Hope

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 Girls & Sex (2016)

  Denison answered them matter-of-factly, dispensing facts and correcting myths—including that “everyone” is “doing it.” “There’s such a perception that everyone is having sex and hooking up,” she said, responding to a ninth-grader’s concerns, “and that is just not the case. There is such pressure and it’s just not that common, especially in ninth grade. There’s plenty of people who don’t even have their first kiss until at least sophomore year, much less go beyond that. So this notion that someone needs to hook up because it’s ‘time’?” She shook her head. “We have to really work on that. We have to get back to this idea of ‘What am I actually feeling, what do I think about it, what do I want to have happen, and how can I look back without regret?’” At the same time, she offered this to an eleventh-grader whose friend was having sex with many different people. “Your response doesn’t have to be ‘That’s gross’ or ‘That’s good’ or ‘That’s bad.’ You can ask, ‘How did that feel to you? What does it bring you? How does it serve you?’ Approached in the right way, that can be a great conversation. Then, if you really care about that person, your job is to be their human shield from shame.” There were times, listening to Denison answer those anonymous questions, that I felt a little uncertain. Like when someone in an eleventh-grade class asked how to have intercourse in a way that wouldn’t hurt his partner. She talked about easing the penis in and out of the vagina gradually, rather than doing the porn-inspired jack hammer thrust, allowing a girl’s body time to acclimate. She suggested a boy could shift his weight so he wasn’t always bashing into the same spot, and could “empower” a female partner to grab his hips to control the depth of the penetration. There was no denying it: she was explaining how to have sex. It was the worst nightmare of conservative policy makers realized. Yet this is exactly the kind of discussion that, if Holland is any indication, is needed to combat the pop porn culture, reduce regret, and improve teens’ satisfaction when they do choose to have sex (whenever that may be). So what about it makes me cringe? Surely, I’d rather have a daughter in bed with a boy who had a question like this asked and answered than one whose only point of reference was what he’d seen on the Internet. “I am not telling them what to do,” Denison would explain to me later. “I am responding to a direct question—one that I get ninety-nine percent of the time, by the way—that rises from a student’s respect and sense of accountability to both himself and his partner. If I didn’t answer specifically, I’d be a fake, just another adult testing their trust.” To the class, she concluded with “It’s all about communication.” And of course she was right.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  20 “If you do abandon (reject) the LORD and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume and destroy you after He has done you good.” 21 The people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve [only] the LORD .” 22 Joshua then said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the LORD , to serve Him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” 23 “Now then, remove the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your hearts toward the LORD , the God of Israel.” 24 The people said to Joshua, “We will serve the LORD our God and we will listen to and obey His voice.” 25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance at Shechem. 26 And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was in [the courtyard of] the sanctuary of the LORD . 27 Joshua then said to all the people, “Look, this stone shall serve as a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD which He spoke to us; so it shall be a witness against you, so that [afterward] you do not deny your God.” 28 Then Joshua sent the people away, each to [the territory of] his inheritance. Joshua’s Death and Burial 29 It happened after these things that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD , died, at the age of a hundred and ten years. 30 They buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-serah, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gaash. 31 Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, and had known all the works of the LORD which He had done for Israel. 32 Now they buried the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up from Egypt, at Shechem, in the plot of land which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money; and it became the inheritance of the sons of Joseph. 33 And Eleazar [the priest], the son of Aaron died; and they buried him at Gibeah [on the hill] of Phinehas his son, which had been given to him in the hill country of Ephraim. Joshua 1 a 1:2 The Hebrew verb “arise” is an instruction to get ready to fulfill a command, somewhat similar to the military command “attention.” b 1:2 In general, sons (children) of Israel or Israel or Israelites refers to all the people (males and females) of the various tribes descended from the twelve sons (Gen 35:23–26 ) of Jacob (later renamed Israel by God).

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  It’s been five years since Orenstein’s bold, hilarious, and occasionally terrifying foray into the princess industrial complex. Now, the same girls she wrote about then—including those high heels-wearing baby divas—are hitting puberty and beyond, and Orenstein is back to see what happens after growing up with “that 21-piece Disney princess makeup set.” Her newest book is an exploration of the lives of high school and college-aged girls today, shown through their various forays into purity balls and walks of shame, into hooking up and coming out. It is not, refreshingly, a condemnation of millennials and their successors—or a hand-wringing call to alarmism. Yes, it discusses frankly the often performative aspects of female adolescent sexuality and doesn’t ignore the realities of sexual assault, but Girls & Sex refuses to be judgmental or doom and gloom. Instead, it offers something else—a demand for education, enlightenment, and ultimately, the radical notion of equal satisfaction. When I got your book, I got a copy for myself, and one for my teen daughter. Now she’s passed it around among her friends and is having conversations with them. Did you imagine it would be used that way? I keep hearing that, and that’s exactly what I’d hoped. Generally what happens with my books is that the first line is parents, but that it quickly migrates to high school girls and college girls. They can just read it themselves and talk with their friends. It gives them information. And that’s power. I thought, I’m going to give this book to my daughter the summer before she goes into ninth grade. I wrote it because my daughter’s going to be going to a gigantic high school where all bets are off, and I was hearing a lot of stuff from my friends whose kids go there. I thought, I need to understand this, and I need to make the world better before my kid gets there. One of the things that bums me out is seeing young girls who can be so empowered and forthright everywhere else, and then in private they don’t even know that they’re allowed to want things. They’re giving sexual favors and getting nothing in return. You talk about how revelatory it is for these girls when they have an orgasm. Yeah. One of them said, “I cried. I cried.” I mean, that’s amazing. One of my favorite stories is talking to girls about the nonreciprocal thing and saying, “What if guys asked you to get a glass of water, over and over, and they never offered to get you a glass of water? Or if they did, it was totally begrudging?” They would laugh. It’s less insulting to be told that you’re never going to have reciprocal oral sex and you’re always going to be expected to go down on a guy than get him a glass of water.

