Pride As Defense

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 The Erotic Mind (1995)

  During adolescence his brothers dated the popular girls, the ones he could only fantasize about. And fantasize he did, developing a favorite image in which several gorgeous women compete for his attention. As they stimulate him in every imaginable way, they become out of control, voracious sex fiends. At the climax of these fantasies he has intercourse with them one by one, while the others caress and kiss him feverishly. As you can see, there’s no obvious sign of inferiority in this fantasy. But displays of confidence and bravado are often exciting precisely because they temporarily reverse the feelings of inferiority from which they spring. Nick made a crucial observation: “I’ve been noticing how this fantasy is most intense when I feel incompetent or defeated. I guess it’s how I make myself feel better.” “What turns you on when you’re feeling strong?” I asked. After a long silence Nick answered, “I’m not sure. I definitely enjoy sex with Barb when I’m feeling good about myself. But I guess I would call that loving sex, not nearly as torrid as my fantasies.” For millions of men and women, the roles they assume in their external lives bear little relation to their sexual preferences. For example, I’ve worked with high-powered executives, both male and female, whose fantasies revolve around total surrender to a dominant other. Many have little difficulty accepting the apparent contradiction. But others require a reasonably close match between their public personas and their private turn-ons. Like Nick, they must actually feel inferior and unworthy for their CETs to work properly. These men and women have no idea why they hold themselves back or repeatedly place themselves in no-win situations. Some don’t even realize what they’re doing because the entire process functions automatically—until they make a concerted effort to become conscious of it. As irrational as it sounds, Nick had placed strict yet invisible limits on his self-esteem to protect the inferior position his CET was designed to fix. He was sacrificing his personal and professional advancement because feeling stronger and more confident was incompatible with his eroticism. Once he saw what he was doing, Nick could no longer act unconsciously. Now he had a choice—albeit an unappealing one. Either he would honor the limits imposed by his negative self-image or he would risk reducing his passion by pushing ahead with his growth. It may be difficult to fathom how success in one area of life can cause trouble in another. Yet Nick’s predicament is not as unusual as it seems. In fact, whenever clients struggle with fears of success I now always suggest they consider the erotic implications of their goals. Once negative core beliefs have been eroticized, most people instinctively attempt to preserve them no matter what the cost.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  This desire was reflected in the reform of King Hezekiah, who succeeded his father in 715.51 We have no contemporary account, but the biblical tradition suggests that Hezekiah wanted to centralize the cult, permitting worship only in the Jerusalem temple and abolishing the rural shrines. The reform was short-lived, and archaeologists show that the general public continued to worship other gods, but because of his religious reform, the biblical historians remember Hezekiah as one of the greatest kings of Judah. His foreign policy, however, was disastrous. In 705, the remarkable Assyrian king Sargon II died, leaving his untested son Sennacherib to succeed. In the ensuing turmoil, when it appeared that Assyria might not be able to control the peripheral territories, Hezekiah foolishly entered an anti-Assyrian coalition and began to prepare Jerusalem for war. In 701, Sennacherib arrived in Judah at the head of a formidable army, and began systematically to devastate the countryside. Finally his soldiers surrounded Jerusalem itself. It seemed that the city could not survive, but at the last moment there was a reprieve. The biblical author tells us that the “angel of Yahweh slew 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp and the army was forced to withdraw.”52 We have no idea what happened. There may have been a sudden epidemic of plague in the Assyrian army, and the apparently miraculous deliverance seemed proof positive that Jerusalem was indeed inviolable. But it was impossible to ignore the damage that archaeologists have uncovered in the Judean countryside.53 Lachish, the second city of Judah, was razed to the ground: fifteen hundred men, women, and children were buried in a mass grave. Hezekiah had inherited a thriving kingdom, but his imprudent foreign policy left him with only the tiny city-state of Jerusalem. Patriotic pride and chauvinistic theology had almost annihilated the nation. The eighth century was an astonishing period in Greece. In a remarkably short space of time, the Greeks emerged from the dark age and laid the foundations of their unique culture. Their star was in the ascendant, as Judah’s seemed in decline. Assyria had no interest in the Aegean, so the Greeks could develop their institutions without the threat of military invasion. They built peaceful contacts with the east and were eager to learn from foreign peoples. Their politics became radical and innovative, and they began to experiment with different forms of government, but this did not touch their religion. At a time when the Hebrew prophets were preaching monolatry, the worship of only one God, the Greeks became committed polytheists. Instead of moving away from the older forms of religion, the Greeks were becoming more systematically traditional.

