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 Martin Luther (2016)

  The staff at many archives, museums, art galleries, and libraries have been unfailingly helpful and kind. First I would like to thank the staff of the Bodleian Library Oxford and the History Librarian, Isabel Holowaty; the British Library; the Wittenberg Stadtarchiv and its researchers, especially Hans-Jochen Seidel, who showed me Wittenberg; the Lutherhalle Wittenberg, in particular Jutta Strehle, who took me through the Bildersammlung, Gabi Protzmann, and Petra Wittig; the Evangelisches Predigerseminar Wittenberg Bibliothek; the Thüringisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar; the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz; the Landesdenkmalamt Halle; the Marienbibliothek Halle; the Stadtarchiv Eisleben; the Stadtarchiv Eisenach; Frau Günzel and Frau Kaiser of Schloss Mansfeld; the Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Magdeburg, Standort Magdeburg; the Landesarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt, Standort Wernigerode, in particular Susan Schulze; the Landesbibliothek Coburg; the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha; and the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. No scholar can work on sixteenth-century German material without the extraordinary “VD 16” and the help of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich. Juliane Kerkhecker generously worked with me on Luther’s Latin and many of her insights are in this book. Christian Preusse, Melinda Letts, Floris Verhaart, Edmund Wareham, Martin Christ, Mikey Pears, and Raquel Candelas all gave invaluable research assistance; Candice Saunders made sure everything happened and provided flair. Nadja Pentzlin proved a phenomenal picture sleuth and organizer. Many audiences have helped me shape my ideas, and I’m grateful to them, as have many individuals, including Mette Ahlefeldt-Laurvig, Sarah Apetrei, Charlotte Appel, Wolfgang Behringer, Paul Betts, Sue Bottigheimer, Patrick Cane, Charles Colville, Natalie Zemon Davis, Martin Donnelly, Michael Drolet, Liz Fidlon, Etienne François, Laura Gowing, Rebekka Habermas, Adalbert Hepp, Michael Hunter, Susan Karant-Nunn, Thomas Kaufmann, Simone Laqua, Volker Leppin, Peter Macardle, Jan Machielsen, Hans Medick, Erik Midelfort, Hannah Murphy, Johannes Paulmann, Glyn Redworth, Tom Robisheaux, Ailsa Roper, Cath Roper, Miri Rubin, Alex Shepard, Philip Soergel, Hubert Stadler, Andreas Stahl, Willibald Steinmetz, Naomi Tadmor, Barbara Taylor, Bernd Weisbrod, Chris Wickham, Merry Wiesner, Tim Wilson, Karin Woerdemann, Sylvie Zannier, and Charles Zika, whose insights have all found their way into this book. Many friends read entire drafts, some even when the book was at a very early stage, generously discussed the ideas, and made countless suggestions.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  the words of Jesus which ordered his followers to do it in remembrance of him, and it was done as a re-enactment of that ‘last supper’ which Jesus had shared with his Twelve before his arrest.43 The power and mystery of the Eucharist, linking the crucified Saviour to those who break bread and drink wine ever afterwards, has provoked intense devotion, gratitude and joy among Christians, yet also deep anger and bitterness when they argue about what it means.These Passion narratives are probably the earliest continuous material in the Gospels, a set of stories first formulated for public recital in the various communities which compiled their own accounts of his life, sufferings and resurrection. Unlike the two infancy narratives, their details have much circumstantial overlap and feel like real events, but in their present shape they are also designed to make sense of something which came to be a real problem for the later Church. The Romans killed Jesus, however much the Temple establishment, in fury and fear at the nature of his preaching, had prompted them to do so. Jesus had said nothing more outrageous about the religion of the Jews than other wild representatives of Judaism had proclaimed either before him or in his own time. His was not a theological but a political threat to the fragile stability of the region. Non-Jews killed a potential Jewish leader, as they had killed the Maccabean heroes long before. This was emphasized by the title inextricably associated with the stories of Jesus’s last hours and said to have been affixed to his cross: ‘King of the Jews’. Like ‘Son of Man’, this was not a title for which the later Christian Church found any use and so its survival in the tradition is all the more instructive. That ‘King of the Jews’ phrase is an inescapable repeated refrain through the Passion narratives, even despite the embarrassment which it was to cause Christians in the fraught political situation which emerged a few decades after that death on the Cross. Most Christians did not want to be enemies of the Roman Empire and they soon sought to play down the role of the Romans in the story. So the Passion narratives shifted the blame on to the Jewish authorities, and the local representative of Roman authority – a coarse-grained soldier called Pontius Pilate – was portrayed as inquisitive and bewildered, cross-questioning the seditious prisoner before him as if Jesus were an equal and making every effort to get him off the hook. The evangelist John pictured the Jews as being forced by legal circumstance to hand over a man condemned for blasphemy to the Roman authorities if they were to secure the death sentence for him which they ardently sought.44 That is implausible, considering that three decades later the Jerusalem High Priest was directly responsible for the execution of Jesus’s brother James, then leader of the Christians in Jerusalem. Additionally, the evangelist Matthew shifted blame for Jesus’s death (with satisfying drama, though without any legal

