Gratitude

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Cultish (2021)

  Acknowledgments It takes so many generous people to make a book like this possible. First, a gigantic thank-you to my many sources (including those whose interviews didn’t end up in the book but were still invaluable). I appreciate your time, expertise, reflection, and vulnerability more than I can say. What made this book especially neat was that it reconnected me to so many friends and family members I hadn’t spoken to in years. Leave it to the oddly universal topic of cults to bring us back together. To my wonderful editors, Karen Rinaldi and Rebecca Raskin, for your continual belief and investment in me. And to the rest of my fabulous, enthusiastic Harper Wave team: Yelena Nesbit, Sophia Lauriello and Penny Makras. To my literary agent, Rachel Vogel, who actually belongs to the next evolutionary level above human. I feel so lucky to have you as a representative and friend. Big thanks as well to Olivia Blaustein, for your constant championing. And to my book launch guru Dan Blank, for “just adding the water.” To my inspiring, supportive family, to whom I owe everything: my parents, Craig and Denise, and my brother, Brandon. Thank you for passing on the curiosity and skepticism. Special thanks to you, Mom, for helping with the title. To you, Brandon, for reading and nitpicking. And to you, Dad, for the many riveting cult stories. As always, I wait on the edge of my seat for your memoir. To my sweet, encouraging friends, mentors, and creative collaborators, especially Racheli Alkobey, Isa Medina, Amanda Kohr, Koa Beck, Camille Perri, Keely Weiss, Azadeh Ghafari, Joey Soloway, and Rachel Wiegand. Rae Mae, can you believe that creepy conversation we had at Pioneer Cemetery in early 2018 actually became a book? Wild. To my wonderfully engaged community of Instagram “followers”: You make the internet feel like a decent place to be. To Katie Neuhof for the killer author photo, and to Lacausa Clothing and Sargeant PR for the incredible dress. To my right-hand woman, Kaitlyn McLintock—this book could not have happened without your dedication, reliability, and sunshiny mettle. To my faithful canine and feline assistants: Fiddle, Claire, and especially my buddy David. I couldn’t have gotten through this year without you, my coccolone. And finally, to Casey Kolb. My soul mate, best friend, duet partner, sounding board, quarantine-mate, and one-man fan club. If there were a cult of CK, I’d join in a heartbeat.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  For the great kindness, however, which you and the Queen have displayed towards me, may God give you thanks and reward you on my behalf, since I myself could never repay you.’ She said no more, but the answer she had given was greatly pleasing to the Queen, who was now persuaded that the girl was as wise as the King had affirmed. The King then summoned Lisa’s parents, and on learning that they approved of what he was proposing, he sent for a certain young man called Perdicone, 7 who was gently bred but poor, and placing some rings in his hand, induced him to marry the girl without any show of reluctance. Nor was this all, for apart from the many precious jewels that he and the Queen presented to Lisa, the King forthwith appointed him lord of Cefalu and

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  HubSpot has created a great deal of wealth. By the end of 2015 the company was valued at nearly $2 billion. But most of the money has ended up in a remarkably small number of hands. After the IPO, in October 2014, nearly 80 percent of the company was owned by five venture capital firms and three insiders—Halligan, Shah, and J. D. Sherman, the chief operating officer, according to the S-1 prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The five venture capital firms invested $100 million and turned it into about $1 billion. And HubSpot stock kept climbing. By the end of 2015, even after selling some of his shares in the secondary offering, Halligan had a stake worth $63 million. Shah had a stake worth $120 million. HubSpot itself has never turned a profit. Wall Street analysts estimate that the company will continue losing money at least through 2017. Most analysts recommend buying the stock. Acknowledgments I’m indebted to many friends from Silicon Valley who spoke to me when I was working on this book and shared their insight and perspective. For the most part I have not mentioned these people by name, for the sake of protecting their privacy—but you guys know who you are. Also, in some parts of the book I have drawn on reporting and writing that I originally did for other publications, including Valleywag. My wife, Sasha, offered emotional support and boosted my spirits during the dark time when I was banished to the telemarketing center at HubSpot. She stayed calm when I was freaking out and dealing with lawyers and being interviewed by the FBI and trying to figure out what HubSpot’s executives had done to us. Most important, Sasha held down the fort while I was away from home, working in Los Angeles, and when I got back to Boston and was holed up in my office for weeks on end. My agent, Christy Fletcher, and her associates at Fletcher & Co. read drafts and provided valuable feedback. My editor, Paul Whitlatch, offered wise counsel, as did others at Hachette, including Mauro DiPreta, Michelle Aielli, Elisa Rivlin, and Betsy Hulsebosch. Production editor Melanie Gold and copy editor Lori Paximadis exhibited tremendous grace under pressure, and improved the manuscript immeasurably. Finally I would like to thank Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, and everyone else at HubSpot for providing me with such rich material. You truly made one plus one equal three.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  My own sensationalistic account has derived most aid and comfort from the writings of Hering, A. W. Volkmann, Stumpf, Leconte, and Schön. All these authors allow ample scope to that Experience which Berkeley's genius saw to be a present factor in all our visual acts. But they give Experience some grist to grind, which the soi-distant 'empiristic' school forgets to do. Stumpf seems to me the most philosophical and profound of all these writers; and I owe him much. I should doubtless have owed almost as much to Mr. James Ward, had his article on Psychology in the Encyclopædia Britannica appeared before my own thoughts were written down. The literature of the question is in all languages very voluminous. I content myself with referring to the bibliography in Helmholtz's and Aubert's works on Physiological Optics for the visual part of the subject, and with naming in a note the ablest works in the English tongue which have treated of the subject in a general way.[295] CHAPTER XXI. THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY.[296] BELIEF. Everyone knows the difference between imagining a thing and believing in its existence, between supposing a proposition and acquiescing in its truth. In the case of acquiescence or belief, the object is not only apprehended by the mind, but is held to have reality. Belief is thus the mental state or function of cognizing reality. As used in the following pages, 'Belief' will mean every degree of assurance, including the highest possible certainty and conviction. There are, as we know, two ways of studying every psychic state. First, the way of analysis: What does it consist in? What is its inner nature? Of what sort of mind-stuff is it composed? Second, the way of history: What are its conditions of production, and its connection with other facts?