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

  schismatic tendency is apt to become in its progress more or less heretical. 1. Montanism, in the first place, sought a forced continuance of the miraculous gifts of the apostolic church, which gradually disappeared as Christianity became settled in humanity, and its supernatural principle was naturalized on earth.767 It asserted, above all, the continuance of prophecy, and hence it went generally under the name of the nova prophetia. It appealed to Scriptural examples, John, Agabus, Judas, and Silas, and for their female prophets, to Miriam and Deborah, and especially to the four daughters of Philip, who were buried in Hierapolis, the capital of Phrygia. Ecstatic oracular utterances were mistaken for divine inspirations. Tertullian calls the mental status of those prophets an "amentia," an "excidere sensu," and describes it in a way which irresistibly reminds one of the phenomena of magnetic clairvoyance. Montanus compares a man in the ecstasy with a musical instrument, on which the Holy Spirit plays his melodies. "Behold," says he in one of his oracles, in the name of the Paraclete, "the man is as a lyre, and I sweep over him as a plectrum. The man sleeps; I wake. Behold, it is the Lord who puts the hearts of men out of themselves, and who gives hearts to men."768 As to its matter, the Montanistic prophecy related to the approaching heavy judgments of God, the persecutions, the millennium, fasting, and other ascetic exercises, which were to be enforced as laws of the church. The Catholic church did not deny, in theory, the continuance of prophecy and the other miraculous gifts, but was disposed to derive the Montanistic revelations from satanic inspirations,769 and mistrusted them all the more for their proceeding not from the regular clergy, but in great part from unauthorized laymen and fanatical women. 2. This brings us to another feature of the Montanistic movement, the assertion of the universal priesthood of Christians, even of females, against the special priesthood in the Catholic church. Under this view it may be called a democratic reaction against the clerical aristocracy, which from the time of Ignatius had more and more monopolized all ministerial privileges and functions. The Montanists found the true qualification and appointment for the office of teacher in direct endowment by the Spirit of God, in distinction from outward ordination and episcopal succession. They everywhere proposed the supernatural element and the free motion of the Spirit against the mechanism of a fixed ecclesiastical order. Here was the point where they necessarily assumed a schismatic character, and arrayed against themselves the episcopal hierarchy. But they only brought another kind of aristocracy into the place of the condemned distinction of clergy and laity. They claimed for their prophets what they denied to the Catholic bishops. They put a great gulf between the true spiritual Christians and the merely psychical; and this induced spiritual pride and false pietism.

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

  Spain’s Catholic orthodoxy was assured, but Spain placed herself outside the current of modern culture and progress. By her policy of religious seclusion and pride, she crushed independence of thought and virility of moral purpose. One by one, she lost her territorial acquisitions, from the Netherlands and Sicily to Cuba and the Philippines in the far Pacific. Heresy she consumed inside of her own precincts, but the paralysis of stagnation settled down upon her national life and institutions, and peoples professing Protestantism, which she still calls heresy, long since have taken her crown in the world of commerce and culture, invention and nautical enterprise. The present map of the world has faint traces of that empire on which it was the boast of the Spaniard of the 16th century that the sun never set. This reduction of territory and resources calls forth no spirit of denunciation. Nay, it attracts a sympathetic consideration which hopes for the renewed greatness of the land of Ferdinand and Isabella, through the introduction of that intellectual and religious freedom which has stirred the energies of other European peoples and kept them in the path of progress and new achievement. CHAPTER VIII.

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

  Ratherius (Rathier) was born of noble ancestry at or near Liège in 890 (or 891) and educated at the convent of Lobbes. He became a monk, acquired much learning and in 931 was consecrated bishop of Verona. By his vigorous denunciation of the faults and failings of his clergy, particularly of their marriages or, as he called them, adulteries, he raised a storm of opposition. When Arnold of Bavaria took Verona (934), king Hugo of Italy deposed him for alleged connivance with Arnold and held him a close prisoner at Pavia from February, 935, until August, 937, when he was transferred to the oversight of the bishop of Como. In the early part of 941 Ratherius escaped to Southern France, was tutor in a rich family of Provence, and in 944 re-entered the monastery of Lobbes. Two years later he was restored to his see of Verona; whence he was driven again in 948. From 953 to 955 he was bishop of Liège. On his deposition he became abbot of Alna, a dependency of the monastery of Lobbes, where he stirred up a controversy upon the eucharist by his revival of Paschasian views. In 961 he was for the third time bishop of Verona, but having learned no moderation from his misfortunes he was forced by, his indignant clergy to leave in 968. He returned to Liège and the abbotship of Alna. By money he secured other charges, and even for a year (971) forcibly held the abbotship of Lobbes. On April 25, 974, he died at the court of the count of Namur. Ratherius "deserves in many respects to be styled the Tertullian of his time."1490 Some see in his castigation of vice the zeal of a Protestant reformer, but his standpoint was different. He was learned and ambitious, but also headstrong and envious. His works are obscure in style, but full of information. The chief are 1. The Combat, also called Preliminary discourses, in six books.1491 It treats in prolix style of the different occupations and relations in life, and dwells particularly upon the duties of bishops. It was the fruit of his prison-leisure (935–937), when he was without books and friends. 2. On contempt for canonical law.1492 It dates from 961, and is upon the disorders in his diocese, particularly his clergy’s opposition to his dispensation of its revenues. In all this Ratherius sees contempt of the canons which he cites. 3. A conjecture of a certain quality.1493 This is a vigorous defense of his conduct, written in 966. Fourteen of his Letters and eleven of his Sermons have been printed.1494 In the first letter he avows his belief in transubstantiation. § 179. Gerbert (Sylvester II.).