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  who might also be considered as having the authority of bishops, in a diverse and loosely organized city Church, and what particular prestige and authority were enjoyed by the Church in Rome was a matter of its collective identity.62 The second-century Roman Church’s numbers were substantial, but still it formed a tiny proportion of the city’s population, and at that time and for some decades to come it revealed its origins as a community of immigrants by the fact that its language was not Latin but Greek. There is one survival of Greek in the liturgy of the Western Church: a Greek prayer so venerable (though not to be found in the text of scripture) that even after the Church in Rome changed to Latin, Western congregations continued to chant it. The threefold Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison (‘Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy’) is so intensely used in Orthodox liturgy that its repetition can almost sound like a mantra; in the Western Church its appearance is much more restricted, but it is one of the fixtures in the preparatory sections of the Eucharist, the inspiration for much sacred music over the centuries. It is a powerful reminder of the era when the ‘Catholic’ Church throughout the Mediterranean was united by a common language. The switch to Latin in Christian Rome may have been made by one of the bishops at the end of the century, Victor (189–99).63 He may indeed have been the first monarchical bishop in Rome; he was one of that generation of Church leaders, like Irenaeus in Lyons and Demetrius in Alexandria, intent on creating a Church with a single source of episcopal authority and a single doctrinal standard which would be affirmed by other bishops elsewhere (see pp. 129–30). It was Victor, with the encouragement of Irenaeus, who narrowed the diversity of belief which a Bishop of Rome would consider acceptable, by ending the long-standing custom of sending Eucharistic bread and wine which he had consecrated to a variety of Christian communities in the city – including Valentinian gnostics, Montanists and various exponents of Monarchian views on the Trinity (see pp. 145–6).64 This was in effect a punitive action; as such, it was a pioneering form of a favourite device in later centuries, excommunication – cutting off offenders from fellowship with the Christians in a particular place. Nothing could better illustrate the new formal role of the bishop as teacher and guardian of discipline. Successive bishops emphasized their unifying role in the vastness of the city by visiting the various places of Christian worship in turn; during the third century, as more churches achieved permanent sites instead of congregations casually meeting in Christian houses, this became the basis of a liturgical rota of ‘stational’ papal visits which still survives in the liturgical year in Rome. Many other bishops in large and potentially divided cities followed the Bishop of Rome’s example later.65

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  End of story.” “That’s it?!” the Colonel said. “That’s the best day of your whole life?!” “Yup.” “I liked eet,” Lara said. “I like the monkeys, too.” “Lame,” said the Colonel. I didn’t think it was lame so much as more of Alaska’s intentional vagueness, another example of her furthering her own mysteriousness. But still, even though I knew it was intentional, I couldn’t help but wonder: What’s so fucking great about the zoo? But before I could ask, Lara spoke. “’Kay, my turn,” said Lara. “Eet’s easy. The day I came here. I knew Engleesh and my parents deedn’t, and we came off the airplane and my relatives were here, aunts and uncles I had not ever seen, in the airport, and my parents were so happy. I was twelve, and I had always been the leetle baby, but that was the first day that my parents needed me and treated me like a grown-up. Because they did not know the language, right? They need me to order food and to translate tax and immigration forms and everytheeng else, and that was the day they stopped treating me like a keed. Also, in Romania, we were poor. And here, we’re kinda reech.” She laughed. “All right.” Takumi smiled, grabbing the bottle of wine. “I lose. Because the best day of my life was the day I lost my virginity. And if you think I’m going to tell you that story, you’re gonna have to get me drunker than this.” “Not bad,” the Colonel said. “That’s not bad. Want to know my best day?” “That’s the game, Chip,” Alaska said, clearly annoyed. “Best day of my life hasn’t happened yet. But I know it. I see it every day. The best day of my life is the day I buy my mom a huge fucking house. And not just like out in the woods, but in the middle of Mountain Brook, with all the Weekday Warriors’ parents. With all y’all’s parents. And I’m not buying it with a mortgage either. I’m buying it with cash money, and I am driving my mom there, and I’m going to open her side of the car door and she’ll get out and look at this house—this house is like picket fence and two stories and everything, you know—and I’m going to hand her the keys to her house and I’ll say, ‘Thanks.’ Man, she helped fill out my application to this place. And she let me come here, and that’s no easy thing when you come from where we do, to let your son go away to school. So that’s the best day of my life.” Takumi tilted the bottle up and swallowed a few times, then handed it to me. I drank, and so did Lara, and then Alaska put her head back and turned the bottle upside down, quickly downing the last quarter of the bottle.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  Acknowledgments I am grateful to the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference for its recognition of an early chapter and the impetus to finish this book; the Ragdale Foundation for the gift of time, space, and amazing food that sustained spirit and body (thank you, Linda); the Writers’ League of Texas, especially Cyndi Hughes and Jan Baumer for ongoing support; and to the Austin Bat Cave and S. Kirk Walsh for workshops that inspired and encouraged me to believe in my story. Many thanks to Theresa May, editor in chief at the University of Texas Press, for her cheerleading and “safety net,” and to writers P. J. Pierce, Mary Day Long, Elena Eidelberg, and Christine Wicker for reading the pages and listening. Special thanks to the women of the Secret Sports Club (you know who you are) for beating back the demons. My sister Carol Terrell Lamb and my mother, Carolyn Richardson, provided background materials that breathed life into the past and for which I am truly grateful. The persistence and patience of agent extraordinaire Dan Conaway turned a prologue into a book and my editor, Lauren Marino, at Gotham kept the faith through missed deadlines. A number of texts provided context and inspiration for this book: First and foremost, Can Somebody Shout Amen! Inside the Tents and Tabernacles of American Revivalists, by Patsy Sims; Salvation on Sand Mountain, by Dennis Covington; The Gospel Singer: A Novel, by Harry Crews; All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America, by David Edwin Harrell Jr.; Border Radio (page 318), by Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford; Journey to Dharavi: The Life and Ministry of David Terrell, by Earl W. Green; and Beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, by David Randall Terrell. Thanks to William Martin, senior fellow for Religion and Public Policy, Baker Institute at Rice University, for sharing his notes and observations of David Terrell and other revivalists. Finally, I owe everything to Kirk Wilson, my husband and partner, for his tireless support and unshakable faith.