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  attempted to share with him some of my own feelings about him and his situation in ways that I hoped might be helpful. I sent off the letter with some qualms, thinking that I might have been ridiculously mistaken. I very quickly received a reply. He was extremely grateful that someone had heard him. I had been quite correct in hearing his tone of voice and I felt very pleased that I had been able to hear him and hence make possible a real communication. So often, as in this instance, the words convey one message and the tone of voice a sharply different one. I find, both in therapeutic interviews and in the intensive group experiences which have meant a great deal to me, that hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at that moment, hearing not simply his words, but him, and when I let him know that I have heard his own private personal meanings, many things happen. There is first of all a grateful look. He feels released. He wants to tell me more about his world. He surges forth in a new sense of freedom. He becomes more open to the process of change. I have often noticed that the more deeply I hear the meanings of this person, the more there is that happens. Almost always, when a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, “Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it’s like to be me.” In such moments I have had the fantasy of a prisoner in a dungeon, tapping out day after day a Morse code message, “Does anybody hear me? Is anybody there?” And finally one day he hears some faint tappings which spell out “Yes.” By that one simple response he is released from his loneliness; he has become a human being again. There are many, many people living in private dungeons today, people who give no evidence of it whatsoever on the outside, where you have to listen very sharply to hear the faint messages from the dungeon. If this seems to you a little too sentimental or overdrawn, I would like to share with you an experience I had recently in a basic encounter group with fifteen persons in important executive posts. Early in the very intensive sessions of the week they were asked to write a statement of some feeling or feelings which they were not willing to share with the group. These were anonymous statements. One man wrote, “I don’t relate easily to people. I have an almost impenetrable facade. Nothing gets in to hurt me but nothing gets out. I have repressed so many emotions that I am close to emotional sterility. This situation doesn’t make me happy, but I don’t know what to do about it. Perhaps insight into how others react to me and why will help.” This was clearly a message from a dungeon. Later in the week a member of the group identified himself as the

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “T do, but I got a good deal. When I showed the artist the portrait I wanted him to work from, he said he’d do it free if he could keep the painting, even though he’s a big name in the business.” She grinned. “Good stuff cheap.” “Took, I feel bad, Leeny. I can’t have paid you all I owe you.” “Tye been the canvas and I’ve been the model. Now I’m the inspiration. Paid in full.’ She stroked my stubble coated chin softly then gave my cheek a firm pat. She turned around and her daisy hair bounded as she trotted to the big brown van to drive to her next delivery. The Witch of Jerome Avenue Tsaurah Litzky Yesterday morning I went off to art school at the Brooklyn Museum but our teacher felt sick and sent us home. I was disappointed. I loved drawing the magical objects in the museum’s collection, the kachina dolls and pharaohs’ crowns. It was my mother’s idea that I go to art school. She signed me up when she saw me doodling in the margins of my school notebooks. She made me the pink brocade shoulder bag that I use to carry my art supplies. When I got off the bus at our corner I realized I could still catch the Saturday matinée with free popcorn at the Valentino Cinema on Avenue L. It was East of Eden starring my heartthrob, James Dean. My mother and little brother Seymour weren’t home. They were at a science fair at Utrecht High School where my brother had won some kind of prize. His revolting interest in the earthworms he dug up from the swampy marshes near our house had paid off. Maybe my father was home and would go to the movies with me. I love going places with my handsome father. Women were always looking at him and I wondered if sometimes they thought I was his date. When we go to the movies, he always buys two Hershey bars with almonds but gives me the almonds from his because he knows how much I like them. On the way home he likes to talk about my opinion of the movie. He tells me I have a very smart, insightful mind. Our gray Plymouth Fury was in the driveway, an encouraging sign. I went in the side door that led to our finished basement. I thought he’d be down there reading the newspapers in his big leather chair. My father was in the basement but he wasn’t reading newspapers and he was not alone. He was leaning over the studio couch, his pants down to his thighs. What happened to his underwear? There The Witch of Jerome Avenue 389 was a woman beneath him and she wasn’t wearing clothes. He was moving up and down on top of her and she was letting out silly little squeals like my brother’s pet hamster, Eisenhower.