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Fame was thus more important than life itself, and the poems show warriors desperately competing with one another in order to acquire it. In this quest for glory, every man was out for himself. The hero was an egotist, obsessed with questions of honor and status, loudly boasting about his exploits, and prepared to sacrifice the good of the whole to enhance his own prestige. There was no kenosis, no self-surrender; the only way a warrior could “step outside” the confines of self was in the ekstasis of killing. When possessed by Ares, god of war, he experienced a superabundance of life and became divine, losing himself in aristeia and slaughtering anything that stood in his way. War was, therefore, the only activity that could give meaning to life. Every warrior was expected to excel, but to be the “best” (aristos) meant simply to excel in battle.72 No other quality or talent counted. In the heightened state of aristeia, the hero experienced a superabundance of life that flared up gloriously in contempt of death. In India, priests and warriors alike were gradually moving toward the ideal of ahimsa (nonviolence). This would also characterize the other Axial spiritualities. But the Greeks never entirely abandoned the heroic ethos: their Axial Age would be political, scientific, and philosophical—but not religious. In presenting a warrior like Achilles as the model of excellence to which all men should aspire, Homer seems to have nothing in common with the spirit of the Axial Age. Yet standing on the threshold of a new era, Homer was able to look critically at the heroic ideal. He could see a terrible poignancy in the fate of the warrior, because in order to achieve the posthumous glory that was his raison d’être, the hero had to die. He was wedded to death, just as, in the cult, he was confined to the dark chthonian regions, tortured by his mortality. For Homer too, death was a catastrophe.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  The reader will have realised that, as I have explained above, I exercised complete free will in my chosen sexual life and if, as I have just illustrated, I orchestrated little breakaways, this latitude could only be measured in terms of its direct opposite: the way fate brings people together, the determinism of the chain in which one link – one man – links you to another, which links you to a third and so on. Mine was not the kind of freedom played out on the whims of circumstances, it was a freedom expressed once and for all, an acceptance to abandon oneself unreservedly to a way of life (like a nun saying her vows!) I have never formed a relationship – however fleeting – with someone I have met on a train or in the metro, even though I have frequently heard stories of feverishly erotic encounters in such places, not to mention in lifts or restaurant toilets. I have always cut them short, rather abruptly even. I discourage them, humorously and gently, I hope, but in such an offhand way that it must look like firm resolution. Engaging myself in the playful meanderings of seduction and, however briefly, keeping up the teasing banter which necessarily occupies the interval between a chance meeting with someone and accomplishing the sexual act with them, would be beyond me. At a push, if it were possible for the thronging crowds at a station or the organised hordes in the metro to accept the crudest accesses of pleasure in their midst as they accept displays of the most abject misery, I could easily undertake that sort of coupling, like an animal. Neither do I belong to the category of women who are ‘looking for adventure’ and I have been successfully chatted up only very rarely, and, even then, never by strangers. On the other hand, I have willingly accepted to go on dates arranged on the telephone by a voice purporting to have met me at some function or another, but to which I could not put a face. I was easy to find; they just had to call the magazine. That was how I ended up at the opera one night, at a performance of La Bohème… I arrived late and had to wait till the end of the first scene before I could go and sit down in the darkness next to my quasistranger. We had met, if you could call it that, a few days earlier at a mutual friend’s party (when the relationship returns to the realms of a possible one-on-one, men rarely use the term ‘orgy’), but the profile I could see, the balding head and the jowly face didn’t mean a thing to me. I suspected that he had indeed been at the party but had not approached me there. He risked putting a hand on my thigh, looking at me furtively with something approaching anxiety in his eyes. He never shook off his air of weariness; he had a habit of rubbing his head in the same way that he ran his great bony hands over me, doing it mechanically and complaining of terrible headaches. I thought he had a screw loose and there was something rather pitiful about him. I saw him again several times; he took me to shows and to very expensive restaurants which I found more than a little entertaining, not because I could be mistaken for a prostitute but because I could outwit the usherettes, the waitresses and the bourgeois clients around us, given that it was with a bona fide intellectual that the bald gentleman with the drooping skin was in conversation with.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘And because I was able to place freely at his disposal certain portions of the Rumpiadin the vernacular, together with several extracts from Capretius,20 which he had long been anxious to acquire, he gave me a part-share in his holy relics, presenting me with one of the holes from the Holy Cross, and a small phial containing some of the sound from the bells of Solomon’s temple, and the feather of the Angel Gabriel that I was telling you about, and one of Saint Gherardo da Villamagna’s sandals,21 which not long ago in Florence I handed on to Gherardo di Bonsi, who holds him in the deepest veneration; and finally, he gave me some of the coals over which the blessed martyr Saint Lawrence was roasted. All these things I devoutly brought away with me, and I have them to this day. ‘True, my superior has never previously allowed me to exhibit them, until such time as their authenticity was established. However, by virtue of certain miracles they have wrought, and on account of some letters he has received from the Patriarch, he has now become convinced that they are genuine, and has granted me permission to display them in public. But I am afraid to entrust them to others, and I always take them with me wherever I go. ‘Now, the fact is that I keep the feather of the Angel Gabriel in a casket to prevent it being damaged, and in another casket I keep the coals over which Saint Lawrence was roasted. But the two caskets are so alike that I often pick up the wrong one, which is what has happened today; for whereas I intended to bring along the one containing the feather, I have brought the one with the coals. Nor do I consider this a pure accident; on the contrary I am convinced that it was the will of God, and that it was He who put the casket of coals into my hands, for I have just remembered that the day after tomorrow is the Feast of Saint Lawrence.22 And since it was God’s intention that I should show you the coals over which he was roasted, and thus rekindle the devotion which you should all feel towards Saint Lawrence in your hearts, He arranged that I should take up, not the feather which I had meant to show you, but the blessed coals that were extinguished by the humours of that most sacred body. You will therefore bare your heads, my blessed children, and step up here in order to gaze devoutly upon them. ‘But before you do so, I must tell you that all those who are marked with the sign of the cross by these coals may rest assured that for a whole year they will never be touched by fire without getting burnt.’23