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Wirt, Sherwood Eliot (ed.). Spiritual Awakening: Classic Writings of the Eighteenth Century. Devotions to Inspire and Help the Twentieth-Century Reader. Tring, U.K, 1988. Wolfenstein, Martha. Disaster: A Psychological Essay. Glencoe, Ill., 1957. Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969. Wright, Lawrence. Saints and Sinners. New York, 1993. Wright, Melton. Fortress of Faith: The Story of Bob Jones University. Greenville, S.C., 1984. Wuthnow, Robert, and Matthew P. Lawson. “Religious Movements and Counter Movements in North America.” In James Beckford (ed.), New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change. Paris, 1987. ———. “Quid Obscurum: The Changing Terrain of Church-State Relations.” In Mark A. Noll (ed.), Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s (Oxford and New York, 1990). ———.“Sources of Christian Fundamentalism in the United States.” In Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Accounting for Fundamentalisms. Chicago and London, 1994. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Spinoza and Other Heretics. 2 vols. I: The Marrano of Reason; II: The Adventures of Immanence. Princeton, N.J., 1989. ———.Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews. Cambridge, U.K., 1998. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As ALWAYS, I must express heartfelt thanks to my literary agents, Felicity Bryan, Peter Ginsberg, and Andrew Nurnburg, and to my editors, Jane Garrett, Michael Fishwick, and Robbert Amerlaan. Their encouragement, enthusiasm, and devoted work on my behalf over the years have been quite indispensable, as well as a source of joy. I am also most grateful to the production team at Knopf for their skilled, patient work: Melvin Rosenthal (production editor), Anthea Lingeman (designer), Claire Bradley Ong (production manager), and Archie Ferguson, who designed the jacket. I must also express my gratitude to Michele Topham and Carole Robinson in Felicity Bryan’s office, for their constant help and their calm support in moments of crisis; to John Esposito, who invited me to the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (giving me access to its rich resources and the expertise of every single one of its members), and, with his wife, Jeanette, lavished such generous hospitality upon me. Thanks also to Rosie Tollemache, who acted as my assistant for three glorious months, before leaving to have her baby, Lizzie, and to Henrik Mossin, my Danish translator, for introducing me to the work of Johannes Sloek. Finally, a big thank you to Kate Jones and John Tackaberry for their friendship in moments of despair and for the many beautifully cooked meals that supplemented my dismal diet during the long months of writing. A Conversation with Karen Armstrong Karen Armstrong was interviewed by Jonathan Kirsch, a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times who writes and lectures widely on biblical, literary, and legal topics.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  We had separate blankets, and there were never fewer than three layers between us, but the possibilities kept me up half the night. forty-six days before BEST THANKSGIVING FOOD I’d ever had. No crappy cranberry sauce. Just huge slabs of moist white meat, corn, green beans cooked in enough bacon fat to make them taste like they weren’t good for you, biscuits with gravy, pumpkin pie for dessert, and a glass of red wine for each of us. “I believe,” Dolores said, “that yer s’posed to drink white with turkey, but—now I don’t know ’bout y’all—but I don’t s’pose I give a shit.” We laughed and drank our wine, and then after the meal, we each listed our gratitudes. My family always did that before the meal, and we all just rushed through it to get to the food. So the four of us sat around the table and shared our blessings. I was thankful for the fine food and the fine company, for having a home on Thanksgiving. “A trailer, at least,” Dolores joked. “Okay, my turn,” Alaska said. “I’m grateful for having just had my best Thanksgiving in a decade.” Then the Colonel said, “I’m just grateful for you, Mom,” and Dolores laughed and said, “That dog won’t hunt, boy.” I didn’t exactly know what that phrase meant, but apparently it meant, “That was inadequate,” because then the Colonel expanded his list to acknowledge that he was grateful to be “the smartest human being in this trailer park,” and Dolores laughed and said, “Good enough.” And Dolores? She was grateful that her phone was back on, that her boy was home, that Alaska helped her cook and that I had kept the Colonel out of her hair, that her job was steady and her coworkers were nice, that she had a place to sleep and a boy who loved her. I sat in the back of the hatchback on the drive home—and that is how I thought of it: home—and fell asleep to the highway’s monotonous lullaby. forty-four days before “COOSA LIQUORS’ entire business model is built around selling cigarettes to minors and alcohol to adults.” Alaska looked at me with disconcerting frequency when she drove, particularly since we were winding through a narrow, hilly highway south of school, headed to the aforementioned Coosa Liquors. It was Saturday, our last day of real vacation. “Which is great, if all you need is cigarettes. But we need booze. And they card for booze.