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  Let me move on to a second learning that I would like to share with you. I like to be heard. A number of times in my life I have felt myself bursting with insoluble problems, or going round and round in tormented circles or, during one period, overcome by feelings of worthlessness and despair. I think I have been more fortunate than most in finding at these times individuals who have been able to hear me and thus to rescue me from the chaos of my feelings, individuals who have been able to hear my meanings a little more deeply than I have known them. These persons have heard me without judging me, diagnosing me, appraising me, evaluating me. They have just listened and clarified and responded to me at all the levels at which I was communicating. I can testify that when you are in psychological distress and someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good! At these times it has relaxed the tension in me. It has permitted me to bring out the frightening feelings, the guilts, the despair, the confusions that have been a part of my experience. When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to reperceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  If there had been no big boys as Monitors, there would still have been a certain amount of solitary frigging; from twelve or thirteen on, most boys and most girls too, practice self-abuse from time to time on some slight provocation, but the practice doesn’t often become habitual unless it is fostered by one’s elders and practiced mutually. In Ireland it was sporadic; in England perpetual and in English schools it often led to downright sodomy as in this instance. In my own case there were two restraining influences, and I wish to dwell on both as a hint to parents. I was a very eager little athlete: thanks to instructions and photographs in a book on athletics belonging to Vernon, I found out how to jump and how to run. To jump high one had to take but a short run from the side and straighten oneself horizontally as one cleared the bar. By constant practice I could at thirteen walk under the bar and then jump it. I soon noticed that if I frigged myself the night before, I could not jump so well, the consequence being that I restrained myself, and never frigged save on Sunday and soon managed to omit the practice on three Sundays out of four. Since I came to understanding, I have always been grateful to that exercise for this lesson in self-restraint. Besides, one of the boys was always frigging himself: even in school he kept his right hand in his trousers’ pocket and continued the practice. All of us knew that he had torn a hole in his pocket so that he could play with his cock; but none of the masters ever noticed anything. The little fellow grew gradually paler and paler until he took to crying in a corner, and unaccountable nervous tremblings shook him for a quarter of an hour at a time. At length, he was taken away by his parents: what became of him afterwards, I don’t know, but I do know that till he was taught self-abuse, he was one of the quickest boys of his age at lessons and given like myself to much reading. This object-lesson in consequences had little effect on me at the time; but later it was useful as a warning. Such teaching may have affected the Spartans as we read in history that they taught their children temperance by showing them a drunken helot; but I want to lay stress on the fact I was first taught self-control by a keen desire to excel in jumping and in running, and as soon as I found that I couldn’t run as fast or jump as high after practicing self-abuse, I began to restrain myself and in return this had a most potent effect on my will-power. I was over thirteen when a second and still stronger restraining influence made itself felt, and strangely enough this influence grew through my very desire for girls and curiosity about them.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “She wanted to see the University”, I said, “and I could not well refuse her.” “Oh, pay her” she cried, “but don’t walk with her. She’s a common thing, fancy her mentioning money to you, my dear!” That same evening I got a note from Lorna, saying her husband wanted to see me. I met the little man in the sitting-room and he proposed that I should come to his rooms every evening after supper and sit in a chair near the door reading; but with a Colt’s revolver handy so that no one could rob him and get away with the plunder. “I’d feel safer”, he ended up, “and my wife tells me you’re a sure shot and used to a wild life: what do you say? I’d give you sixty dollars a month and more than half the time you’d be free before midnight.” “It’s very kind of you”, I exclaimed with hot cheeks, “and very kind of Mrs. Mayhew too: I’ll do it and I beg you to believe that no one will bother you and get away with a whole skin”, and so it was settled. Aren’t women wonderful! In half a day she had solved my difficulty and I found the hours spent in Mayhew’s gambling rooms were more valuable than I had dreamed. The average man reveals himself in gaming more than in love or drink and I was astonished to discover that many of the so-called best citizens had a flutter with Mayhew from time to time. I don’t believe they had a fair deal, he won too constantly for that; but it was none of my business so long as the clients accepted the results: and he often showed kindness by giving back a few dollars after he had skinned a man of all he possessed. Naturally the fact that I was working with her husband threw me more into Mrs. Mayhew’s society: twice or so a week I had to spend the afternoon with her, and the constraint irked me. Kate, too, objected to my visits: she had too much pride to speak openly but one day she had seen me go in to Mrs. Mayhew’s and I think divined the rest; for at first she was cold to me and drew away even from my kisses: “you’ve chilled me”, she cried, “I don’t think I shall ever love you again entirely.” But when I got into her and really excited her, she suddenly kissed me fervently and her glorious eyes had heavy tears in them. “Why do you cry, dear?” I asked. “Because I cannot make you mine as I am all yours!” she cried. “Oh!” she went on, clutching me to her, “I think the pleasure is increased by the dreadful fear—and the hate—oh, love me and me only, love mine!” Of course, I promised fidelity; but I was surprised to feel that my desire for Kate, too, was beginning to cool.