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

  The key-note of the Christian epitaphs, as compared with the heathen, is struck by Paul in his words of comfort to the Thessalonians, that they should not sorrow like the heathen who have no hope, but remember that, as Jesus rose from the dead, so God will raise them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus. Hence, while the heathen epitaphs rarely express a belief in immortality, but often describe death as an eternal sleep, the grave as a final home, and are pervaded by a tone of sadness, the Christian epitaphs are hopeful and cheerful. The farewell on earth is followed by a welcome from heaven. Death is but a short sleep; the soul is with Christ and lives in God, the body waits for a joyful resurrection: this is the sum and substance of the theology of Christian epitaphs. The symbol of Christ (Ichthys) is often placed at the beginning or end to show the ground of this hope. Again and again we find the brief, but significant words: "in peace;"543 "he" or "she sleeps in peace;"544 "live in God," or "in Christ;" "live forever."545 "He rests well." "God quicken thy spirit." "Weep not, my child; death is not eternal." "Alexander is not dead, but lives above the stars, and his body rests in this tomb."546 "Here Gordian, the courier from Gaul, strangled for the faith, with his whole family, rests in peace. The maid servant, Theophila, erected this."547 At the same time stereotyped heathen epitaphs continued to be used but of course not in a polytheistic sense), as "sacred to the funeral gods," or "to the departed spirits."548 The laudatory epithets of heathen epitaphs are rare,549 but simple terms of natural affection very frequent, as "My sweetest child;" "Innocent little lamb;" "My dearest husband;" "My dearest wife;" "My innocent dove;" "My well-deserving father," or "mother."550 A. and B. "lived together" (for 15, 20, 30, 50, or even 60 years) "without any complaint or quarrel, without taking or giving offence."551 Such commemoration of conjugal happiness and commendations of female virtues, as modesty, chastity, prudence, diligence, frequently occur also on pagan monuments, and prove that there were many exceptions to the corruption of Roman society, as painted by Juvenal and the satirists. Some epitaphs contain a request to the dead in heaven to pray for the living on earth.552 At a later period we find requests for intercession in behalf of the departed when once, chiefly through the influence of Pope Gregory I., purgatory became an article of general belief in the Western church.553 But the overwhelming testimony of the oldest Christian epitaphs is that the pious dead are already in the enjoyment of peace, and this accords with the Saviour’s promise to the penitent thief, and with St. Paul’s desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.554 Take but this example: "Prima, thou livest in the glory of God, and in the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ."555 Notes. I. Selection of Roman Epitaphs.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  “William’s rejected me,” Annie told me with a faint grin and excessive blinking, as though she’d just removed the bandages. “The awful thing is that he won’t let me go entirely. He likes the idea of me, he wants to be normal sexually, but he feels horribly claustrophobic when I’m around. I try to hug myself into vanishing, take up as little space as possible, but it’s no good; he’s frantic—the law school takes twice as many freshmen as it keeps on, really vicious system, the poor guy’s a genius, but not at all disciplined, and does he really want to be a lawyer I keep wondering or is it just the High WASP camp of the Brooks sack suit and the monogrammed briefcase from Mark Cross, but one thing’s sure he sure can sting, speaking of wasp, he says he loves me but all my girlie things drive him nuts, can’t bear my slip and garter belt and makeup, though he’s better than I am at making up and he’s really a tyrant about my appearance; O’Reilly thinks he’s a sicko out to murder his mother but could O’Reilly be just the weeniest bit jealous ’cause I think William is oddly curative for me in that he’s more obsessive about appearance than I am and he makes me feel tired out by narcissism, speaking of negative psychology and he’s”—deep breath, the recollection of a smile—“wonderful. He really is, you know.” Like a baby who’s panicked crawling through a tunnel but emerges smiling, Annie had pushed away her fears and was now quietly discussing “our future,” by which she meant hers with William. “He really does want to marry me, at least we’ve spent hours lingering in front of jewelry windows and he even sashayed into one and demanded to see the costliest diamonds.” I could hear an echo of William in the way she said “costliest.” “And now we both know everything about minks, how to let them out and match skins.” At my fraternity we celebrated founder’s night, a “bachelor evening” when we all dressed in black tie, ate shrimp cocktail and well-done steaks, then went to the party room in the cellar and drank ourselves into a blackout. The style of the house was hang-dog: seasoned, weary, alcoholic. Our president, the one who looked freshly peeled, would wake up at six in the evening, climb out of his hooded sweatsuit and two pairs of athletic socks, his costume for sleeping in the unheated “fresh air” dorm, spend an hour shaving and showering and emerge, flushed, in impeccable black tie and diamond studs, his debauches betrayed only by his red nose. He mixed potent cocktails, but he refused to serve them unless every detail was perfect—correct glass correctly frosted, the right kind of garnish, the right monogrammed paper napkin.