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  I am also most grateful to the production team at Knopf for their skilled, patient work: Melvin Rosenthal (production editor), Anthea Lingeman (designer), Claire Bradley Ong (production manager), and Archie Ferguson, who designed the jacket. I must also express my gratitude to Michele Topham and Carole Robinson in Felicity Bryan’s office, for their constant help and their calm support in moments of crisis; to John Esposito, who invited me to the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (giving me access to its rich resources and the expertise of every single one of its members), and, with his wife, Jeanette, lavished such generous hospitality upon me. Thanks also to Rosie Tollemache, who acted as my assistant for three glorious months, before leaving to have her baby, Lizzie, and to Henrik Mossin, my Danish translator, for introducing me to the work of Johannes Sloek. Finally, a big thank you to Kate Jones and John Tackaberry for their friendship in moments of despair and for the many beautifully cooked meals that supplemented my dismal diet during the long months of writing. A Conversation with Karen Armstrong Karen Armstrong was interviewed by Jonathan Kirsch , a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times who writes and lectures widely on biblical, literary, and legal topics. He is the author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed books King David, Moses: A Life, and The Harlot by the Side of the Road. JK: Your very first book , Through the Narrow Gate , is a memoir of your experiences as a nun. What convinced you to enter a convent? KA: Very few of our motivations are simple and clear and pure, and what drew me to the religious life was a complex decision. There certainly was a religious desire—I did want to find God. Of course, there were other less noble reasons, too—I was only seventeen years old, and the whole mess of adolescent confusion was certainly a factor. I was very shy, believe it or not, and I was very scared about how I was going to cope in the big wide world. The convent seemed something familiar. I thought I’d become so holy and wise that I would transcend these confusions and lose myself in a sort of being called God and become saintly and happy. But that didn’t happen. If you’re just seeking to escape yourself, you’re not going to stay very long because in the convent you are confronted with yourself twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. JK: What prompted you to leave the convent? KA: Why I left is equally complicated. I didn’t want to leave at all. I was really frightened to leave. I wasn’t thinking, Now I can wear beautiful clothes and fall in love and be free. I left with real dread. I had missed the 1960s, and I came out into an entirely transformed world.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  at Blenheim in 1704, English armies had not won a major victory since Flodden in 1513, or in mainland Europe since Agincourt a century before that. Churchill gained his title of Duke of Marlborough, and the money to build Blenheim Palace, one of Europe’s most splendid houses, thanks to the gratitude of British monarch and Parliament; his brilliant command of the armies had, in four major battles, permanently halted the Catholic tide from washing away all surviving Protestant power. It was not surprising that the people of northern Europe were still virulently anti-Catholic in 1700. They continued to read their sixteenth- century martyrologies — especially for the English the luridly detailed and luridly illustrated folios of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs — but Protestants had no need merely to recycle passions from the days of Reformation sufferings: the Catholic menace was a living reality.37 So there was no possibility of England countenancing a Catholic Stuart succession when Queen Anne died with no surviving children in 1714. The thrones of Ireland and Great Britain (from 1707 there had been a United Kingdom of England and Scotland) went to another descendant of the Elector Palatine Friedrich, the Elector Georg of Hanover. Now he was King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. His new British subjects never felt much affection for him as a person — charm was not his strong suit — but overwhelming numbers of them in England deeply valued him as a saviour of the Protestant Glorious Revolution and a bulwark against the return of the Stuarts. The outworkings of the Reformation thus pulled England back into an intimate territorial involvement in the affairs of mainland Europe, from which the French had previously expelled it when they captured the last medieval English mainland enclave of Calais in 1558. From 1688 to 1702, and again from 1714 until 1832, when different laws of succession severed the thrones of Britain and Hanover, the British Isles were part of a joint European and vigorously Protestant state enterprise spanning the North Sea, while the British also built up a seaborne empire, first in North America and then in India. Initial British interests in Asia, to begin with in fierce competition with their Protestant coreligionists the Dutch, were not to acquire territory but, like the Portuguese before them, to create small bases which would stabilize their trade in cottons and a swelling volume of other consumer goods. The momentum of British prosperity sustained their enterprise where the penurious Portuguese had failed, and their markets seemed limitless; the Dutch proved unable to sustain the same momentum in political organization and financial resources, and so the United Provinces fell behind the United Kingdom in power and world reach. In the British Isles, the pace of manufacturing quickened until, with the aid of a new technology harnessing the power of steam

