med., with aor. 2 δοΐ., to slip out of, escape, c. ἜΝ πόνους Τρωικοὺς ὑπεξέδυν Eur. Cycl. 347, cf. Plut. 2. 170 F, etc. ; also c. gen., Plut. Demosth. 9, Opp.; absol., ὑπεκδύς having slipped out, Hdt. 1. 10, Plut. Arat. 9, etc.—An act. pres. ὑπεκδύνω in Babr. 4. 4. ὑπέκδῦσις, ἡ, a slipping out or away, escape, Opp. H. 3. 395. ὑπεκθέσιμος, ov, of merchandise, deposited for recxportation, Inscr, Cret. in C. 1. 2556. 25, where it is written ὑπεχθέσιμος ; cf. ὑπεκτί- θεμαι 11, and v. Bickh p. 414. ὑπέκθεσις, ἡ, a removing secretly, κτήσεως Joseph. Β. J. 4. 7, 2. ὑπεικθέω, to run off secretly or gradually, Emped. 363, Plut. Pomp. 80. ὑπεκκαθαίρω, to purg e from beneath, Hipp. 612. 16, in Pass.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Along the populated beach were tanned, bemuscled men; women whose hands bore diamonds the size of gumballs. I tried to roll the window down more, but it stuck about halfway. He drove on, head-banging to the backbeat of Ozzy Osborne’s Paranoid . On a steep hill, he downshifted and said, Mary, do you believe you live by what you earn? I said sure, stunned less by the question than by the breath he’d exhaled—real snake-shit breath. He shouted, Some live by what their own hands take. Others feed like buzzards on the carcass’s leftovers. That’s right, I said, wondering what he was getting at. Maybe he wanted me to sell Tupperware or cosmetics door-to-door. Some of the want ads I’d answered offered that. He said, Samson after his haircut could not break his chains, and the stones of the temple rained down. I nodded at the King James Bible cadence he’d slid into, his accent no longer evoking Grandpappy on the porch with a slab of pie, but a preacher whose fire and brimstone maybe came from a guilty conscience about underage choristers. I tried to adopt the big-eyed face of a church girl with a well-armed brother. A crumb of fear. He drew a snuff can out from under his seat and tucked a pinch in his jaw, saying around it, You dip? No, sir, I said. He said, Not a pretty habit on a young woman. After an awkward silence, he added, Here’s the real truth, if you can dig it. He reached into the backseat and handed over a bedraggled paperback whose inside-back ads involved books on UFOs and Nostradamus. Looks real interesting, I said. You believe in presences? he said. I lied that I knew ESP and ghosts existed, though I believed in nothing, naught, nada . (When I got to college and found the word nihilist , I’d glom onto it the way a debutante does an alligator handbag.) He shook his head. Those are just circus tricks for the weak mind. That’s when I noticed that no aspect of this hillbilly matched up with the surfboard lashed on top. Sam’s sunken chest meant his only swimming included water wings. Or —the ghost of reason said to me— when he was weighing down corpses in some black sunken lagoon . He said, My granny back in Tennessee was born with the web of a caul over her head like a wedding veil, and I come into this world wearing that same veil. I see what others don’t. I am wed to the truth and a missionary of it. He studied me in black-eyed silence for a while. You’re not a Jew, are you? I didn’t peg you for a Jew. Me? No, sir. Actually, do you know a good church around here for me and my fiancée? As if, I thought, I’d ever enter a church other than carried by handles .

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The renegades would never return to the fold; by living and praying separately from these wicked Jews, the true Haredim were simply expressing physically the onto-logical gulf that existed between them at a metaphysical level. But this fearful vision meant that, living as they were in the midst of satanic evil, every detail of the lives of the faithful had cosmic importance. Matters of dress, methods of study, even the cut of the beard, must be absolutely correct. Jewish life was gravely imperiled, and any innovation was utterly forbidden: “Care should be taken that the right lapel overlaps the left, so that the right hand of the Most High, ‘the right hand of the Lord uplifted,’ in its exalted Love (hesed), predominates over the left side, which represents Power (din), the strength of the Evil Impulse.” 