The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.
Simon SchamaRead
The notion that religion can actually be something... attached to progressivism seems so bizarre. But all you have to say is that Abolition wouldn't have happened without it. The way in which African Americans managed to achieve a degree of self-determination was through the church.
Interpretation
Religion played a crucial role in the progress of social justice movements, particularly abolitionism.
Simon Schama highlights the strong link between religion and social progress, arguing that religion, particularly through the African American church, was instrumental in the abolition of slavery and the empowerment of African Americans. This sheds light on the often overlooked influence of faith in driving societal change and the pursuit of justice.
In practice
In a discussion on the influence of religion in social movements.
The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.
In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present.
Jewish history turns out not to be an either/or story - as in, either pure Judaism detached from its surroundings or else assimilation - but rather, for the vast majority, the adventure of living in between.
I understood when I was quite small that there were two special things about the Jews. That we'd endured for over 3,000 years despite everything that had been thrown at us, and that we had an extraordinarily dramatic story to tell.
History is admirably dangerous. It is not the soft option. Teachers need to be grown up and brave. Sensitivity is fine, but it stops at the door of honest narrative.
History gives you insight of the same quality of truth as poetry or philosophy or a novel.
There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
Who taught me that animals were put on this Earth for food? Who taught me to disrespect animals and view them as mere commodities? Who stole my compassion, my empathy and my conscience? Who lied to me? Who instilled this vicious mindset of human-to-animal exploitation as standard operating procedure?
Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.
Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.
We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.
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