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

  At about four that afternoon, the knights went to the archbishop’s palace, leaving their weapons behind, and concealing their coats of mail by the ordinary cloak and gown. They demanded from him, in the name of the king, the absolution of the excommunicated bishops and courtiers. He refused, and referred them to the pope, who alone could absolve them. He declared: "I will never spare a man who violates the canons of Rome or the rights of the Church. My spirituals I hold from God and the pope; my temporals, from the king. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s." The knights said, "You speak in peril of your life." Becket replied: "Come ye to murder me in my own house? You cannot be more ready to kill me than I am to die. You threaten me in vain; were all the swords in England hanging over my head, you could not terrify me from my obedience to God and my lord the pope. I defy you, and will meet you foot to foot in the battle of the Lord." During the altercation, Becket lost command over his fiery temper. His friend, John of Salisbury, gently censured him for his exasperating tone. The knights quitted the room and called their men to arms. A few minutes before five the bell tolled for vespers. Urged by his friends, the archbishop, with his cross carried before him, went through the cloisters to the cathedral. The service had begun, the monks were chanting the psalms in the choir, the church was filled with people, when two boys rushed up the nave and created a panic by announcing that armed men were breaking into the cloister. The attendants of Becket, who had entered the church, shut the door and urged him to move into the choir for safety. "Away, you cowards!" he said, "by virtue of your obedience, I command you not to shut the door; the church must not be turned into a fortress." He was evidently prepared and eager for martyrdom. He himself reopened the door, and dragged the excluded monks into the building, exclaiming, "Come in, come in—faster, faster!" The monks and priests were terror-stricken and fled in every direction, to the recesses and side-chapels, to the roof above, and the crypt below. Three only remained faithful,—Canon Robert of Merton, Chaplain William Fitz-Stephen, and the clerk Edward Grim.162 One of the monks confesses that he ran with clasped hands up the steps as fast as his feet would carry him.

• From Cultish (2021)

  The language of cult fitness (“Be your best self,” “Change your body, change your mind, change your life”) helps connect aspects of religion—like devotion, submission, and transformation—to secular ideals like perseverance and physical attractiveness. Earnestly seeking out a fringe religious community would be a stretch for many modern citizens, but following that shot of woo-woo with a chaser of capitalistic ambition makes it go down a little smoother. With groups from intenSati to CrossFit, we’ve created the secular “cults” we deserve. There was a period in history when exercise and American Protestantism overlapped more explicitly. In the nineteenth century, long before it was customary for everyday people to work out at all, some of the only groups that devoutly exercised were Christian Pentecostals, who promoted fitness as an overtly religious purification process. To them, idleness and gluttony were offenses punishable by God, while disciplining the flesh through grueling strength training and fasting was a sign of virtue. For them, lazing around the house while eating junk food was not a metaphorical sin, but a literal one. By contrast, some churches nowadays actively condemn modern gym culture as an overcelebration of the self as opposed to God. “CrossFit is not like church; it is more like the hospital, or even the morgue,” critiqued a Virginia-based Episcopal priest in a 2018 blog post. “It is not a place where bad people go to be made good, but a place where bad people are loved in their badness. The grace of God is the only salvation plan that does not lead to burnout.” It’s hard to conduct a productive conversation with someone who’s arguing that their understanding of spirituality is “the only” valid one. It’s also undeniable that American workout culture carries a strong Protestant charge of its own. Just look at the general vocabulary we use to talk about fitness: cleanse, detox, purify, obedience, discipline, perfection. These terms have unquestionably Biblical undertones, and when repeated day after day, the language of cleansing and purification can condition listeners to believe that achieving “perfect fitness” is possible, if you try hard enough, and that it will in turn “perfect” their whole life. This mentality can feel like a soothing Epsom salt bath in a society that leaves so many citizens feeling existentially high and dry. At the same time, it can make participants more vulnerable to getting involved (and staying involved) with a potentially power abusive guru. I’m not the first to notice that the conflation of the work we do on our bodies and the value of our humanity can sound eerily Amwayian . You can hear it in statements like “You can get inner peace and flat abs in an hour” —a promise Tess Roering, former CMO of CorePower Yoga, made of the brand in 2016.

• From Cultish (2021)

  Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” You can hear Peale’s influence in Donald Trump’s speeches and social media posts half a century later. “Success tip: See yourself as victorious. This will focus you in the right direction. Apply your skills and talent—and be tenacious,” Trump tweeted in 2013. Upon launching his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump’s rants about self-reliance took a more paranoid turn. Early that year, when asked who he consults on foreign policy, he replied, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. I know what I’m doing. . . . My primary consultant is myself.” From this complex history, the MLM—the uncanny lovechild of Protestantism, capitalism, and corporatization—was conceived. The Protestant ethic remains very much a part of professional culture as a whole in the United States, and we all grow up internalizing its rhetoric—work hard, play hard; another day, another dollar. My partner and I have an extensive collection of coffee mugs embellished with little sayings, and the other day, I looked up and noticed for the first time that they all just shamelessly evangelize toxic productivity dogma: One mug says “Sleep is for the weak”; another reads “A yawn is just a silent scream for coffee.” A silent scream? Are we all so conditioned to believe it’s romantic to be overworked and exhausted, so terrified of leisure and “laziness,” that we print cute jokes about it on drinkware? In twenty-first-century America, apparently so. The language of Protestant capitalism is everywhere—all the way down to our coffee mugs—but it plays a starring role in the MLM industry, which at once indulges Americans’ most quixotic aspirations and their gravest fears. It’s especially pronounced in the way MLMs stress meritocracy, the idea that money and status are individually earned. Meritocracy is founded on the tenet that people can control their lives in big ways, that as long as they really try, they can pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps. Americans love the mythology that successful people deserve their success while struggling people are simply less worthy. MLM recruits, whose “success” is entirely based on commission from selling and recruiting, relish this notion even more. Per MLM ideology, no win is unearned, regardless of what or who is sacrificed to achieve it. And no failure is undeserved, either. The majority of direct sales propaganda I’ve read emphasizes the “blood, sweat, tears, heart, and soul” necessary to build a sales team, urging sellers to view their efforts as a badge of patriotic honor and to wear it with a smile. Countless MLMs invoke nationalistic slogans to reinforce the idea that enlisting to be a #bossbabe means signing up to serve your country. One diet supplement MLM is literally named American Dream Nutrition; another is called United Sciences of America, Inc.

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

  “There’s no better way to purify the heart than to deal with its fleshy counterpart. Your impudent, little rump.” Three more very hard smacks elicit some twists and turns. Cuter than kittens at Christmas. His lean little bum is luscious, almost demanding you smack it. I stroke his hair, breathing over his face and into his mouth, rubbing my hand inside his slinky knickers to check he is rock hard. He moans harder as my fingertips brush over his anus. He is yearning to be penetrated, while fearful of which implement might enter his most secret place. Kissing him passionately, I press a purple butt plug into his mouth. He sucks at it busily, my darling demonstrating just what an eager little tart he is. He will be needing that busy little tongue later when I am queening him, rocking back and forth on his face. I take the plug, the width of three bunched fingers, lube him up and press it in his bottom. I pull his panties back up and give his rump a maternal pat. He’s squirming with pleasure as we kiss, slowly and lovingly, still hungry for each other after all this time. When we started it was all about him. I was apparently privileged to watch a preening narcissist get in touch with his feminine side, a female persona whose appeal eluded me. While it was occasionally An Inverted Heart. Glowing Ruby Red 347 fun I could only see it as a waste of a perfectly manly man. While he would once have been thrilled to tart around in lingerie, imagining himself to be as alluring as his beautiful Mistress he is now all too aware that these pleasures must be paid for. I’m breathing deeply, drunk on power and wondering how far I can go this time. Domme, do no harm. A simple mantra I recite whenever the spirit of vengeance threatens to claim me. It would be all too easy to tan his hide till the tears ran down his face, over the leather headrest and on to our thick dungeon carpet. (Note to self. Push his boundaries. Soon.) But today is about love. “Valentine’s day didn’t used to be childishly sentimental — a cutesy, vomitous exchange of newspaper greetings and cards. ‘Ickle Susie loves her big Poppa Bear.’ Hearts and chocolates. It used to be Roman women yearning to have their bare flesh whipped by strips of cow hide.” I abandon the paddle for my hand and soon hear a satisfying smack ring out. It sounds so good I give him two sets of six. I remove my panties from his mouth. I wish to hear his cries of distress as clearly as possible. e “Drunken lust-crazed maidens‘fighting each other for the honour of being flogged with leather whips. Pert white buttocks striped red, cries of initial outrage becoming urgent pleas for more. Heat from _ glowing bottoms spreading to nearby erogenous zones.”

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

  The haste of this narrative has many unforeseen drawbacks: it makes it appear as if I had had conquest after conquest and little or no difficulty in my efforts to win love. In reality my half dozen victories were spread out over nearly as many years, and time and again I met rebuffs and refusals quite sufficient to keep even my conceit in decent bounds. But I want to emphasize the fact that success in love, like success in every department of life, falls usually to the tough man unwearied in pursuit. Chaucer was right when he makes his Old Wyfe of Bath confess: And by a close attendance and attention Are we caught, more or less the truth to mention. It is not the handsomest man or the most virile who has most success with women, though both qualities smooth the way; but that man who pursues them most assiduously, flatters them most constantly and cleverly, and always insists on taking the girl’s “No” for consent, her reproofs for endearments and even a little crossness for a new charm. Above all, it is necessary to push forward after every refusal, for as soon as a girl refuses, she is apt to regret and may grant then what she expressly denied the moment before. Yet I could give dozens of instances where assiduity and flattery, love-looks and words were all ineffective, so much so that I should never say with Shakespeare: “he’s not a man who cannot win a woman.” I have generally found, too, that the easiest to win were the best worth winning for me, for women have finer senses for suitability in love than any man. Now for an example of one of my many failures which took place when I was still a student and had fair opportunity to succeed. It was a custom in the University for every professor to lecture for forty-five minutes, thus leaving each student fifteen minutes at least free to go back to his private class-room to prepare for the next lecture. All the students took turns to use these classrooms for their private pleasure. For example, from 11:45 to noon each day I was supposed to be working in the Junior Class-room and no student would interfere with me or molest me in any way. One day, a girl Fresher, Grace Weldon by name, the daughter of the owner of the biggest department store in Lawrence, came to Smith when Miss Stevens and I were with him, about the translation of a phrase or two in Xenophon. “Explain it to Miss Weldon, Frank!” said Smith and in a few moments I had made the passage clear to her. She thanked me prettily and I said, “If you ever want anything I can do, I’ll be happy to make it clear to you, Miss Weldon; I’m in the Junior class-room from 11:45 to noon always.”