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  I am grateful, too, for all who have contributed to this project who prefer to remain unnamed, including those who have entrusted me with their stories. Thank you. I am deeply indebted to scholars and participant-observers who read all or parts of this manuscript: Elesha Coffman, George Marsden, Daniel Silliman, James Bratt, Will Katerberg, Lauren Turek, Greg Jones, Devin Manzullo-Thomas, Nevada DeLapp, Doug Koopman, David Malone, David Henreckson, Josh Parks, and Darren Dochuk. And especially to Tim Gloege, who slogged through early drafts and prodded me forward at key moments along the way. Thanks, too, to Alan Bean, Hunter Hampton, and Daniel Silliman for their scholarly generosity. This endeavor has always been part of a larger academic conversation, and it has been a distinct privilege to engage with such brilliant colleagues, critics, and coconspirators. Throughout this project I’ve been the beneficiary of the prompt and able assistance of librarians and archivists, including Calvin University’s David Malone and the Hekman Library staff, Melissa Nykanen of Pepperdine’s Special Collections and University Archives, Katherine Graber and Keith Call of Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center Archives, and also Bill Lindsay of the Hamblen Music Company. Without the generous support of the Louisville Institute and their investment in scholarship serving the church and society, this book could not have been written; special thanks to Don Richter for wholeheartedly endorsing this undertaking. Calvin University also provided essential research support. The Calvin Research Fellowship, Civitas Program, McGregor Scholars Program, Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, Dean for Research and Scholarship, and Provost’s office have all facilitated this work in indispensable ways. I am especially grateful to Cheryl Brandsen, Matt Walhout, and Susan Felch for their support in seeing this project through to completion. Thanks also to Todd Buchta and Beth Dykstra for help in securing additional support, to Jenna Hunt for expert assistance, and to John Hwang for working to ensure that this research finds a larger public. Perhaps most critically, Calvin University has enabled me to work with an exceptional team of research assistants. Austin Hakes helped launch this study with his keen interest and dedication, and along the way Kate Guichelaar and Isaac LaGrand provided additional expertise and assistance. More recently, Josh Parks, Kathryn Post, and Kelly Looman signed on, devoting countless hours to reading bad novels, collecting disturbing internet missives, and going down rabbit holes wherever they might lead, always with meticulous care, perceptive insight, and sparkling wit. Your camaraderie brought light to an otherwise somber study. There would be no book without you three, but you already know that. Opportunities to present this research in a variety of public settings have enriched and expanded the project. Harvard Divinity School’s Religious Literacy and the Professions Initiative provided a remarkable setting for interdisciplinary conversation that generated new friendships and intellectual partnerships; I am especially grateful for the guidance and encouragement offered by Stephen Prothero and David Hempton.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  In 1961, Tammy Faye married a fellow Pentecostalist, Jim Bakker, and started on a public career in a classic conservative Christian mode. Their evangelism was structured on a variation of Pentecostalism often styled the ‘Prosperity Gospel’, which proclaims that prayer is the route to success and wealth, citing Christ’s promise in Mark 11.23–24 that ‘whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours’. Tammy Faye predictably emphasized how traditional, stable nuclear heterosexual families were now under threat from the New Morality, although in a pattern remarkably frequent among her fellow women campaigners on the Christian Right, her own family background had in fact been disrupted and unhappy. Likewise, her husband later claimed that he had suffered sexual abuse in his youth behind a conventional Pentecostal facade. [49] From 1965 the Bakkers built up a phenomenally successful TV evangelistic show, PTL (Praise the Lord, or People That Love), in step with the growth of American religious and political conservatism. In the echo chamber of the Religious Right, though carefully avoiding endorsing a particular political party unlike some of their competitors, they enjoyed regular viewing figures of 12 million by 1986. By then behind the scenes all was unravelling: both Bakkers were suffering addictions seeking to counter severe stress, and their lives were becoming chaotic. Sexual abuse accusations against Jim Bakker in 1987 were followed by revelations that he had embezzled vast sums from the contributions of the devout, funding the pair’s lavish lifestyle. This is a not unfamiliar progression in popular evangelism, but there was a twist. While Jim went to prison, Tammy Faye persevered in developing an unexpected and individual strand in their TV show that she herself had pioneered. In 1985, to widespread Evangelical astonishment and disapproval, Tammy Faye staged an interview on PTL with Steve Pieters, a minister of the Metropolitan Community Church – by satellite, since he was by then in an advanced stage of AIDS and too sick to come to the PTL studio. It was an emotional and ideologically chaotic occasion, but out of it emerged Tammy Faye’s tearful acceptance of Pieters on screen as a fellow Christian, at a time when AIDS sufferers were often seen as alien threats to American society. After the Bakkers’ final disgrace and divorce, she persisted, co-hosting a TV talk show with a gay actor and becoming a regular and welcome fixture at public gay events (Plate 37). ‘When we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue, and I will always love them for that,’ she told Larry King Live in 2006. A year later she was dead of cancer, mourned by the leading US gay magazine The Advocate as ‘one of the few Christian conservatives to openly support us’. [50] Tammy Faye Bakker’s version of a conversion narrative represents one possible outcome of seventy years of bitterness and confrontation on sexual matters: a story of judgement suspended and transformed by personal experience.