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  While the Jesuits rapidly began following up their initial advantage in Portuguese territories in Africa, Asia and Brazil, they were comparatively late into the Spanish Empire, since the Spanish Inquisition for a couple of decades after the Society’s foundation remained suspicious of an organization whose leader had twice briefly spent time in their prison cells. The Society only began arriving in the 1560s and 1570s, after more than half a century in which Franciscan and Dominican missions had been forced to think out a new theology of mission. Western Catholicism had limited experience to draw on; the last great ventures had been by the friars in Central Asia during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (see pp. 272–5). Apart from that not very fruitful precedent and small beginnings in the Canaries, only the officially sponsored changes of religion in medieval Lithuania and Spain provided any reference point. America presented a complex weave of powers and hierarchies which the missionaries needed to navigate with care. The Spaniards were very ready to distinguish between tribal societies and the sophistication of city-based cultures with recognizable aristocracies like their own. In such urban settings, they might very willingly strike marriage alliances with members of the local elites, in a notable contrast with the attitudes of Protestant English colonists in North America. Maybe Spaniards were simply more secure in their own culture than Tudor and Stuart Englishmen, who were products of one of Europe’s more marginal and second-rank monarchies, and conscious that they had failed badly in their effort at cultural assimilation in their neighbouring island of Ireland.9 The nephew of Ignatius Loyola, Martín García de Loyola, symbolizes the complexity in Spanish America. He led the expedition which in 1572 seized the last independent Inka ruler in Peru, Tupac Amaru, and executed him in the Inka capital, Cuzco, but Loyola also eventually married Beatriz, Tupac’s great-niece. Their politically motivated nuptials were proudly commemorated (and idealized away from a murky reality) in a portrait which is still one of the most remarkable features of the Jesuit Church in Cuzco (see Plate 59). In it there stand beside the Spanish newcomers the Inka grandees in their traditional finery, but also duly equipped with the blazons of European heraldry.10 As Christianity took shape in the new setting, it was hardly surprising that even those most concerned to protect the native ‘Indio’ populations brought with them the exclusive attitudes of their Christian monopoly culture when dealing with the religions that they found. Sometimes one encounters echoes of Spain’s non-Christian past, some presumably the result of craftsmen bringing their own style from Europe: for instance, the intricate Moorish abstract designs decorating the ceilings of the Franciscan church at Tlaxcala in New Spain (modern-day

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  self-improvement on their shore. As ever, Oxford’s wonderfully rich library resources and benevolent librarians have been a luxury at my disposal, and I am particularly appreciative of the help of Alan Brown. As festive companions and encouragers in this venture, my colleagues in the running of the Journal of Ecclesiastical History have been exemplary: Martin Brett, James Carleton Paget, Christine Linehan and Anne Waites.Colleagues in a different enterprise have been all those involved in making the BBC television series which has accompanied the writing of this book, a mammoth operation which has brought much fun and many varied expeditions round the world. Among the very many involved in that process, I particularly thank Gillian Bancroft, Jean-Claude Bragard, Kathryn Blennerhassett, Nick Holden-Sim, Mike Jackson, Roger Lucas, Erin Mactague, Lucy Robinson, Sian Salt, Graham Veevers and Michael Wakelin. Both projects spanned a new time in my life. I am especially in Sam Baddeley’s debt for his friendship and shrewd advice. Support, morale-boosting or wise words have also come from Mark Achurch, Isabel and Rosa Gerenstein, Peter and Bea Groves, Gaynor Humphrey, Philip Kennedy, Craig Leaper, Judith Maltby, Jane Upperton and Allen Young, to name the principals among legion. Diarmaid MacCulloch St Cross College, Oxford Passiontide 2009

• From Action (2014)

  Once they’ve expelled all they’ve been keeping, get the point across that you’re grateful about that. Then continue, “I wanted to talk to you about how I’m feeling, too.” Let them know how you feel about all of the aforementioned, and what potential adjustments you two might want to make. Once you’ve finished, ask what they think without interrupting their answers. I am willing to wager the other person will not be SHOCKED and APPALLED about a sexual lull they can not only already tell you’re bored by, but agree is an issue of their own volition. If this still seems like A LOT to discuss with your person because you two haven’t adroitly broached the topic of sex until now, imagine how they’re feeling. Remember that they didn’t have the stability of advance warning and agency in this conversation, as you did. If they seem freaked out, don’t forsake your respectful, open courtesy by rising to meet the pitch of their emotional tenor, because that gets everybody exactly NOWHERE besides possibly primed to hurt each other. How you do this: Be sure of this conversation as a worthy and loving endeavor, because it is. Dilige et quod vis fac = especially significant when you’re trying to handle the person that you love most with care. GROUP SEX ETIQUETTE [image file=image_1059.jpg] Threesomes are one of life’s greatest pleasures, ranking alongside glacially cold seltzer, seeing a baby skunk in the wild, and the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire. That good. There are many groupings, roles, and shapes in which you can enjoy them: I have been the special guest star as well as part of the host couple plenty of times, in differently gendered lineups, and left each bizarre love triangle with a song in my heart and exhausted mouth-muscles. Group sex is like reading an Apollinaire poem about a baby skunk WHILE guzzling a crispy Schweppes. That good. A threesome with three breathing beings, two of whom are involved for longer than just that night, usually has to be artfully assembled. Group sex, when it involves a long-term couple, can veer into gruesomeness if you’re dealing with delicate personalities—which is to say, “personalities.” The biggest challenge of ménage-à-triangles for those in relationships is the fact that you have to account for and manage not only your and one other partner’s happiness, which is strenuous enough on its own, but that of another person forming all-new angles in this shape. Each person involved is CAUTION—FRAGILE, because threesomes can feel like ego wrecking balls even if they’re handled with the softest of kid gloves.