12 Where Protestant fundamentalists had sought to fill the void by seeking absolute certainty in stringent doctrinal correctness, these anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox sought certainty in a minute observance of divine law and customary observance. It is a spirituality that reveals almost ungovernable fear which can only be assuaged by the meticulous preservation of old boundaries, the erection of new barriers, a rigid segregation, and a passionate adherence to the values of tradition. This rejectionist vision is utterly incomprehensible to Jews who regard the Zionist achievement as wondrous and salvific. This is the dilemma that Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all had to face in the twentieth century: between the fundamentalists and those who adopt a more positive attitude to the modern secular world there is an impassable gulf. The different groups simply cannot see things from the same point of view. Rational arguments are of no avail, because the divergence springs from a deeper and more instinctual level of the mind. When Shapira, Teitelbaum, and Margolis contemplated the purposeful, pragmatic, and rationally inspired activities of the secular Zionists, they could only see them as godless and, hence, as demonic. When later they and their followers heard about the rationalized, practical, and ruthlessly directed activities of the Nazis in the death camps, they experienced them as similar to the Zionist enterprise. Both revealed the absence of God, and were, therefore, satanic and nihilistic, destructively trampling upon every sacred value that these Haredim held dear. To this day, the placards and graffiti on the walls of an anti-Zionist district in Jerusalem equate the political leaders of the State of Israel with Hitler. To an outsider, such an equation is shocking, false, and perverse, but it gives us some idea of the profound horror that secularism can inspire in the heart of a fundamentalist. The very idea of Jewish apostates setting up a secular state in Eretz Israel violated a taboo.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The dynamic of fundamentalism, however, has not changed. Nobody could have predicted the details of this attack, because they were inconceivable. But this was simply the latest and most ferocious offensive conducted by fundamentalists in their ongoing battle for God. As I try to show in these pages, for almost a century, Christians, Jews, and Muslims have been developing a militant form of piety whose objective is to drag God and religion from the sidelines, to which they have been relegated in modern secular culture, and bring them back to center stage. These “fundamentalists,” as they are called, are convinced that they are fighting for the survival of their faith in a world that is inherently hostile to religion. They are conducting a war against secular modernity, and in the course of their struggle, they have achieved notable results. In the middle of the twentieth century, it was generally assumed by pundits and commentators that secularism was the coming ideology and that religion would never again become a force in international affairs. But the fundamentalists have reversed this trend and gradually, in both the United States and the Muslim world, religion has become a force that every government has been forced to take seriously. The apocalypse of September 11 can be seen as the logical outcome of the history of fundamentalism described in this book. Fundamentalism is not a conscious archaism, as people often imagine; it is not a throwback to the past. These fundamentalisms are essentially modern movements that could take root in no other time than our own. This was the most devastating fundamentalist attack yet committed against secular modernity, and the terrorists could not have chosen more significant targets. Never have fundamentalists made more skillful use of the modern media than on September 11: Alerted by the crash of the first plane, millions of people were already in front of their television screens in time to watch the second plane plunging into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The fundamentalists used the modern technology of aviation to bring down magnificent buildings that had seemed like a modern Babel—built in defiance of nature. To a fundamentalist, such structures could seem a human challenge to the supremacy of God. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbols of the economic and military might of the United States, fell to the ground like a house of cards before the onslaught of this religious wrath. It was a deadly blow. Not only were thousands of lives lost, but America’s proud self-sufficiency and confidence had crumbled with the towers. Never again would people feel as safe as they did on September 10. For decades, the airplane had given people an experience of superhuman freedom, enabling them to soar high above the clouds, traveling around the world as swiftly as the gods of old. But now many are afraid to fly. They have been grounded, cut down to size, their secular wings clipped, and their confidence severely dinted.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  6 These rejectionists could see nothing positive in the agricultural achievements of the Zionists, who were making the desert bloom, or the political acumen of their leaders, who were striving to save Jewish lives. This was an “outrage,” a “defilement,” and the final eruption of the forces of evil. 7 The Zionists were atheists and unbelievers; even if they had been the most strictly observant of Jews, their enterprise would still be evil because it was a rebellion against God, who had decreed that Jews must endure the punishment of the Exile and must take no initiative to save themselves. For Shapira, the Land was too holy to be settled by any ordinary Jew, let alone by self-confessed Zionist rebels. Only the religious zealot who devoted his entire life to study and prayer could live there safely. Wherever there is a holy object, like Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel), evil forces gather to attack it. The Zionists, Shapira explained, were simply the external manifestation of these demonic influences. The Holy Land itself, therefore, was teeming with wicked forces “which excite God’s anger and fury.” Instead of God, it was Satan that now dwelt in Jerusalem. The Zionists who “pretend to ‘ascend’ to the Land, are in fact, descending to the depths of hell.” 8 The Holy Land was empty of God and had become an inferno. Eretz Israel was not a homeland, as the Zionists maintained, but a battlefield. The only people who could safely dwell there in these terrible times were not householders and farmers, but holy warriors, “zealous fearers of God,” “valiant men of war” who set out “to fight the just war for the residue of God’s heritage in the holy mountain of Jerusalem.” The whole Zionist enterprise imbued Shapira with existential terror. Teitelbaum saw the Zionists as the latest manifestation of the evil hubris that had consistently brought disasters upon the Jewish people: the Tower of Babel, the idolatry of the Golden Calf, the Bar Kochba rebellion in the second century CE which had cost thousands of Jewish lives, and the Shabbetai Zevi fiasco. But Zionism was the heresy par excellence; this was brazen arrogance which shook the very foundations of the world. It was no wonder that God had sent the Holocaust! 9 Hence the faithful must separate themselves absolutely from this evil. Rabbi Yeshayahu Margolis, one of the most zealous of the Hasidim in Jerusalem, who wrote during the 1920s and 1930s, was a great admirer of both Shapira and Teitelbaum, and wanted Teitelbaum to become the leader of Edah Haredis. Margolis created a counterhistory of Israel which stressed the existence of an embattled minority that had consistently over the centuries felt obliged to rise up and fight other Jews in the name of God.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  They are, therefore, preparing themselves for the catastrophe. They foresee the imminent destruction of the federal government, which they call ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government), which is dominated by Satan and Jews, and dedicated to the destruction of the Aryan nation. Some have formed themselves into militant groups in remote corners of the northwestern United States, where they learn survival techniques, collect guns and ammunition, and prepare for the last war. Some make paramilitary raids on ZOG, killing state officials. Others bomb and set fire to abortion clinics. 132 It is this type of ideology that inspired Timothy McVeigh’s bomb attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It is difficult to chart the activities and ideals of Christian Identity, which is not a monolithic movement but a constellation of affiliated organizations. Their numbers are small; there are probably no more than 100,000 members, and could be as few as 50,000. 