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

  He saw no connection between Trump and Hitler, but he did refer to Trump’s opponent as “Hitlery Clinton.” He suggested, too, that his critics bore a striking resemblance to Nazis. It wasn’t Trump and his followers who were guilty of racism and xenophobia; it was the “Beltway and Manhattan elites” who practiced a “new and accepted tribalism and xenophobia” against “white European ‘Christian’ varieties.” Metaxas derided his critics as “vile,” “obscene,” “impotent.” The Yale-educated Manhattanite positioned himself “on the side of the common folk against ‘elites.’” At the time of the Republican National Convention, Metaxas reiterated his support for Trump. He may be no “great man of virtue,” but he loved America. It wasn’t really about his sexual ethics or humility or narcissism: “When you are in a war mentality, you say ‘who is going to stand up where we need to stand up.’” Metaxas’s protestations aside, it did indeed seem to be about Trump’s sexual ethics, his lack of humility, his narcissism. What Metaxas admired in Trump appeared to be precisely the fact that he was no great man of virtue, traditionally defined. But he was the perfect embodiment of a different set of masculine “virtues” that evangelical men had been touting for nearly half a century.26 By that point Metaxas was in good company; at the time of the convention, 78 percent of white evangelicals were backing Trump.27 AS THE ELECTION NEARED , the evangelical vote for Trump seemed secure. In fact, the more unconventional, bombastic, and offensive he became, the more evangelicals seemed to rally to his side. In September, Trump took a momentary pause from campaigning to attend Phyllis Schlafly’s funeral. Although the times had changed, the matriarch of the Religious Right, in her waning years, had not. During the Obama administration she continued to denounce “the stupidity of feminists” for getting rid of “all the manly men.” Most women liked “big, strong, John-Wayne-type men,” the kind of men who “put out fires, fight in combat, protect their wives and children against intruders, and save damsels in distress.” For too long feminists had made men “afraid to be manly,” but it was time for women to say: “we love manly men.” Schlafly knew a manly man when she saw one. She had been an early Trump supporter during the primaries, and she had spoken in support of Trump at the RNC in Cleveland, connecting Trump, in the words of his evangelical biographers, to “fifty years’ worth of anti-establishment, grassroots, Christian, Republican Party politics.” Trump eulogized Schlafly as a “truly great American patriot,” a hero of the Christian Right. The day after Schlafly’s death her final book was released: The Conservative Case for Trump .28 Remarkably, Trump had become the standard-bearer of the Christian Right. Four weeks before the election, however, the release of the Access Hollywood tape threw everything into question.

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

  True to the Gaithers’ brand, it was a nostalgic ballad; by that point in time, for many of their evangelical fans, little separated Jesus from John Wayne. Jesus had become a Warrior Leader, an Ultimate Fighter, a knight in shining armor, a William Wallace, a General Patton, a never-say-die kind of guy, a rural laborer with calluses on his hands and muscles on his frame, the sort you’d find hanging out at the NRA convention. Jesus was a badass.1 This Jesus was over half a century in the making. Inspired by images of heroic white manhood, evangelicals had fashioned a savior who would lead them into the battles of their own choosing. The new, rugged Christ transformed Christian manhood, and Christianity itself. Weaving together intimate family matters, domestic politics, and a foreign policy agenda, militant masculinity came to reside at the heart of a larger evangelical identity. Over the years, Christians have been drawn into this cultural and political identity in many ways. Christian men attended men’s ministries to become better fathers and more faithful Christians. Christian parents sought help raising children. Christian women looked to books and seminars to learn how to be better wives. The resources they found introduced them to a larger world of evangelical “family values”—to traditional visions of masculinity and femininity, and to a social order structured along clear lines of patriarchal authority. FROM THE START , evangelical masculinity has been both personal and political. In learning how to be Christian men, evangelicals also learned how to think about sex, guns, war, borders, Muslims, immigrants, the military, foreign policy, and the nation itself. Consider, for instance, gun rights. Writers on evangelical masculinity have long celebrated the role guns play in forging Christian manhood. From toy guns in childhood to real firearms gifted in initiation ceremonies, guns are seen to cultivate authentic, God-given masculinity. A 2017 survey revealed that 41 percent of white evangelicals own guns, a number higher than members of any other faith group and significantly higher than the 30 percent of Americans overall who own firearms. In 2018, the National Rifle Association elected none other than Oliver North as president. Introduced as “a legendary warrior for American freedom,” North opened the annual meeting with a patriotic and unapologetically Christian invocation. At the meeting’s prayer breakfast, he reminded members that they were “in a fight . . . in a brutal battle to preserve the liberties that the good Lord presents us with.” At the same meeting, former Major League first baseman Adam LaRoche pontificated that Jesus was no pacifist. Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword. LaRoche was sporting a black T-shirt emblazoned with the message “Jesus loves me and my guns.”2 It’s not just the religious rhetoric that is striking here, or the fact that it could have been lifted straight out of dozens, if not hundreds, of books on evangelical masculinity. A common sense of embattlement also links the rhetoric of the NRA to that of conservative white evangelicalism.