• From Action (2014)

  [image file=image_1316.jpg] My endless gratitude, esteem, and so forth is the permanent property of the following beloveds: Rookie, who supported and generated this book in manifold ways; soup dumplings; Ma, Lito, Laurg, Maddy, and our family as a collective—forever and ever, and for everything; Dimitri Stathas aka DVS par excellence, who sat up with me through the night and rubbed oil on my mitt during the entire summer I spent writing my proposal; Dan Kirschen, my agent extraordinaire; Libby Burton who edited me gently and strongly; Charles Aaron; Tavi Queen Gevinson, who is the aperture through which this exists; Lena Queen Singer for extending me her signature grace and camaraderie—and more or less making it possible for me to finish this; Lauren Redding, the team captain; Action Park; Joseph Mitchell; Julianne Escobedo Shepherd; John McElwee; everyone I’ve ever fucked; everyone in general; Hermione Hoby for friendship and being one of my two readers; Rosie Lichter-Marck for the same; every editor I’ve ever had, but especially and above all, Anaheed Alani; ROOKIE ROOKIE ROOKIE and all of its people; www.rookiemag.com, in case that wasn’t yet clear; Laia Garcia; Jake Fogelnest, who said, “You’ll be amazed at what can happen if you just FINISH THE THING” and was right; Caryn Ganz; E. B. White, whose essays I read once or more a day before starting; Wayne Koestenbaum for the same; Jesse Miller-Gordon, my research assistant and love; Maggie Thrash, who kept saying, “Tell me the first word of your book. Or the last one”; Meredith Graves; Jessica “Jayhawk” Hopper; Sonja Midboe; Helen Gurley Brown; Sarah Nicole Prickett; Andy Ward; Andy Kaufman; Morrissey; The Jane Hotel and my own lunatic impulses (also, everyone who visited me at Gitane—JMG, Bree [“goodbye, f-friend!”], JES, SNP, Ganzy and John and Tavi, who came without a word of hello and contributed more work to the air); Brafe; The Paris Suites Motel’s fake plants and view of the Unisphere; G. I. Gurdjieff; Stephanie Kuehnert Lewis; Lucy Betz; Annie Mok; Esme Blegvad; Gabby Noone and Hazel Cills; Steve Gevinson; Buffy Sainte-Marie; Matt Groening; Nick Brown; Lulu Penny; “Greenies”; Taha, I know this reads like I’m signing a yearbook and I don’t care, God, seriously. (Also: God. Seriously!) About the Author [image file=image_1328.jpg] Amy Rose Spiegel is a freelance writ(h)er and editor, most recently for Rookie. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Guardian, NME, Dazed & Confused, the FADER, BuzzFeed, and many other publications. She came up in New Jersey and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. * Tavi Gevinson, “Work Hard and Be Kind: An Interview with Chris Ware,” Rookie magazine, Issue 15: Invention (2012), accessed 2015, http://www.rookiemag.com/2012/11/chris-ware-intervie/.* Staff reporter, “‘Masturbation Is Good for Your Health’: Experts Say It Can Prevent Conditions Such as Cystitis, Diabetes, and Cancer,” DailyMail.com, December 5, 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2518802/Masturbation-good-health-prevents-cystitis-diabetes-cancer.html.Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital. To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters. Sign Up

• From Action (2014)

  I love talking and thinking about sex as much as I do having it. Speaking about sex comes, in part, from the attendant preference for wanting to listen to how others feel about it, too. In this book I have tried not to mistranslate and express ownership over experiences that are not mine, which is exactly the behavior that leaves people feeling overlooked, erased from the record, and socially shut down. All I can do is recount how sex has featured in my life and how that has felt. I’m not a doctor—I am equipped to write about sex only in that I am a person who has a pretty normal life that (mostly) does not include anxiety meltdowns about sex i/r/t identity. If I am “qualified” to be honest about my whole sexual deal, of course you are, too. No academic degree—or degree of skankitude—can imbue someone with the grand and lofty ability to know what feels good for them/fuck like a maniac; you’ve already got that (if you want it). I am trying not only to talk about sex, but also putting forth mad ideas about how to get your partners to talk back (remember that whole fun “listening” gambit? It pays off!). I am a single person, albeit one who happens to have been with many others, so this book cannot even come close to encompassing the boundless interactions people have with their partners. (I’m wild grateful for that—homogeneity is boring, and premature death.) I do not expect you to agree with me throughout all of this. I’d rather you observe the aspects in which you are unlike me—and make up your own mind about how you’d have met the decisions I came to. This is ostensibly a contemporary, youthful, we-do-it-so-different-here’s-how-we’re-special-and-new guide to the rutting that our ancestors have enjoyed and started wars over since humankind took its place among the cosmic junk of our vast and terrible universe, so I’ll quickly hearken back to my original point. Here is what you learn about a person when you’re taking off their clothes: Are they good to the people they fuck—those people in those vulnerable, powerful states of anticipatory pleasure, trust, and fear? Yo—are you? You are, and you can show them how to be good to you. (And have great orgasms about it.) I think we’re about ready to figure out how that goes down. Dilige et quod vis fac. Let’s go get some action. By Definition: A Glossary of Terms asexual: Used to describe a person who does not experience, or feel compelled to act on, sexual desire. cis and cisgender: Used to describe a person whose male or female gender identity is the one widely expected of the body they were born with. non-binary: Someone whose male or female gender identity, or attraction to partners, does not adhere tightly to the one expected of them or the people to whom they are attracted.