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  It is I who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall [again] be inhabited!’ And of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall [again] be built.’ And I will raise up and restore her ruins. 27 “It is I who says to the deep, ‘Be dried up!’ And I will make your rivers dry. 28 “It is I who says of Cyrus, ‘He is My shepherd (ruler), And he will carry out all that I desire—’ Saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall [again] be built,’ And of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall [again] be laid.’ ” Isaiah 45 God Uses Cyrus 1 T HIS IS what the LORD says to His anointed, to Cyrus [king of Persia], Whose right hand I have held To subdue nations before him, And I will ungird the loins of kings [disarming them]; To open doors before him so that gates will not be shut: 2 “I will go before you and level the mountains; I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. 3 “I will give you the treasures of darkness [the hoarded treasures] And the hidden riches of secret places, So that you may know that it is I, The LORD , the God of Israel, who calls you (Cyrus the Great) by your name. 4 “For the sake of Jacob My servant, And of Israel My chosen, I have also called you by your name; I have given you an honorable name Though you have not known Me. 5 “I am the LORD , and there is no one else; There is no God except Me. I will embrace and arm you, though you have not known Me, 6 That people may know from the rising to the setting of the sun [the world over] That there is no one except Me. I am the LORD , and there is no other, 7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing peace and creating disaster; I am the LORD who does all these things. God’s Supreme Power 8 “Rain down, O heavens, from above, Let the clouds pour down righteousness [all the blessings of God]; Let the earth open up, let salvation bear fruit, And righteousness spring up with it; I, the LORD , have created it. 9 “Woe (judgment is coming) to him who quarrels with his Maker— A [worthless] piece of broken pottery among other broken pieces [equally worthless]! Shall the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or does the thing say, ‘He has no hands’? [Rom 9:20 ] 10 “Woe (judgment is coming) to him who says to a father, ‘What are you fathering?’ Or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’ ” 11 For the LORD , the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker says this, “Ask Me about the things to come concerning My sons, And give Me orders concerning the work of My hands. 12 “I made the earth and created man upon it.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  End of Captivity Promised 12 “Listen to Me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called; I am He, I am the First, I am the Last. [Is 41:4 ] 13 “My hand founded and established the earth, And My right hand spread out the heavens; When I call to them, they stand together [in obedience to carry out My decrees]. 14 “Assemble, all of you, and listen! Who among them [the idols and Chaldean astrologers] has declared these things? The LORD loves him (Cyrus of Persia); he will do His pleasure and purpose against Babylon, And his arm will be against the Chaldeans [who reign in Babylon]. 15 “I, even I, have spoken; indeed, I have called Cyrus; I have brought him, and will make his way successful. 16 “Come near to Me, listen to this: From the beginning I have not spoken in secret, From the time that it happened, I was there. And now the Lord GOD has sent Me, and His [Holy] Spirit.” 17 This is what the LORD , your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel says, “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit (benefit), Who leads you in the way that you should go. 18 “Oh, that you had paid attention to My commandments! Then your peace and prosperity would have been like a [flowing] river, And your righteousness [the holiness and purity of the nation] like the [abundant] waves of the sea. 19 “Your offspring would have been like the sand, And your descendants [in number] like the grains of sand; Their name would never be cut off or destroyed from My presence.” [Gen 13:16 ; Jer 33:22 ; Luke 19:42 ] 20 Get out of Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans [who reign there]! Declare with a voice of jubilation, proclaim this, Send it out to the end of the earth; Say, “The LORD has redeemed His servant Jacob.” 21 They did not thirst when He led them through the deserts. He made the waters flow out of the rock for them; He split the rock and the waters flowed. 