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

  The report concluded that Boykin had violated three internal regulations, but the substance of his remarks was not addressed; a senior defense official called the report a “complete exoneration,” finding Boykin responsible only for a few “relatively minor offenses,” technical and bureaucratic matters. Boykin emerged from the situation largely unscathed. Chuck Holton later had his fictional colonel come to Boykin’s defense: “Boykin got flambéed in the press for telling it like it is,” for saying “this war is against radical Islam, and the press tried to crucify him for it.”22 Boykin, however, had other things on his mind. At the height of the scandal, he was also engaged in a covert operation to “gitmoize” the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Boykin had flown to Iraq to meet with the commander of Guantanamo, who had been called to Baghdad to brief military commanders on interrogation techniques. Under Rumsfeld’s command, Cambone introduced these methods—both physical coercion and sexual humiliation—at Abu Ghraib to extract intelligence on the Iraqi insurgence. All of this was carried out secretly within the Defense Department. When news, including photographs, leaked of the tactics being employed, members of the 372nd Military Police Company took the fall. Boykin remained at his post until his retirement in 2007.23 Even after his retirement, Boykin pressed his agenda. He founded Kingdom Warriors, an organization to promote militarized Christianity, and he accepted a position as executive vice president of the Family Research Council. He also published Never Surrender: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom , a book endorsed by kindred spirits Oliver North and Stu Weber. Boykin decided not to submit the book to the Pentagon for advance review and ended up receiving “a scathing reprimand” after a criminal investigation revealed that the book disclosed classified information. Boykin was unrepentant, insisting that the censure was payback for his vocal objections to the Pentagon, particularly his opposition to the integration of women in the military. In 2014 Boykin published another book, coauthored with “terrorism expert” Kamal Saleem. CBN featured Boykin and Saleem on The Watchman , a program devoted to exposing how “radical Islam” was on the march around the world, and the Family Research Council touted their dystopian exploration of “what happens when Islam rules” as an “exciting merger of reality and fiction.”24 EVANGELICALS WEREN’T the only ones renegotiating their views on foreign policy in the post–Cold War era, nor were they the only ones who thought President Clinton’s pursuit of humanitarian wars and peacekeeping missions betrayed American interests and values. During the 1990s, a group of young conservative intellectuals developed a plan for how America should brandish its unrivaled military and economic power, and though they were not particularly religious, these self-described neoconservatives did have faith—an expansive faith in American power. And they had their own patron saints: Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  16 Classical yoga was not an aerobic exercise but a systematic assault on the ego. The word yoga (“yoking”) is itself significant. It was originally used by the Aryans to describe the tethering of draft animals to the war chariot before a raid, but the new men of yoga were engaged in the conquest of inner space and in a raid on the unconscious drives that held human beings captive to their me-first instincts. In order to achieve an ekstasis , a “stepping outside” the norm, a yogi did the opposite of what came naturally. Instead of succumbing to the ceaseless motion that characterizes all sentient beings, he would sit as still as a plant or a statue. He controlled his respiration, the most fundamental and automatic of our physical functions, his aim being to stop breathing for as long as possible between exhalation and inhalation. He learned to master the ceaseless flux of thoughts, sensations, and fantasies that coursed through his mind in order to concentrate “on one point” ( ekagrata ). As a result, he found that he saw other objects and people differently; because he had repressed the aura of memory and personal association surrounding each one of them, he no longer saw them through the filter of his own desires and needs. The “I” was disappearing from his thinking . But before he was permitted to practice the simplest yogic exercise, an aspiring yogi had to undergo a long apprenticeship, which amounted to a head-on collision with the Four Fs. He had to observe five “prohibitions” ( yamas ). Violence of any sort was forbidden: he must not swat an insect, speak unkindly, make an irritable gesture, or harm a single creature in any way. Stealing was outlawed, which also meant that he could not grab food when he was hungry but must simply accept what he was given whenever it was offered. Renouncing the acquisitive drive, he forswore avarice and greed. He was required to speak the truth at all times, not altering what he said to protect himself or serve his own interests. And, finally, he had to abstain from sex and intoxicants, which could cloud his mind and hinder his yogic training. Until his guru was satisfied that this behavior was now second nature to him, he was not even allowed to sit in the yogic position. But once he had mastered these disciplines, explained Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras , he would experience “indescribable joy.” 17 Making a deliberate effort to transcend the primitive self-protective instincts had propelled him into a different state of consciousness. Siddhatta Gotama, the future Buddha, studied yoga under some of the best teachers of his day before he achieved the enlightenment of Nirvana.