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I. Title PS3562.075Z23 1982 813′.54 82-15086 Parts of this book in earlier versions have appeared in Heresies, Conditions, Sinister Wisdom, Azalea, The Iowa Review , and Callaloo . eISBN: 978-0-307-78081-2 v3.1 Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography Acknowledgments May I live conscious of my debt to all the people who make life possible. From the bottom of my heart I thank each woman who shared any piece of the dreams/myths/histories that give this book shape. In particular I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to: Barbara Smith for her courage in asking the right question and her faith that it could be answered; Cherríe Moraga for listening with her third ear and hearing; and to them both for their editorial fortitude; Jean Millar for being there, when I came up for the second time, with the right book; Michelle Cliff for her Island ears, green bananas, and fine, deft pencil; Donald Hill who visited Carriacou and passed the words on; Blanche Cook for moving history beyond nightmare into structures for the future; Clare Coss who connected me with my matrilineage; Adrienne Rich who insisted the language could match and believed that it would; the writers of songs whose melodies stitch up my years; Bernice Goodman who first made a difference of difference; Frances Clayton who holds it all together, for never giving up; Marion Masone who gave a name to forever; Beverly Smith for reminding me to stay simple; Linda Belmar Lorde for my first principles of combat and survival; Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins and Jonathan Lorde-Rollins who help keep me honest and current; Ma-Mariah, Ma-Liz, Aunt Anni, Sister Lou and the other Belmar women who proofread my dreams; and others who I can not yet afford to name. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography To Helen, who made up the best adventures To Blanche, with whom I lived many of them To the hands of Afrekete In the recognition of loving lies an answer to despair . Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Acknowledgments Dedication Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Epilogue Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography To whom do I owe the power behind my voice, what strength I have become, yeasting up like sudden blood from under the bruised skin’s blister? My father leaves his psychic print upon me, silent, intense, and unforgiving. But his is a distant lightning.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  PENGUIN BOOKS CHRISTIANITY DIARMAID MACCULLOCH is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His books include Thomas Cranmer: A Life, which won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, and the Duff Cooper Prize; The Reformation: A History, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Wolfson Prize; and Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life. An Anglican deacon, knighted in 2012, he has presented many highly celebrated documentaries for television and radio. He lives in Oxford, England. DIARMAID MACCULLOCH ChristianityThe First Three Thousand Years PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2010 Published in Penguin Books 2011 Copyright © Diarmaid MacCulloch, 2009 All rights reserved Published in Great Britain as A History of Christianity by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd. Illustration credits appear on pages xi–xiv. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS: MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: the first three thousand years / Dairmaid MacCulloch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-1-101-18999-3 1. Church history. I. Title. BR145.3.M33 2010 270-dc22 2009040184 Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Version_7 For Philip Kennedy Faithful friend, who has managed to persist in affirming a Christian story

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  It is rare when pinnacle heroes measure up in private to their idealized public images, but the crew of Apollo 8 are the genuine article. I have never met three finer gentlemen. I’m grateful to Marilyn Lovell and Valerie Anders for granting me interviews in their homes, and for delving deep into their personal lives and experiences. One cannot understand the story of Apollo 8, or realize the true strength behind the astronauts and their historic mission, without knowing these amazing women. I spoke briefly to Susan Borman while visiting in Montana, but she was too ill by that time to conduct interviews. Still, I feel like I came to know her through the memories and writings her husband and sons shared with me, and by being in her presence, surrounded by people who love her. I’m grateful to her family for allowing me that. Many thanks to Chris Kraft, one of NASA’s most legendary figures, for the two full days of interviews he gave me at his home in Houston. Kraft is a wonderful explainer, but by his eyes alone it was clear he still believed the decision to fly Apollo 8 to be the most courageous the space agency ever made. Others from NASA, including astronauts, engineers, and managers, granted me interviews in person and by phone, every one of them helpful to me in understanding both the Apollo 8 mission and the social, political, and scientific context in which it took place. For this, I’m thankful to Jerry Bostick, Mike Collins, Walt Cunningham, Gerry Griffin, Fred Haise, Glynn Lunney, Ken Mattingly, Milt Windler, and Al Worden. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. David M. Harland, Dwayne Day, Frank O’Brien, J. L. Pickering, David Shomper, and Asif Siddiqi, who explained to me the complex workings of space flight and lunar missions, the history of the Space Race, and NASA’s daring decision to fly Apollo 8. Warm thanks also to Clare Fentress and Andrew Billingsley for their superb research on this project; Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox for providing me with interviews they conducted decades earlier for their classic book Apollo: The Race to the Moon; Robert Feder, for his singular expertise on Walter Cronkite; Connie Moore at NASA; David Mosena and the staff at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry; and to Ed Borman, Fred Borman, Dydia Delyser, Mark Foster, Jay Lovell, Susan Lovell, Diane Murphy, Sam Skinner, Pam Smith, and Mary Weeks for invaluable interviews and other contributions that helped me tell the story of Apollo 8. A special thanks goes to Apollo historian W. David Woods, a world-class expert on NASA’s lunar missions, and author of the book How Apollo Flew to the Moon . I discovered David while listening to a podcast about the Apollo program; I’d never heard someone explain technical matters so clearly and visually. I reached out to David at his home in Scotland and was thrilled when he agreed to consult with me.