Archive
Category: History
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A Long Campaign With Mixed Motives
I remember sitting in a cramped, dimly lit community hall years ago, watching a young organizer pace the floor with a fervor that was…
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Honest History Includes What Was Done Badly
I’ve sat through far too many seminars where academics and activists use increasingly dense, polished language to signal their virtue, as if a more…
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Mission and Empire Were Entangled and Not Identical
I remember sitting in a cramped, dimly lit hospital waiting room years ago, listening to a young man try to explain his profound grief…
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The Conflict Story Is Mostly Nineteenth Century Invention
I remember sitting in a sterile hospital room years ago, watching a young man stare at a monitor that was providing him with more…
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Criticism Produced Better Arguments on Both Sides
I remember sitting in a sterile hospital room late one Tuesday night, listening to a man try to make sense of a terminal diagnosis…
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Toleration Began as Exhaustion, Not Principle
I remember sitting in a cramped, fluorescent-lit palliative care room thirty years ago, listening to a man argue with his brother over a theological…
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Politics Wore Religious Clothing
I’ve spent many long afternoons in the hospital chapel, sitting in the heavy silence that follows a sudden, violent loss, and I can tell…
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Reform Happened on Both Sides
I spent many years in hospital wards, sitting in the heavy silence that follows a difficult diagnosis, and if those years taught me anything,…
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Several Causes Converged at Once
I spent thirty years in hospital wards, sitting by bedsides where people were stripped of their pretenses, and if there is one thing I…
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Cheap Books Changed Who Could Argue
We are often told a tidy, almost celebratory story about how the invention of the movable type machine democratized the world, as if the…