22 “There is no peace for the wicked,” says the LORD . Isaiah 49 Salvation Reaches to the End of the Earth 1 L ISTEN TO a Me, O islands and coastlands, And pay attention, you peoples from far away. The LORD has called Me from the womb; From the body of My mother He has named Me. 2 He has made My mouth like a sharp sword, In the shadow of His hand He has kept Me hidden; And He has made Me a sharpened arrow, In His quiver He has hidden Me.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  After studying the Dutch, Amy Schalet whipped up a four-part “ABCD” model for raising sexually healthy kids. First off, we want them to be autonomous (that’s A), to understand desire and pleasure, to be able to assert sexual wishes and set limits, and to prepare responsibly for sexual encounters. Moving slowly, with awareness of desire and comfort, is the best way to gain those skills. Who, after all, is truly more sexually “experienced,” a person who has intercourse while drunk to divest herself of virginity or the one who spends three hours kissing a partner, learning about erotic tension, mutual pleasure, intentionality? Frankly, if American parents didn’t get any further than A, we’d be ahead of the game. Nonetheless, there are three more letters. B, for building egalitarian, supportive relationships that value shared interest, respect, care, and trust; C for maintaining and nurturing connection with your child; and D for recognizing the diversity and range of sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and development among their peers. As for that sleepover? I don’t know whether I could get there myself, but I’m not saying never—the argument is awfully compelling. Regardless of how we navigate the details, though, we still can, and must, be more open with our daughters and our sons—and encourage them to be more open with us. My friend is actually wrong: Kids do want to hear that from their parents. They really do. In a 2012 survey of over four thousand young people, most said they wish they’d had more information, especially from Mom or Dad, before their first sexual experiences. They particularly wanted to know more from us about relationships and the emotional side of sex. So, think about it: Would you like your teenager to explore and understand her own body thoroughly before plunging ahead with partnered sex? Would you like her notion of what constitutes intimacy to extend beyond intercourse? Would you like her to have fewer partners, and consistently protect herself against disease and pregnancy? How about enjoying her sexual encounters? Transcending gender stereotypes? Would you hope she’ll find caring, reciprocal, egalitarian relationships in which she can express her needs and limits? If she does pursue sexual pleasure outside relationships, do you want those experiences, too, to be safe, mutual, and respectful? I know I would. All the more reason to take a deep breath and forge ahead with discussions (that’s multiple discussions) that include ideas about healthy relationships, communication, satisfaction, joy, mutuality, ethics, and, yes, toe-curling bliss.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  After talking to so many girls, I now know what to hope for—for my own daughter and for them. I want sexuality to be a source of self-knowledge and creativity and communication despite its potential risks. I want them to revel in their bodies’ sensuality without being reduced to it. I want them to be able to ask for what they want in bed, and to get it. I want them to be safe from disease, unwanted pregnancy, cruelty, dehumanization, and violence. If they are assaulted, I want them to have recourse from their school administrators, employers, the courts. It’s a lot to ask for, but it’s not too much. We’ve raised a generation of girls to have a voice, to expect egalitarian treatment in the home, in the classroom, in the workplace. Now it’s time to demand that “intimate justice” in their personal lives as well. Appendix A: Consent Alone Is a Low Bar for SexBY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMSThis article first appeared in Salon at www.salon.com. An online version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission. I’m not going to tell you to go right now and buy a copy of Peggy Orenstein’s Girls & Sex. I’m going to tell you to buy two copies: One for yourself, and one for the teenager in your life. Because kids—boys and girls, gay and straight—need to understand not just what a new generation of girls is doing in its intimate life. They need to know what those girls are not doing. Like when they’re not saying no to stuff they’re not into, because it’s easier than arguing about it. Like when they’re not asking themselves what feels good—for them. And it’s high time, in a cultural moment fraught with sexual panic about hookups and sexting and questions of consent, to shift the conversation—and to fight for young women’s right to orgasm. Peggy Orenstein is a uniquely qualified advocate. As she told me recently in a raucous, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend-referencing Skype session, “I feel this really intense connection and resonance with girls. I love talking to girls; I love hanging out with girls. That’s why I keep coming back.” That she does—Orenstein has spent much of her journalistic career in girl world, from 1994’s Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap through her 2011 bestseller Cinderella Ate My Daughter.