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Next morning I awoke rested but very weak: the Doctor came in and sponged me in warm water and changed my linen: my nightshirt and a great part of the sheet were quite brown. “Can you make water?” he asked, handing me a bed-dish: I tried and at once succeeded. “The wonder is complete!!” he cried, “I’ll bet, you have cured your lumbago too”, and indeed I was completely free of pain. That evening or the next my father and I had a great, heart-to-heart talk. I told him all my ambitions and he tried to persuade me to take one hundred pounds a year from him to continue my studies. I told him I couldn’t, though I was just as grateful. “I’ll get work as soon as I am strong”, I said; but his unselfish affection shook my very soul and when he told me that my sister, too, had agreed he should make me the allowance, I could only shake my head and thank him. That evening I went to bed early and he came and sat with me: he said that the doctor advised that I should take a long rest. Strange colored lights kept sweeping across my sight every time I shut my eyes: so I asked him to lie beside me and hold my hand. At once he lay down beside me and with his hand in mine, I soon fell asleep and slept like a log till seven next morning. I awoke perfectly well and refreshed and was shocked to see that my father’s face was strangely drawn and white and when he tried to get off the bed, he nearly fell. I saw then that he had lain all the night through on the brass edge of the bed rather than risk disturbing me to give him more room. From that time to the end of his noble and unselfish life, some twenty-five years later, I had only praise and admiration for him.

• From Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020)

  I had the honor, too, of returning to the University of Notre Dame’s CORAH seminar and to Notre Dame’s Enduring Trends and New Directions conference to engage in lively discussions around themes in this book; special thanks to Jonathan Riddle and Darren Dochuk for extending these invitations. Thanks also to the University of Iowa’s Geneva Lecture series and to Tom Wolthuis and Dawn Wolthuis for their generous hospitality, and to Calvin University’s Festival of Faith and Writing, Just Citizenship series, and the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics for additional opportunities to share portions of this research. Talks at local churches, the National Women’s Studies Association, the American Historical Association, the Conference on Faith and History, and the American Society of Church History also provided spaces for illuminating exchanges. At each of these venues, I benefited from thoughtful audience engagement; I am especially appreciative of the many white evangelical men who responded with such interest and investment in this project. Earlier forays into this research have appeared in print, sparking further constructive conversation. I am grateful to Marie Griffith and Tiffany Stanley at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics for publishing my initial exploration into evangelical masculinity and militarism at Religion & Politics . I am grateful, too, to Wendy McDowell and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin and Bob Smietana and the Religion News Service for publishing further iterations of this work. In recent years, I’ve had the privilege of being part of a wonderful group of historians writing at Patheos’s Anxious Bench . Thanks especially to Chris Gehrz for leading this team, and to Beth Allison Barr for bringing me on board and for being both friend and accomplice. It seems appropriate, too, to offer a word of thanks to the many religion journalists whose careful reporting has been essential to my own research, and whose work will no doubt prove indispensable to future historians. Over the course of this project I’ve benefited immensely from the guidance of my agent Giles Anderson, who shepherded this book from its inception and ensured that it ended up in the right hands. It has been an honor to work with the Liveright team, from Katie Adams, who first loved this project and helped give it shape, to Robert Weil who tended it along the way, and, finally, to my editor Dan Gerstle, who has the uncanny ability to be right about everything. Thank you, too, to Gina Iaquinta for efficient and cheerful production assistance, to Nancy Palmquist for copyediting with such care, and to Peter Miller, Jessica R. Friedman, Haley Bracken, and all those who have worked to bring this book into the world. My family, near and far, have supported me in ways that are difficult to capture in words, not least by providing a beautiful reminder on a daily basis that there are things more important than politics, and that love extends across political divides.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Acknowledgements Hardly had my reading for this book begun in 2020 when the world was plunged into lockdown. It was a particular pleasure in those peculiar conditions to enjoy the virtual or carefully regulated face-to-face company of my colleagues and friends at Campion Hall Oxford, who in my retirement from the Oxford Theology and Religion Faculty had generously elected me to a Fellowship at the Hall, complete with study space. Their hospitality afforded pleasant hours contemplating angels proudly bearing rifles, in the delightful collection of Cuzco art donated to the Hall by Prof. Peter Davidson. I extend my thanks to all at Campion for their welcome and conversation, alongside my continuing happy association with St Cross College over three decades, now as Emeritus Fellow. Although I take full responsibility for both the reading and research I have done and for the conclusions I have drawn, I was very lucky to have expert and enthusiastic assistance from Dr Anna Chrysostomides and Dr Rachel Dryden, specialists in Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christianity, who drew up bibliographies for me on some of the topics