133 But as a trend, Christian Identity is worrying. Like fundamentalists, they have retreated from the world in contempt and fear, and plan to take it over. Like the most extreme types of fundamentalists, members see conspiracy everywhere and cultivate a theology of rage and resentment. But they have outdone the fundamentalists in their overtly fascist ideology, their pure hatred of the United States government, and the extremity of their withdrawal from modern life. No longer concerned with problems of doctrine and biblical inerrancy, the Identity groups want to carve out for themselves a separate Aryan state in America. Christian Identity has developed an ideology of alienation and terror unparalleled in American history. Like Reconstructionism, this loose confederation of Identity communities is a small but disturbing indication of the way religion could be used to articulate helplessness, disappointment, and discontent in the future. The secularist establishment and mainstream denominations may feel that the fundamentalist threat is receding in the United States, but as far as some Christians are concerned the war is still on, the federal government must be destroyed, and the conflict will certainly continue into the twenty-first Christian century. Religion did not disappear after all, and in some circles it has become more militant than ever. In all three of the monotheistic faiths, fundamentalists have reacted angrily to attempts to privatize or to suppress religion, and have, as they believe, rescued it from oblivion. It has been a hard struggle and in the course of it, the faith has often been distorted; this represents a defeat for religion. But fundamentalism is now part of the modern world.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Like my brother, her banal tone revealed not one iota of dread or panic. Images of the black-caped, faceless hooded riders filled my mind. At any moment, they might come to strike down my father, and no one seemed to care. I felt a sudden, overpowering compulsion to locate him. I feared what could happen if we left him alone in the house. She brushed my pony-tail one last time as I pulled away and ran down the hall. Dad was next to my brother on the living room couch. He was pulling the Kodak Instamatic from the case, his muscles rippling near the sleeve line of his T-shirt. Randy opened a pack of flash bulbs the shape and size of ice cubes. Dropping my purse and sweater, I ran to Dad’s side and threw my arms around his neck, taking in his familiar scent of Aqua Velva. “Randy says you’re going to die at Armageddon,” I blurted out. Startled at first, he peeled me off his shoulder and sat me down firmly on the couch. He wore a huge grin, but that vanished as he registered the depths of my despair. “He did, did he?” He stole a quick glance at Randy, then back at me. His eyes were dancing, but his face was serious. He was barefoot, wearing blue jeans. “It’s not funny.” I was wiping the tears from my eyes. “Can’t you come with us? You’ll be safe there. I’ll introduce you to all of our friends. Everyone will like you. I promise, promise, promise.” I couldn’t stop myself from panting and pleading. He put his arm around me and waited until I caught my breath. My sister, Lory, sat watching from the corner, her long legs stretched out in front of her, her arms dangling between them. She resembled a colt at rest. “Now, you listen to me, young lady.” His eyes possessed a steely hardness that rattled me into submission. “Armageddon doesn’t have anything to do with me. That’s just some self- righteous assholes’ way of scaring people into action. I’m not interested in sitting around all day, listening to somebody else tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. I have enough sense in my head to figure that out myself. You can believe that if you want to. Everyone needs something to believe.” I imagined one of the faceless riders—maybe even Jehovah God himself— watching from heaven, shaking his head and jotting down a few notes. “I would love to spend the day with you kids,” he said in a softer voice, “but your mother gets her way when it comes to these assemblies. Next weekend will be different. Don’t worry, Lindy. I’m not going anywhere. What could be safer than being here at home?” He toggled my chin with genuine affection, then resumed loading film into the camera.