• From Who Wrote the Bible? Searching for Its Origins and Authors (2025)

  69 11. The Minor Prophets A century later, in the world of Haggai and the first half of Zechariah, circumstances have changed even more radically. The Babylonians have gone, and the Persians have come. What stick could the prophets possibly threaten Israel with at this point? Instead of castigating Israel, the prophets encourage the rebuilding of the Temple: If we rebuild the Temple, the defunct kingship will be restored, and a priest will rule alongside the king. In this period, prophecy begins to turn harder toward the eschatological and then the apocalyptic, as with the end of Zechariah. Updating Prophecy Each minor prophet’s book has a core prophecy that speaks to the context in which it was written—and then expansions that seem to take a later historical situation into account. For example, Amos says God will punish Israel for its transgressions: “I will wipe it off the face of the earth!” (Amos 9:8). However, in the last half of the last chapter, the message suddenly changes: “But I will not wholly wipe out the house of Jacob” (9:8). An even bigger change comes next, with the book saying, “I will restore my people Israel” (9:14). This text looks like it was written after the Babylonian exile. Clearly, someone living long after these books were written expanded them with updated messages. Recall that when prophecy is carried down through the generations, the older material needs to be made relevant for a new situation. People often act as if later additions are somehow inauthentic; there’s an understandable desire to somehow reclaim the authentic words of a divinely inspired prophet. However, the Bible has preserved not only the words of the prophets but also the desires of later readers to make sense of them in their own time. Thus, the act of interpreting biblical texts for one’s own contexts and to align with changing notions of morality, ethics, and theology is an entirely biblical practice. Reading Blenkinsopp, Joseph. A History of Prophecy in Israel. Westminster John K nox, 1996. Nogalski, James, and Marvin Sweeney, eds. Reading and Hearing the Book of the Twelve. SBL, 2000.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  This year you will die, because you have spoken and counseled rebellion against the LORD .’ ” 17 So Hananiah the [false] prophet died [two months later], the same year, in the seventh month. Jeremiah 29 Message to the Exiles 1 N OW THESE are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders in exile and to the priests, the prophets and all the people whom a Nebuchadnezzar had taken into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2 (This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the princes (court officials) of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem.) 3 The letter was hand-carried by Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, saying, 4 “So says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the captives whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, 5 ‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6 ‘Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there and do not decrease [in number]. 7 ‘Seek peace and well-being for the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its peace (well-being) you will have peace.’ 8 “For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Do not let your [false] prophets who are among you and your diviners deceive you; pay no attention and attach no significance to the dreams which they dream or to yours, 9 for they prophesy falsely to you in My Name. I have not sent them,’ says the LORD . 10 “For thus says the LORD , ‘When seventy years [of exile] have been completed for Babylon, I will visit (inspect) you and keep My good promise to you, to bring you back to this place. 11 ‘For I know the plans and thoughts that I have for you,’ says the LORD , ‘plans for peace and well-being and not for disaster to give you a future and a hope. 12 ‘Then you will call on Me and you will come and pray to Me, and I will hear [your voice] and I will listen to you. 13 ‘Then [with a deep longing] you will seek Me and require Me [as a vital necessity] and [you will] find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

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

  The theme of the Apocalypse is: "I come quickly," and the proper attitude of the church toward it is the holy longing of a bride for her spouse, as expressed in the response (Rev. 22:20): "Amen: come, Lord Jesus." It gives us the assurance that Christ is coming in every great event, and rules and overrules all things for the ultimate triumph of his kingdom; that the state of the church on earth is one of continual conflict with hostile powers, but that she is continually gaining victories and will at last completely and finally triumph over all her foes and enjoy unspeakable bliss in communion with her Lord. From the concluding chapters Christian poetry has drawn rich inspiration, and the choicest hymns on the heavenly home of the saints are echoes of John’s description of the new Jerusalem. The whole atmosphere of the book is bracing, and makes one feel fearless and hopeful in the face of the devil and the beasts from the abyss. The Gospels lay the foundation in faith, the Acts and Epistles build upon it a holy life; the Apocalypse is the book of hope to the struggling Christian and the militant church, and insures final victory and rest. This has been its mission; this will be its mission till the Lord come in his own good time.1252 Analysis of Contents. The Apocalypse consists of a Prologue, the Revelation proper, and an Epilogue. We may compare this arrangement to that of the Fourth Gospel, where John 1:1–18 forms the Prologue, John 21 the Epilogue, and the intervening chapters contain the evangelical history from the gathering of the disciples to the Resurrection. I. The Prologue and the Epistles to the Seven Churches, Rev. 1–3. The introductory notice; John’s salutation and dedication to the Seven Churches in Asia; the vision of Christ in his glory, and the Seven Churches; the Seven Epistles addressed to them and through them to the whole church, in its various states.1253 II. The Revelation proper or the Prophetic Vision of the Church of the Future, 4:1–22:5. It consists chiefly of seven Visions, which are again subdivided according to a symmetrical plan in which the numbers seven, three, four, and twelve are used with symbolic significance. There are intervening scenes of rest and triumph. Sometimes the vision goes back to the beginning and takes a new departure. (1) The Prelude in heaven, Rev. 4 and 5. (a) The appearance of the throne of God (Rev. 4). (b) The appearance of the Lamb who takes and opens the sealed book (Rev. 5). (2) The vision of the seven seals, with two episodes between the sixth and seventh seals, 6:1–8:1. (3) The vision of the seven trumpets of vengeance, 8:2–11:19. (4) The vision of the woman (the church) and her three enemies, 12:1–13:18. The three enemies are the dragon (12:3–17), the beast from the sea (12:18–13:10), and the beast from the earth, or the false prophet (13:11–18).