investigated in this book. What an unalloyed pleasure it was to work with them and enjoy their learning and friendship: it was a privilege to discuss this material with them, and they hugely enriched what I have been able to write. I am deeply grateful to the British Academy Small Grants Fund, supported by the Leverhulme Trust, for providing funding for that research assistance. I am also grateful to friends and colleagues for fruitful conversations and advice, of whom these are especially to be thanked, while exempt from blame for remaining faults: Lindsay Allason-Jones, Sarah Apetrei, Nick Austin, Matthew Bemand-Qureshi, John Blair, Averil Cameron, Sarah Caro, Martin Carver, Mark Chapman, Sophie Grace Chappell, Sarah Coakley, Katy Cubitt, Brian Cummings, Peter Davidson, Bea Groves, Peter Groves, Helena Hamerow, Michael Harazin, Martin Henig, Judith Herrin, David Hilliard, Ronald Hutton, Isidoros Katsos, Jim Keenan, Tim Lavy, Philip Lindholm, Jack Mahoney, Noel Malcolm, Rachel Rafael Neis, Nicholas Orme, Aristotle Papanikolaou, David Parker, Ken Parker, John Paton, Glyn Redworth, Malise Ruthven, Alison Salvesen, Josephine Seccombe, Gemma Simmonds, Michael Snape, Guy Stroumsa, Susan Walker, Robin Ward, William Whyte, Christopher Woods and Simon Yarrow. In addition, Sam Baddeley, John Barton, John Blair, Katy Cubitt, Sue Gillingham, Paula Gooder, Helen King and Judith Maltby kindly read all or part of my text and made invaluable suggestions. I learned much from the late John Boswell and the late Alan Bray, brave and pioneering scholars whom I would dearly love to have known longer. As ever, I am hugely grateful to the support provided even for retired University staff by the Oxford library system and its heroic staff members, from Bodley’s librarian onwards. What a luxury it is to enjoy this association. All through my three decades in Oxford, I have also luxuriated in the range of our graduate seminars and the welcome I received into their specialist deliberations.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Margulies, Alfred. The Empathic Imagination. New York, 1989. Muhaiyaddeen, M. R. Bawa. A Book of God’s Love. Philadelphia, 1981. Schweitzer, Albert. Reverence for Life. New York, 1965. Thich Nhat Hanh. Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. New York, 2001. ———. The Art of Power. New York, 2004. ———. The Miracle of Mindfulness. Boston, 1975. ———. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. New York, 1991. ———. Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions. New York, 2004. ———. Teachings on Love. Berkeley, 2007. ———. True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart. Boston, 1997. Tolle, Eckhart. The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. London, 1999. Tutu, Desmond M. No Future Without Forgiveness. New York, 1999. ———, and Mpho Tutu. Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes a Difference. New York, 2010. These books look at compassion from the perspective of modern psychology and neuroscience. Begley, Sharon. The Plastic Mind. London, 2009. Browning, Don. Religious Thought and Modern Psychologies: A Critical Conversation in the Theology of Culture. Philadelphia, 1987. Davidson, Richard J., and Anne Harrington, eds. Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature. Oxford, 2002. Gilbert, Paul. The Compassionate Mind. London, 2009. Hefner, Philip. The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion. Minneapolis, 1993. Molino, Anthony, ed. The Couch and the Tree: Dialogues in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism. London, 1998. Pope, Stephen. The Evolution of Altruism and the Ordering of Love. Washington, D.C., 1994. Post, Stephen G. Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion, and Service. Radnor, Pa., 2003. ———. Lynn G. Underwood, Jeffrey S. Schloss, and William B. Hurlbut, eds. Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue. Oxford, 2002. Rolston, Holmes. Genes, Genesis and God. Cambridge, U.K., 1999. Vaillant, George E. Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith. New York, 2008. Walsh, Anthony. The Science of Love: Understanding Love and Its Effects on Mind and Body. Buffalo, 1991. Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious. New York, 2009. These books address the issues of scripture and scriptural interpretation. Akenson, Donald Harman. Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds. New York, San Diego, and London, 1998. Alter, Robert, and Frank Kermode, eds. A Literary Guide to the Bible. London, 1987. Particularly recommended is the essay by Gerald L. Bruns, “Midrash and Allegory: The Beginnings of Scriptural Interpretation.” Armstrong, Karen. The Bible: A Biography. London and New York, 2007. Cragg, Kenneth. The Event of the Qur’an. Oxford, 1971. A marvelous book. ———. Readings in the Qur’an. London, 1988. Fishbane, Michael. The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology. Cambridge, Mass., 1998. ———. The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics. Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989. Both books by Fishbane are highly recommended. Gatje, Helmut. The Qur’an and Its Exegesis. Berkeley, 1976. Holcomb, Justin S., ed. Christian Theologies of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction. New York and London, 2006. Kraemer, David. The Mind of the Talmud: An Intellectual History of the Bavli. New York and Oxford, 1990.