Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer for The Atlantic. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Jacobin, and other publications.
The devil was understood to be present and industrious, and America’s earliest forebears were quick to suss him out by his evil works.
Confession being fraught as it is with danger for both speaker and listener, the ordinariness of admission is probably the only thing that sustains it.