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Rob Corcoran

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Finding our humanity
January 25, 2021January 25, 2021

Finding our humanity

My recent blog, “No healing without truth,” has sparked some challenging conversations. A respected African American colleague, Rev. Paige Chargois, while agreeing wholeheartedly on the need for truth, writes, “Black folks have not been avoiding the truth. Quite the contrary! Black folks have been living that, writing that, teaching that, even adjudicating that for centuries!” She says that the real […]

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No healing without truth
January 14, 2021January 18, 2021

No healing without truth

On January 6, a white mob assaulted the US Capitol. “Hang Mike Pence!” they shouted as they forced their way into the Chambers. Some carried assault rifles and Confederate flags. Others brought explosives. One man had texted he was thinking of “putting a bullet” in Nancy Pelosi. There was no doubt about the intent of the ringleaders. They were hoping […]

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The bridge of trust
January 5, 2021March 13, 2023

The bridge of trust

It is becoming increasingly evident that trust is an essential moral foundation for the functioning of democracy. The greatest challenges in our communities, our countries and the world today are not intellectual, or technical, or even economic. They are problems of lack of trust. But what is trust? Most of us have an implicit understanding, but its multidimensional nature makes […]

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The wind, the sails and the rudder
December 18, 2020December 22, 2020

The wind, the sails and the rudder

“Rebuilding trust is, obviously, the work of a generation.” This is how David Brooks concludes a recent column in the New York Times. He surveys the threat to democracy presented by the refusal among large sections of the US population to accept reality and to trust proven data. He notes that social media are accelerants of paranoia by spreading misinformation, […]

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Questions for America
November 10, 2020November 13, 2020

Questions for America

History turns on small hinges. We may look back at the question posed by a 76-year-old African American woman as a key factor that made Joe Biden’s presidency possible. At a time when his primary campaign was floundering, Jannie Jones, a church usher beckoned to Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina and whispered, “I need to know who you’re going […]

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Stand still and listen
October 27, 2020November 3, 2020

Stand still and listen

“America is at a crossroads. One road leads to community, the other to the chaos of competing identities and interests.” These words, inspired by the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., are the opening sentences of A Call to Community, a manifesto for honest conversation about race that Hope in the Cities and its national partners launched in May, 1996 […]

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Are you a radiator or a thermometer?
October 16, 2020October 20, 2020

Are you a radiator or a thermometer?

My father-in-law, Alan Thornhill was an Anglican priest and playwright. My wife has been editing a book of reflections drawn from some of his sermons at the small country church in England which he served in retirement. In one of them he highlights three vital ingredients for a growing faith: air, food and exercise. We breath in and out as we […]

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An unlikely advocate for racial healing
September 28, 2020September 29, 2020

An unlikely advocate for racial healing

Gerald Henderson was not the most obvious person to lead a movement for truth-telling and racial healing. An Englishman, he was the product, as he put it, of a “white, privileged, middle class, private school background.”  Yet he was to become the trusted confidante of people of all races and classes in his adopted hometown of Liverpool, and he played […]

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If you are not safe, nothing else matters
September 13, 2020

If you are not safe, nothing else matters

(I first posted this in August 2014 but current events in the US and international protests against police and government violence make it even more relevant.) In May of this year I was called for jury duty. Every Wednesday for a month I joined more than 100 other Richmonders of all backgrounds at the John Marshall courthouse. For hours we […]

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Put children first
August 28, 2020August 30, 2020

Put children first

We now have four granddaughters. The older two are eight and seven. The younger two were born during the Covid crisis, just five and three months ago. For the older two, much of the conversation centers on questions about the opening of the school year. But all of them are fortunate to have comfortable homes and parents with secure jobs […]

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