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Conservative Protestants had become extremely ambivalent about democracy: it would lead to “mob rule,” to a “red republic,” to the “most devilish rule this world has ever seen.” 12 Peace-keeping institutions, such as the League of Nations, would henceforth always be imbued with absolute evil in the eyes of the fundamentalists. The League was clearly the abode of Antichrist, who, St. Paul had said, would be a plausible liar whose deceit would take everybody in. The Bible said that there would be war in the End- times, not peace, so the League was dangerously on the wrong track. Indeed, Antichrist himself was likely to be a peacemaker. 13 The fundamentalists’ revulsion from the League and other international bodies also revealed a visceral fear of the centralization of modernity and a terror of anything resembling world government. Faced with the universal-ism of modern society, some people instinctively retreated into tribalism. This type of conspiracy fear, which makes people feel that they are fighting for their lives, can easily become aggressive. Jesus was no longer the loving savior preached by Dwight Moody. As the leading premillennialist, Isaac M. Haldeman, explained, the Christ of the Book of Revelation “comes forth as one who no longer seeks either friendship or love.... His garments are dipped in blood, the blood of others. He descends that he may shed the blood of men.” 14 The conservatives were ready for a fight, and, at this crucial moment, the liberal Protestants went on the offensive. The liberals had their own difficulties with the war, which challenged their vision of a world progressing inexorably toward the Kingdom of God. The only way they could cope was to see this as the war to end all wars, which would make the world safe for democracy. They were horrified by the violence of premillennialism, and its devastating critique of democracy and the League of Nations. These doctrines seemed not only un-American but a denial of Christianity itself. They decided to attack, and, despite their Gospel of love and compassion, their campaign was vicious and unbalanced. In 1917, theologians at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, the leading scholastic institution of liberal Christianity in the United States, began to attack the Moody Bible Institute on the other side of town. 15 Professor Shirley Jackson Chase accused the premillennialists of being traitors to their country and of taking money from the Germans. Alva S. Taylor compared them to the Bolsheviks, who also wanted to see the world remade in a day. Alfred Dieffenbach, the editor of the Christian Register, called premillennialism “the most astounding mental aberration in the field of religious thinking.” 16 By linking the devout teachers of the Moody Bible Institute with foes who were not only their political enemies but whom they regarded as satanic, the liberals had hit below the belt. The conservatives struck back, hard. The editor of the Moody Bible Institute Monthly and president of the Institute, James M.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Fundamentalists blamed liberals of any hue, secularist or Christian, for the marginal status of the “true” Christians. They were beginning their swing to the political Right. In the nineteenth century, evangelicals had seen patriotism as idolatrous. Now it became a sacred duty to defend the American way of life. Hargis, the founder of the Christian Crusade, an anticommunist ministry, saw the Soviet Union as demonic, and battled tirelessly against what he regarded as communist infiltration: the liberal press, leftist teachers, and the Supreme Court were all, in his view, part of a conspiracy to turn America “red.” Carl McIntyre, who seceded from the Presbyterian Church to found the Bible Presbyterian Church and the Faith Theological Seminary, saw hidden enemies everywhere. The mainline denominations themselves were part of a satanic plot to destroy Christianity in America. In the 1950s, McIntyre joined Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade. These extremists were not typical, but they were influential. By 1934, some 600,000 people subscribed to Winrod’s Defender Magazine; 1 20,000 took McIntyre’s Christian Beacon . McIntyre reached thousands more in his Twentieth Century Christian Hour , a radio program which condemned all Christians who did not subscribe to his theology of hatred, and all liberal clergy, who might seem loving and Christian to the uninformed, but who were really “atheistic, communistic, Bible-ridiculing, blood-despising, name-calling, sex-manacled sons of green-eyed monsters.” 