I found an article as a link (and example) of the author’s use of plain text to compose complex (in his case, academic) documents. I’m being drawn to this practice as a way to improve my productivity. (I now often use UberWriter, a GUI frontend application to pandoc, but will also use pandoc on the command line directly.)
But that’s not what inspires this post. That example of academic history is about role of personal relationships to build trust in the water cure. There’s something about nineteenth century American fringe movements — like mesmerism, abolitionism and women’s rights — that makes me wonder if there are lessons for Universalist history. And I hadn’t considered personal repute so clearly. (Family ties were, and still are, key in historic Southern Universalist churches.)
A thought.