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  How do we assert a strongly felt conviction with compassion? Saint Paul provides us with a useful checklist in the famous description of love quoted earlier. Charity is “patient and kind”; it “is never boastful, never conceited, never rude,” never envious or “quick to take offence.” Charity “keeps no score of wrongs” and “takes no pleasure in the wrongdoing of others.”15 If we are quick to take offense and positively smack our lips in self-righteous delight at the wrongdoing of others, we will fail this test. If we speak impatiently, rudely, or unkindly, we may be in danger of bringing ourselves down to the level of intolerance we are condemning. An older translation rendered the phrase “never boastful, never conceited” as “charity … is not puffed up.” Our critique should not inflate the ego. Sometimes when people are inveighing against an abuse or crime, they seem almost to swell before our eyes with delicious self-congratulation. Gandhi left us a fine example of compassionate assertiveness: advocating nonviolent resistance, he frequently asked people to consider whether they fought to change things or to punish. When Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek, Gandhi believed, he was urging them to show courage in the face of hostility. This was the way to transform hatred and contempt into respect. But nonviolence did not mean compliance with injustice: his opponents could have his dead body, Gandhi would insist, but not his obedience. During this step, we try to make ourselves mindful of the way we speak to others. When you argue, do you get carried away by your own cleverness and deliberately inflict pain on your opponent? Do you get personal? Will the points you make further the cause of understanding or are they exacerbating an already inflammatory situation? Are you really listening to your opponent? What would happen if—while debating a trivial matter that would have no serious consequences—you allowed yourself to lose the argument? After a contentious discussion, conduct a postmortem with yourself: Can you really back up everything you said in the heat of the moment? Did you want to inflict pain? Did you really know what you were talking about, or were you depending on hearsay? And before you embark on an argument or a debate, ask yourself honestly if you are ready to change your mind.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The Germanic tribes who established kingdoms in the old Roman provinces had embraced Christianity and revered the warrior kings of the Hebrew Bible, but their military ethos was still permeated with ancient Aryan ideals of heroism and desire for fame, glory, and loot. All these elements blended inextricably in their conduct of war. The Carolingians’ wars were presented as holy wars, sanctioned by God, and they called their dynasty the New Israel. 5 Their military campaigns certainly had a religious dimension, but material profit was every bit as important. In 732 Charles Martel (d. 741) had defeated a Muslim army on its way to pillage Tours, but after his victory Charles immediately proceeded to loot the Christian communities in southern Francia as thoroughly as the Muslims would have done. 6 During his Italian wars to defend the pope, his son Pippin forced the Lombards to relinquish a third of their treasure; this massive wealth enabled his clergy to build a truly Catholic and Roman enclave north of the Alps. Charlemagne (r. 772–814) showed what a king could do when supported by such substantial resources. 7 By 785 he had conquered northern Italy and the whole of Gaul; in 792 he moved into central Europe and attacked the Avars of western Hungary, bringing home wagonloads of plunder. These campaigns were billed as holy wars against “pagans,” but the Franks remembered them for more mundane reasons. “All the Avar nobility died in the war, all their glory departed. All their wealth and their treasure assembled over so many years were dispersed,” Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer, recorded complacently. “The memory of men cannot remember any war of the Franks by which they were so enriched and their material possessions so increased.” 8 Far from being inspired solely by religious zeal, these wars of expansion were also informed by the economic imperative of acquiring more arable land. The episcopal sees in the occupied territories became instruments of colonial control, 9 and the mass baptisms of the conquered peoples were statements of political rather than spiritual realignment. 10 But the religious element was prominent. On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne “Holy Roman Emperor” in the Basilica of St. Peter. The congregation acclaimed him as “Augustus,” and Leo prostrated himself at Charlemagne’s feet. The popes and bishops of Italy had long believed that the raison d’être of the Roman Empire was to protect the libertas of the Catholic Church. 11 After the empire’s fall, they knew that the Church could not survive without the king and his warriors.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  It was not like a scientific theory, which offered a detached and spectatorial account of how the world functioned; it was a participatory account of things. Marxism invited me both to appreciate its rendering of reality and to locate myself within that account and live accordingly. It was not simply a set of beliefs to be affirmed but a promise of participation in a new kind of existence. On this reading of things, I was part of something bigger. My life had a meaning. Empirical studies of meaning see this as ‘the extent to which one’s life is experienced as making sense, as being directed and motivated by valued goals, and as mattering in the world.’ 28 Marxism offered me all of these. As far as I was concerned, without such an informing and interpretative framework, it was impossible to discern or construct meaning in life. Marx also played an important role in solidifying my increasingly trenchant teenage atheism. I had embraced atheism partly because of books I had read suggesting that religion was the enemy of science. Yet as I look back on that fascinating but long-vanished world of the late 1960s, I can see that Marxism allowed me to reinterpret what was probably little more than a cultural distaste for the kind of religion I encountered in Belfast as an intellectual and moral crusade against an alien and oppressive ‘other’. I could reimagine myself as a noble hero in a culture war, part of a brave intellectual elite advancing human dignity by eliminating enemies of freedom. It made me feel good about myself, for a while. I subsequently read Karl Popper’s Poverty of Historicism . Popper, like me, had been drawn to Marxism as a teenager on account of its apparent explanatory power. And gradually I found myself unable to overlook his exposure of Marxism’s evidential deficits (it consisted mainly of unfalsifiable claims) and its alarming capacity to incite violence and intolerance. But I had learned something important – the imaginative and intellectual appeal of a big picture account of reality. If I were ever to embrace another worldview, I told myself, it would have to be one that developed a framework of meaning that would allow me to be an active participant rather than a passive observer. Let’s return to our imagined world, populated only with convictions that can be proved to be true. Could we live meaningfully in this environment from which beliefs about existential meaning and moral values have been excluded?