49 Fundamentalism was becoming a religion of rage, but, as in Haredi Judaism, this rage was rooted in deep fear. This was evident in the premillennialism that became a hallmark of the movement during this period. By the Second World War, only premillennialists still called themselves “fundamentalists”; other conservative Christians, such as Billy Graham, preferred to call themselves “evangelicals”: the duty of saving souls in this rotten civilization demanded some degree of cooperation with other Christians, whatever their theological beliefs. Fundamentalists proper, however, insisted on separatism and segregation. 50 The war years seemed to prove that the postmillennial optimism of the liberals had been deluded; fundamentalists regarded the new United Nations in as negative a light as they had the old League of Nations. It would prepare the world for the dictatorship of Antichrist and the ensuing Tribulation. There could be no world peace. “The Bible contradicts such a utopian dream,” wrote Herbert Lockyear in 1942. “This is not to be the last war. Present horrors are but the spawn to produce still more terrible anguish.” 51 This was a vision diametrically opposed to the view of the liberal establishment. There were “two nations” in America, unable to share each other’s vision of the modern world. The premillennial vision endorsed the fundamentalists’ feeling of utter helplessness. The atomic bomb, they believed, had been foretold by St. Peter, who had predicted that on the last day, “with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and fall apart, the earth and all that it contains will be burnt up.”

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ἀποδῖδράσκω, Ion. -ἤσκω ; fut. -δράσομαι, Ion. -δρήσομαι (δράσω only in Eccl.): aor. ἀπέδραν, Ion. -- ἐδρην, opt. ἀποδραίην Theogn. 927, imperat. ἀπόδραθι, inf. ἀποδρᾶναι, Ion. -δρῆναι, part. daodpds—the only form found in Hom, ; the other tenses in Hdt., etc. To run away or off, escape or flee from, esp. by stealth, Hom. (never in Il.), ἐκ νηὸς ἀποδράς Od. τό. 65; νηὸς ἀπ. 17. 510; ἀπ. ἐκ τῆς Σάμου Hdt. 3. 148; ἐς Σάμον 4. 43; ἐπὶ θάλασσαν 6. 2; ἀποδρᾶσα ὥχετο Andoc. τό. 28, cf, 31. 18, Ar. Eccl. 196, Plat. Theaet. 203 Ὁ ; of runaway slaves, Xen. An. 1. 4, 8 (where ἀποδρᾶναι is to escape by not being found, ἀποφυγεῖν by not being caught, v. Ammon.); so, of ἀποδράντες Inscr. Att. in Ussing, p. 58; of soldiers, to desert, Xen. An. 5. 6, 343 ἀποδιδράσκοντα μὴ δύνασθαι ἀποδρᾶναι attempting to escape, not to be able to escape, Plat. Prot. 317 B, cf. 310 C. 2. Cc, acc. to flee, shun, Hdt. 2.182, Ar. Pax 234, etc. ; ἀπέδρασαν αὐτόν Thuc. 1.128; τὸν Popov Arist. Pol. 2.9, 243 οὐκ ἀπέδρα τὴν στρατείαν Dem. 567. fin.; so, ὅτε .. τὸ σὸν ὄμμ᾽ ἀπέδραν (poét. for ἀπέδρασαν) Soph. Aj. 167.—Rare in Trag., cf. ἐκδιδράσκω. ἀποδῖδύσκω, = ἀποδύω, c. acc. pers., Artem. 2. 74 :—Med., Parthen. 15. ἀποδίδωμι [i], fut. --δώσω :—to give up or back, Srey return, τινί τι Hom. and Att.: esp. to render what is due, to pay, as debts, penalties, submission, honour, etc., θρέπτρα φίλοις Il. 4. 478 ; ἀπ. τινὶ λώβην to give him back his insult} i.e. make atonement for it, Il. 9. 387 5 ἀπ. ἀμοιβήν τινι Theogn. 1263; ἀπ. τὴν ὁμοίην τινι Hadt. 4.119; ἀπ. τὸ μόρσιμον to pay the debt of fate, Pind. N. 7: 64; τὸ χρέος Hdt. 2. 136; τὸν ναῦλον Ar. Ran. 270; τὴν ζημίαν, τὴν καταδίκην “hues 3°27 Ones. 50; εὐχάς Xen. Mem.~2. 2,10; ἀπ. ὀπίσω és Ἡρακλείδας Ὧν ὭΣ» Hdt. 1. 13, etc.—For the prevalence of this first and proper sense at Athens, see the whole speech of Dem. de Halonneso, cf. Aeschin, 55. 30; 50, ἀπ. χάριτας Lys. 189. g, cf. Thuc. 3. 63; dm. Tt és χάριν, ἐς ὀφεί- λημα Id. 2. 40; am. χάριν Isocr. 131 B; ἰτὴν πόλιν] ἀπ. τοῖς ἐπιγιγνο- μένοις οἵανπερ παρὰ τῶν πατέρων παρελάβομεν Xen. Hell. 7.1, 30:— Pass., ἕως « ἀπὸ πάντα δοθείη Od. 2. 78; ἀπ. μισθός, χάριτες Ar. Eq. 1066, Thuc. 3. 63. 2. to assign, ταῖς γυναιξὶ μουσικήν Plat. Rep. 456 B; τὸ δίκαιον Arist. Rhet. 1. 1, 7; τὸ πρὸς ἀλκὴν ὅπλον ἀπ. ἡ φύσις Id. G. A. 3. Io, 6, ete. b. ¢o refer to one, as belonging to his department, εἰς τοὺς κριτὰς τὴν κρίσιν Plat. Legg. 765 B; ἀπ. eis τὴν βουλὴν περὶ αὐτῶν to refer their case to the Council, Isocr. 372 B, cf. Lys. 164. 17, etc. 3. to return, render, yield, of land, ἐπὶ διηκόσια ἀποδοῦναι (sc. καρπόν) to yield fruit two hundred-fold, Hdt. 1.