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As always, a full-hearted thanks to my agents, Felicity Bryan, Peter Ginsberg, and Andrew Nurnberg, and my editors, Jane Garrett, Will Sulkin, and Robbert Ammerlaan, who have supported me so devotedly over the years. I am also most grateful to all the people who have worked on this book with such professional expertise: At the Bodley Head, special thanks to Jörg Hensgen for his painstaking, thorough, and imaginative work on the manuscript, Kay Peddle (assistant editor), Beth Humphries (copy editor), and Anna Crone (jacket designer); and at Knopf, Ellen Feldman (production editor), Maggie Hinders (text designer), Barbara de Wilde (jacket designer), Louise Collazo (copy editor), and Claire Bradley Ong (production manager), who worked to the standard of excellence that I have come to expect from Knopf but hope I shall never take for granted. Thanks too to Michele Topham, Carole Robinson, and Jackie Head in Felicity Bryan’s office, and to Leslie Levine, Jane Garrett’s assistant, for their kindness and endless patience. Thanks in advance also to the publicists: Chloe Johnson Hill, Kim Thornton, Sheila Kay, and Francien Schuursma, who I know will work with their usual skill and commitment when the book is published. But I must also thank all those who have worked with me on the Charter for Compassion. First, my sincere gratitude to everybody at TED, who from the very beginning saw potential in what some would have regarded as a quixotic project, especially Chris Anderson, Amy Novogratz (to whom this book is dedicated), Casson Rosenblatt, and Daniel Mitchell. Your generosity, commitment, and creativity never cease to astonish me. It has also been a great joy to work with everybody at the Fetzer Institute, with special thanks to Susan Trabucchi (former senior program officer) for her invaluable commitment and practical insight during my first months with Fetzer, Gillian Gonda (program officer), and Amy Ferguson (communications specialist). Thanks too to Simon Cohen and Lance McPherson at Global Tolerance for their superb input; and to Emily Hawkins at Sunshine, Sachs & Associates. Finally, thanks to James Berrill for achieving the near-impossible feat of collating the myriad contributions made to the draft charter by the general public in preparation for the meeting of the Council of Conscience in Vevey, Switzerland. It is unfortunately impossible to thank all the people in over 150 partner organizations and the individual ambassadors who are working so tirelessly to incorporate the message of the charter into their own programs. We are immensely grateful for the support and endorsement of H.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Who baked the bread you toast for breakfast? Become aware of the labor that went into the production of each slice. As you set off to work, reflect on the thousands of workers and engineers who build and maintain the roads, cars, railroads, planes, trains, and underground transport on which you rely. Continue this exercise throughout the day. We should also make ourselves aware that our cultural, ethical, religious, and intellectual traditions have all been profoundly affected by other peoples’. We think of them as ours, but they may in the past have been deeply influenced by the ancestors of those we now regard as enemies. We are what we are because of the hard work, insights, and achievements of countless others. When we are braced defensively to withstand a threat, we cannot think intelligently or creatively. If we allow ourselves to feel anger or disdain, this will affect our spiritual and intellectual health, because ingratitude and hatred shrink our horizons. Zhuangzi would say that it is unrealistic to try to freeze our cultural, national, or religious traditions in their current mode. Think of how radically they have changed and adapted to new conditions over the centuries and even within your lifetime. The meditation on the Immeasurables is designed precisely to bring down the barriers we erect against the other so that our horizons can expand. Letting go of our “tribal” egotism can become a spiritual process, which is beautifully illustrated in the story of the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey ( isr ’) to Jerusalem and his Ascension to Heaven ( mi‘r j ). 7 This is a mythos; it describes an archetypal process rather than an accurate occurrence. There are references in the Qur’an to a mystical experience of the Prophet, but they don’t resemble the detailed narrative that was written down for the first time during the eighth century. 8 Muhammad’s early biographers inserted the story into the period when the Prophet was being forced to leave Mecca, abandon his tribe, and take up permanent residence with another, and like any myth, it explores the deeper significance of what was happening. The hijrah (“migration”) from Mecca to the agricultural settlement of Medina, some 250 miles to the north, was more than a change of address: abandoning your tribe, the most sacred value of all, amounted to blasphemy in Arabia at this time. The word hijrah itself suggests a painful rupture, its root HJR meaning “he cut himself off from friendly or loving communication or intercourse … he ceased … to associate with them.” 9 Traditional Arab odes often depicted the poet embarking on a night journey, a terrifying trek across the desert, before enjoying a joyful reunion with his tribe, which he celebrates in a hymn of praise to its unique superiority, its valor in war, and its eternal hatred of those who threaten its survival. 10 But Muhammad’s Night Journey reverses this pattern.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  H. the Dalai Lama and the Dalai Lama Foundation. I must give special thanks to Badr Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum, for his extraordinary commitment and pragmatic genius in promoting the charter in the Middle East; Amin Hashwani for his relentless and innovative work for peace in Pakistan; Ambassador Mussie Hailu of Ethiopia, who declared April 5 Golden Rule Day in the United Nations and has energetically promoted the charter in Africa; Danielle Lauren of Sydney, Australia; Janet Allinson in Canada; all my new friends at the Compassionate Action Network in Seattle for their outstanding leadership; the United Religious Initiative; Mozes & Aäronkerk in Amsterdam; and my friends at the Chautauqua Institution for their impressive work and ongoing counsel. It is a joy and privilege to work with each and every one of you. Finally, I am most grateful to the members of the Council of Conscience, who composed the charter. First, my dear friend the Reverend Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, Director