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Acknowledgements Such a hubristic enterprise as a single-volume history of quite a lot of history floats on a sea of friendship and help. As ever, Stuart Proffitt has been the prince of editors, combining encouragement, critical judgement and a relish for getting prose exactly right, and Joy de Menil and Kathryn Court have also provided thorough and invaluable editorial comment from across the Atlantic. Unflappable and assiduous in their help in preparing the text have been Sam Baddeley, Lesley Levene, Cecilia Mackay and Huub Stegeman. My literary agent, Felicity Bryan, once more had the ability to envisage me writing this book when I might have felt faint-hearted, and has always been there to cheer me on. Many professional colleagues have shown generosity in their conversation and replies to importunacies as I have been constructing the book; some of them have even taken on the penitential task of reading drafts of the text. I am indebted to them all, but particularly to Sam Baddeley, Sebastian Brock, James Carleton Paget, Andrew Chandler, Eamon Duffy, Craig Harline, Philip Kennedy, Judith Maltby, Andrew Pettegree, Miri Rubin, John Wolffe and Hugh Wybrew. I am also grateful for advice on particular points to Sarah Apetrei, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Pier Giorgio Borbone, Michael Bourdeaux, Frank Bremer, Michael Chisholm, Tom Earle, Massimo Firpo, Peter Groves, Ahmad Gunny, Peter Jackson, Ian Ker, Sangkeun Kim, Graeme Murdock, Matteo Nicolini-Zani, Martin Palmer, Mark Schaan, Bettina Schmidt, Andrew Spicer, Dom Marie- Robert Torczynski, Dom Gabriel van Dijck, Steve Watts, Philip Weller and Jonathan Yonan, and to Pier Giorgio Borbone, Joel Cabrita and John Edwards for permission to quote unpublished material. Remaining imperfections are of course my responsibility and not theirs. My colleagues in the Theology Faculty and the Humanities Division of the University of Oxford made researching for and writing this book much easier by their forbearance and flexibility in agreeing to my having an extended period of unpaid leave to create it, and I am especially grateful to the Rev. Dr Charlotte Methuen for being my alter ego in the university during this period. It has been a privilege to be a member of a university where there are so many seminars and lectures on offer to give glimpses of specialist wisdom across the whole span of Christian history, and I am grateful to all the convenors and lecturers who have given me a hospitable welcome when, as a bogus asylum seeker, I have sought

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  “We’re just very happy to be here and appreciate all your efforts, and I know you had to stay out here over Christmas and that made it tough…We can’t tell you how much we really appreciate you being here, and how proud it is for us to participate in this event, because thousands of people made this possible, and I guess we’re all just part of the group. Thank you very much.” Surrounded by sailors, the astronauts made their way across the flight deck, then down an elevator to the hangar deck and into the ship’s sick bay for a medical evaluation. For his part, Anders was in no shape for an inspection. As part of his plan to avoid defecating in space, he’d asked NASA doctors to prescribe a low-residue diet before and during the flight, and his plan had worked so well that he hadn’t had a bowel movement during the entire mission. Now he needed to find a toilet. He located a cabin just in time. As nature began to have its say, there was a pounding on the bathroom door. “Major Anders! Quick! You’ve got to come to flag bridge. The president is going to call in five minutes. Move it!” Anders was torn between his duties. He could only answer to the higher power. “I’m not going!” Anders yelled to the man. “Tell him I’m on the toilet and I’m not going.” There was no way Anders could risk losing control of himself while talking to the president of the United States. A minute later, one of the ship’s doctors ran in with a portable telephone and passed it through the bathroom door to Anders. Borman and Lovell picked up their own extensions, likely in sick bay, surrounded by physicians, stethoscopes, and syringes. Less than a month remained in Johnson’s presidency. Five years earlier, he’d taken over from his slain predecessor, a president who’d made an impossible promise: to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Johnson might have been forgiven for backing off Kennedy’s commitment. Instead, he’d charged forward. “You’ve seen what man has really never seen before,” Johnson said to the astronauts. “You’ve taken all of us all over the world and into a new era. And my thoughts this morning went back to more than ten years ago…when we saw Sputnik racing through the skies, and we realized that America had a big job ahead of it. It gave me so much pleasure to know that you men have done a large part of that job.” And it gave Borman, especially, the same kind of pleasure. He’d gone to the Moon because of his love of country, and because he felt it was important to beat the Soviets in the race to get there. He’d always told himself his mission wouldn’t be done until he and his crewmates were standing on the carrier deck.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Iansa in Brazil. I am very grateful to Bettina Schmidt for directing me to this source. 56 L. Hurbon, Voodoo: Truth and Fantasy (London, 1995), 161, 77. 57 D. J. Cosentino (ed.), Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou (Los Angeles, 1995), 246–59, 264–5; J. Hainard and P. Mathez (eds.), Vodou: A Way of Life (Geneva, 2007), 29. 58 C. R. Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion 1440–1770 (Baltimore, 1978), 82; on Canada, cf. e.g. L. Campeau, La mission des Jésuites chez les Hurons 1634–1650 (Montreal, 1987), Ch. 16, esp. 298, 302. 20: Protestant Awakenings (1600–1800) 1 Handy, 6–13. For useful sceptical comment on the Brazil and Florida ventures, see J. McGrath, ‘Polemic and History in French Brazil, 1555– 1560’, SCJ, 27 (1996), 385–97. 2 N. Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York, 1999), 9, 20, 53. See also discussion of Protestant anti-papal rhetoric in relation to Islam in L. Jardine, ‘Gloriana Rules the Waves: Or, the Advantage of Being Excommunicated (and a Woman)’, TRHS, 6th ser., 14 (2004), 209– 22, at 209–10, 216. 3 J. Maltby, ‘“The good old way”: Prayer Book Protestantism in the 1640–50s’, in R. Swanson (ed.), The Church and the Book (SCH, 38, 2004), 233–56; L. Gragg, ‘The Pious and the Profane: The Religious Life of Early Barbados Planters’, Historian, 62 (2000), 264–83. I am grateful to Judith Maltby for pointing me to this reference. 4 Ahlstrom, 136. 5 Handy, 20; on North Africa, Matar, Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery, 84–92. 6 An absorbing study of White’s ministry in Dorchester and its implications for America is D. Underdown, Fire from Heaven: The Life of an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1992). 7 F. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (Oxford, 2003). 8 A. Zakai, ‘The Gospel of Reformation: The Origins of the Great Puritan Migration’, JEH, 37 (1986), 584–602, at 586–7. 9 Ahlstrom, 146–7. I am grateful to Francis Bremer for our discussions on this point. 10 F. J. Bremer, Congregational Communion: Clerical Friendship in the