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams, Mary Church Terrell, and other nineteenth-century Black women who make cameos in this book were colleagues, who in many cases knew each other. Mary Church Terrell is offered here as an ideological bridge between the early race women and later ones like Pauli Murray and Toni Cade Bambara. Terrell and Murray met while doing desegregation campaigning in Washington, D.C., in the 1940s, and Terrell was always among Murray’s own lists of influential Black leaders. Murray herself was connected with the advent of the Black feminist movement of the 1970s and was a key legal and social theorist, alongside colleagues like Toni Cade Bambara. There are many maps and linkages that could be drawn when telling the stories of Black women intellectuals. This is one intellectual map, offering one set of geographic and genealogical routes that can be taken to more clearly understand the long and rich history of African American women’s knowledge production. My hope is that this map, this genealogy, leads us all, as Hopkins foresaw, in luminous and unexpected directions.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Isaiah 4 A Remnant Prepared 1 A ND IN that day seven women will take hold of one man, saying, “We will eat our own food and wear [and provide] our own clothes; only let us be called by your name; take away our shame [of being unmarried].” 2 In that day the Branch of the LORD will be splendid and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be excellent and lovely to those of Israel who have survived. [Jer 23:5 ; 33:15 ; Zech 3:8 ; 6:12 ] 3 It will come to pass that he who is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy (set apart for God)—everyone who is recorded for [eternal] life in Jerusalem. [Joel 3:17 ; Phil 4:3 ] 4 When the Lord has washed away the [moral] filth of the daughters of Zion and has cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from her midst, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning, 5 then the LORD will create over the entire site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies, a cloud by day, smoke, and the brightness of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory and brilliance will be a canopy [a defense, a covering of His divine love and protection]. 6 And there will be a pavilion for shade from the heat by day, and a refuge and a shelter from the storm and the rain. Isaiah 5 Parable of the Vineyard 1 N OW LET me sing for my greatly Beloved [LORD ] A song of my Beloved about His vineyard (His chosen people). My greatly Beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile slope (the promised land, Canaan). [Song 6:3 ; Matt 21:33–40 ] 2 He dug it all around and cleared away its stones, And planted it with a the choicest vine (the people of Judah). And He built a tower in the center of it; And also hewed out a b wine vat in it. Then He expected it to produce [the choicest] grapes, But it produced only worthless ones. 3 “And now, says the LORD , O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge between Me and My vineyard (My people). 4 “What more could have been done for My vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to produce good grapes, why did it yield worthless ones? 5 “So now let me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will take away its thorn-hedge, and it will be burned up; I will break down its c stone wall and it will be trampled down [by enemies]. 6 “I will turn it into a wasteland; It will not be pruned or cultivated, But briars and thorns will come up.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  “For I will forgive their wickedness, and I will no longer remember their sin.” [Heb 8:8–12 ; 10:16 , 17 ] 35 Thus says the LORD , Who gives the sun for light by day And the fixed order of the moon and of the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea’s roaring billows or stills the waves when they roar; The LORD of hosts is His name: 36 “If this fixed order departs From before Me,” says the LORD , “Then the descendants of Israel also will cease From being a nation before Me forever.” 37 Thus says the LORD , “If the heavens above can be measured And the foundations of the earth searched out below, Then I will also cast off and abandon all the descendants of Israel For all that they have done,” says the LORD . 38 “Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD , “when the city [of Jerusalem] will be rebuilt for the LORD from the f Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. 39 “The measuring line will go out farther straight ahead to the hill Gareb; then it will turn to g Goah. 40 “And the whole valley (Hinnom) of the dead bodies and [the hill] of the ashes [long dumped there from the temple sacrifices], and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to the LORD . It (the city) will not be uprooted or overthrown anymore to the end of the age.” [Zech 14:10 , 11 ] Jeremiah 32 Jeremiah Imprisoned 1 T HE WORD that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of a Nebuchadnezzar. 2 Now at that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the guard, which was in the house of the king of Judah. 3 For Zedekiah [the last] king of Judah had locked him up, saying, “Why do you prophesy [disaster] and say, ‘Thus says the LORD , “Behold, I am giving this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it; 4 and Zedekiah king of Judah will not escape from the hand of the b Chaldeans, but he will surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will speak with him face to face and see him eye to eye; 5 and he will lead Zedekiah to Babylon, and he will be there until I visit him [for evaluation and judgment],” says the LORD .