of the Department of Religion at the Chautauqua Institution, who committed herself heart and soul to the charter from day one and chaired the Vevey meeting with such brilliance and acumen. The very first person I approached about the charter was Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, whose immediate and generous response gave the charter a credibility at an early stage that it might not otherwise have had. And my most sincere thanks to all the Councillors whose wisdom and insight were an inspiration: Salman Ahmed, musician and social activist; Ali Asani, Professor of the Practice of Indo-Muslim Languages and Culture at Harvard University; Sadhvi Chaitanya, Spiritual Director of Arsha Vijan Mandiram; the Right Reverend John Bryson Chane, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C.; Sister Joan Chittister, Founder and Director of Benetvision; His Excellency Sheikh Ali Gomaa, Grand Mufti of the Arab Republic of Egypt; Mohsen Kadivar, Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University; Chandra Muzaffar, President of the International Movement for a Just World; Baroness Julia Neuberger, Prime Minister’s Champion for Volunteering, U.K.; Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University; Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C.; Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, Rabbi of the Reform Jewish Community of The Hague; Reverend Peter Storey, former President of the Methodist Church of South Africa and the South African Council of Churches; Tho Ha Vinh, Head of Training, Learning, and Development in the International Committee of the Red Cross; Tu Wei Ming, Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies at Harvard University; and Jean Zaru, presiding Clerk of the Ramallah Friends Meeting.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Suddenly as I went on, I felt her move and then again; plainly she was showing me where my touch gave her most pleasure: I could have died for her in thanks; again she moved and I could feel a little mound or small button of flesh right in the front of her sex, above the junction of the inner lips: of course it was her clitoris. I had forgotten all the old Methodist doctor’s books till that moment; this fragment of long forgotten knowledge came back to me: gently I rubbed the clitoris and at once she pressed down on my finger for a moment or two. I tried to insert my finger into the vagina; but she drew away at once and quickly, closing her sex as if it hurt, so I went back to caressing her tickler. [Illustration] Sudden the miracle ceased. The cursed organist had finished his explanation of the new plain chant, and as he touched the first notes on the piano, E… drew her legs together; I took away my hand and she stepped down from the chair: “You darling, darling”, I whispered; but she frowned, and then just gave me a smile out of the corner of her eye to show me she was not displeased. Ah, how lovely, how seductive she seemed to me now, a thousand times lovelier and more desirable than ever before. As we stood up to sing again, I whispered to her: “I love you, love you, dear, dear!” I can never express the passion of gratitude I felt to her for her goodness, her sweetness in letting me touch her sex. E… it was who opened the Gates of Paradise to me and let me first taste the hidden mysteries of sexual delight. Still, after more than fifty years I feel the thrill of the joy she gave me by her response, and the passionate reverence of my gratitude is still alive in me. This experience with E… had the most important and unlooked for results. The mere fact that girls could feel sex pleasure “just as boys do” increased my liking for them and lifted the whole sexual intercourse to a higher plane in my thought. The excitement and pleasure were so much more intense than anything I had experienced before that I resolved to keep myself for this higher joy. No more self-abuse for me; I knew something infinitely better. One kiss was better, one touch of a girl’s sex.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  I co-edited the Journal of Ecclesiastical History for two decades from 1995. That journal, leader in its field worldwide, publishes around three hundred book reviews a year, commissioned by the editors from experts across the entire range of Church history: a superb resource of up-to-date discussion which I have found a sure guide in formulating the structure of my historical narratives. The present editorial team continues to be a source of friendship, fun and wisdom. Likewise, my fellow judges of the Wolfson Prize and our admirable support team have prompted both enjoyable discussions and a constant reminder to spread my sights across the whole field of historical publication beyond my own arbitrary interests. At Penguin Press, Stuart Proffitt’s warm encouragement, expert editing and constant interest in the enterprise have remained essential to its completion, together with many Penguin colleagues, notably Richard Duguid. Cecilia Mackay has brought her usual energy and skill to enrich my choice of illustrations. At an early stage in my preparation of this book came the death of my long-standing literary agent, Felicity Bryan: so much more than an agent, as friend, motivator and inspiration. Her zest for life in general, and for the writing and publishing of books in particular, will remain in the affectionate memory of all who knew her; this book itself owes much to her encouragement and spirited championship of my proposal, and it is a privilege to dedicate this book to her memory and for those who love her. Her colleague and successor, Catherine Clarke, has been a continuing source of support and friendship, and I am delighted by the continuing benevolent part that the fine folk at Felicity Bryan Associates play in my enterprises. Finally, those who have taught me what little I understand about human relationships will know who they are, and why they deserve my gratitude. Diarmaid MacCulloch St Cross College and Campion Hall Oxford, February 2024