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Her historical impulse to set the record straight as it related to issues of Black participation in the Civil War and her own American origins fits within the range of impulses that have characterized race women’s turn to autobiography, including a need to revise “official,” exclusionist historical narratives; a desire to theorize about race and gender identity as they relate to Black female subjectivity; and an opportunity to explore forms of embodied discourse that might allow them to counter the sexual silences demanded by the politics of respectability and the culture of dissemblance. However, the text also had a more immediate aim: to recuperate Murray’s public image after she became a target of the Red Scare. In 1952, Murray applied for a job as “research assistant to the Director of the Codification of Laws of Liberia,” “the program President Truman initiated to provide technical assistance to underdeveloped nations.” 66 Participation in this project was at the heart of Murray’s own emergent understanding of African American racial identity. In the unpublished prologue to Proud Shoes, Murray wrote that she was drawn to Liberia because it had cultural traditions that drew upon both American and African roots. Thus, the research position would offer a chance to study how African Americans who had expatriated to Liberia dealt with the challenge of both losing and regaining elements of their African heritage. 67 For Murray, Liberia was evidence not of Black or African resistance to failed American idealism, but rather evidence of Black Americans fundamental affinity for their American homeland. 68 In the introduction to the 1978 edition of Proud Shoes, Murray noted that despite a sojourn to Ghana in the ensuing years between the book’s first publication, she remained firm in her “conviction that [she] was of the New World, irrevocably bound to the destiny of [her] native America.” 69 Nevertheless, Murray’s participation in her twenties with the Socialist party and the Lovestoneite Movement made her candidacy unviable and caused her “past associations” to be subjected to relentless scrutiny. 70 Murray chose to respond to these aspersions by upending and refiguring what was meant by “past.” 71 Her white ancestors had been a part of the North Carolina planter class, and one of them had donated much of the land on which the University of North Carolina now sits. Enamored of her white forebears, Murray believed that her family’s relationship to the peculiar institution of slavery had given her a “peculiarly American background,” a long and identifiable procession of mixed race ancestry of which she was quite proud. Recuperating Fannie Barrier Williams’s language of peculiarity and its invocations of the ways that slavery had affected Black women’s reproductive choices, Murray chose to use her mixed race heritage for decidedly different ends.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Both Garza and Khan-Cullors are queer Black women, and they have insisted that the Black Lives Matter leadership and organizing model move, as Garza mentioned in her herstory, beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. 2 In this regard, these new Black women leaders—including Johnetta Elzie, Brittany Packnett, Brittany Ferrell, Alexis Templeton, Charlene Carruthers, Samantha Master, Elle Hearns, Jasmine Abdullah Richards, and Melina Abdullah 3 —are shaping a movement that rejects the kind of masculinist posturing that caused so much grief for women like Ida B. Wells in the nineteenth century and Pauli Murray in the twentieth century. This movement is inherently Cooperian in its insistence that Black women’s bodies and lives (cis and trans) offer a space of possibility and place through which to cathect our best thinking about how to get free. Yet, Garza’s fears about the erasure of Black women’s intellectual and political labor are well-founded and avoiding this common trap with Black women’s contributions requires a critical vigilance to document, respect, engage, and take seriously the thinking of Black women who continue to lead our movements. My goal in Beyond Respectability is to take seriously the work of Black women thinkers and to demonstrate the value that Black women’s long histories of knowledge production on behalf of Black people can have to contemporary intellectual conversations. Despite the fact that Black feminism, as a critical locus of Black women’s twentieth-century knowledge production, has become a fully institutionalized field of academic specialization since the late 1970s, my contention in this book is that there is still a requisite and tacit failure to take Black women’s work, as thinkers and theorists on broader questions affecting Black people, seriously. Yes, Black feminist women’s arguments about the centrality of gender to racial concerns have gained major academic currency, as evidenced by the broad use of intersectional discourse in numerous fields and disciplines. And yes, this new Black Lives Matter Movement, particularly as conceived by Garza, Tometi, and Khan-Cullors has made Black feminist politics the currency of Black radical thought. But the fact that Alicia Garza’s comments written in the second decade of the twenty-first century, sound eerily similar to commentary from Anna Julia Cooper writing in the nineteenth century, and Pauli Murray, Toni Cade Bambara, and bell hooks writing in the twentieth suggests that not enough has changed. bell hooks attended college in the early 1970s, just as Women’s Studies programs and courses on Black women’s literature and history entered the academy.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  generation of Black leaders, including the many queer, trans, and gender nonconforming leaders among them, are working out in praxis Bambara’s notions of revolutionary Blackhood, unencumbered by the traditional dictates of respectable gender ideology. Throughout this book, I talk about the named lists of Black women that other Black women intellectuals created as a form of archive and memorial to their colleagues who joined them in the project of uplifting African American communities. It is fitting to end this study, in which I interrogate how exclusionary gender politics and conservative ideas about knowledge production continue to shape our ideas about Black intellectual life, by offering a named list of my own. These are women whose lives and work did not make it into this study in any substantive way. They are women that I encountered in various forms along the way—newly discovered archival material, a mention in a book or newspaper article, or another encounter with their already prodigious legacy—but whose lives and thought work I could not do justice to within the bounds of this study. Still they are a part of the story that this book tells. Their names and their work constitute additional markers in the intellectual genealogy and geography that this book has built, and they provide some direction as to where future scholarship might proceed: Sojourner Truth. Sarah Mapps Douglass. Hallie Quinn Brown. Jane Edna Hunter. Mary McLeod Bethune. Sadie Daniel. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander. Ella Baker. Fannie Lou Hamer. Lorraine Hansberry. Jessie Fauset. Callie House. Gertrude Elise Johnson MacDougald Ayer. Dorothy Height. Era Bell Thompson. Ellen Tarry. Claudia Jones. Fanny Jackson Coppin. Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Lucille Clifton. Maritcha Lyons. Angela Davis. Assata Shakur. Frances Beale. Patricia Roberts-Harris. The women under examination in this book and the women listed here attest that Black women’s intellectual leadership traditions are long, robust, multigenerational, and continuing. Still, the intellectual contributions of many of these women languish in relative obscurity because of an enduring politics of racial manhood that places the mantle for race leadership in the hands of men—always men—who are deemed more capable, more critical, and more appropriate. I hope that through the careful excavation of Black women’s ideas, this book reinvigorates and augments the study of Black women’s intellectual traditions pioneered by Gertrude Mossill, Victoria Earle Matthews, Alice Walker, Barbara Smith, Mary Helen Washington, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Hazel Carby, and others. Black women are serious thinkers, and it is our scholarly duty to take them seriously.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  Like the Club era, these community-based spaces, wherein Black women produced knowledge about themselves, constituted a kind of Black female counter-public space that allowed Black women to contest official, dominant narratives that undermined them morally, intellectually, and politically. However, unlike the clubwomen, Bambara did not seek to bring these groups under an organizational umbrella. Instead, she took a more traditional discursive approach, producing an anthology of writings through which Black women could testify to their embodied experiences. Farah Jasmine Griffin notes that the multiplicity of voices in this text, the dialogues between a range of differently situated Black women, is one of the most remarkable features of Black Woman: “[I]ts chorus of voices reminds us of the extra-academic origins of black women’s intellectual work and of its concern with something other than curriculum, canons, fields, careers and academic publication. And while the academy is certainly an important site of struggle, it is not the only place where socially and politically engaged intellectuals ought to find themselves.” 48 In short, the text reminds us that within Black women’s intellectual history, “the sites of intellectual work are always shifting.” 49 The extra-academic nature of the text and its willingness to offer a range of perspectives—both feminist and nonfeminist, nationalist and antinationalist—within its pages offers a discursive representation of a robust Black women’s public sphere. Moreover, it demonstrates in practice that Black women’s knowledge production is not beholden to the academy. By drawing on the works of a range of women to constitute her anthology, Bambara offered a robust model for what Black women’s public intellectual work looked like. Her text also marked one of the clearest generational shifts in the rhetoric about race womanhood. She noted that “unlike the traditional sororities and business clubs,” her contributors “[seemed] to use the Black Liberation struggle rather than the American Dream as their yardstick, their gauge, their vantage point.” 50 This represented a marked shift from the rhetoric of liberal race women like Williams and Murray, whose lives bookend the paradigmatic frame of American peculiarity as a critique of American exceptionalism. Unlike Murray, whose primary quest was for American acceptance, Bambara’s race women used Black freedom as the measuring stick for determining racial progress, noting that, in fact, these two ideals were not congruent. Moreover, the textual debate between Black nationalist women and Black feminist women challenged the distinctive integrationist versus nationalist binary that Cruse had set forth in Crisis. 51 Ironically, however, the major gains made by Black women in politics in the 1970s signals that public Black women, in fact, were using the American Dream as a yardstick. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm ran for president on the Democratic Party ticket. That same year, Barbara Jordan was elected to the House of Representatives, becoming the first woman ever to represent the state of Texas. By the mid 1970s, Barbara Jordan became a kind of guardian of the public trust.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  5 For You are my hope; O Lord GOD , You are my trust and the source of my confidence from my youth. 6 Upon You have I relied and been sustained from my birth; You are He who took me from my mother’s womb and You have been my benefactor from that day. My praise is continually of You. 7 I am as a wonder to many, For You are my strong refuge. 8 My mouth is filled with Your praise And with Your glory all day long. 9 Do not cast me off nor send me away in the time of old age; Do not abandon me when my strength fails and I am weak. 10 For my enemies have spoken against me; Those who watch for my life have consulted together, 11 Saying, “God has abandoned him; Pursue and seize him, for there is no one to rescue him .” 12 O God, do not be far from me; O my God, come quickly to help me! 13 Let those who attack my life be ashamed and consumed; Let them be covered with reproach and dishonor, who seek to injure me. 14 But as for me, I will wait and hope continually, And will praise You yet more and more. 15 My mouth shall tell of Your righteousness And of Your [deeds of] salvation all day long, For their number is more than I know. 16 I will come with the mighty acts of the Lord GOD [and in His strength]; I will make mention of Your righteousness, Yours alone. 17 O God, You have taught me from my youth, And I still declare Your wondrous works and miraculous deeds. 18 And even when I am old and gray-headed, O God, do not abandon me, Until I declare Your [mighty] strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come. 19 Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the [height of the] heavens, You who have done great things; O God, who is like You, [who is Your equal]? 20 You who have shown b me many troubles and distresses Will revive and renew me again, And will bring me up again from the depths of the earth. 21 May You increase my greatness (honor) And turn to comfort me. 22 I will also praise You with the harp, Your truth and faithfulness, O my God; To You I will sing praises with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. 23 My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to You, And my soul, which You have redeemed. 24 My tongue also will speak of Your righteousness all day long; For they are ashamed, for they are humiliated who seek my injury. Psalm 72 The Reign of the Righteous King. A Psalm of Solomon. 1 G IVE THE king [knowledge of] Your judgments, O God, And [the spirit of] Your righteousness to the king’s son [to guide all his ways].