This should be in the historians’ and sociologists’ bible.

Some readers of my diss have said “you have countless progressive student voices recovered, but what about the wider Iranian ‘community?’” the wider Iranian community:

My solution to the (entirely manufactured) “too many official Catholic saints” problem? Just become a Protestant: everyone is a saint! :p

I left the Catholic Church decades ago But I still know the words of Jesus according to the Bible "Christian" Nationalism is a heresy And most people who call themselves Christians don't believe in most of the things that these wealthy con artist evangelical pastors like Paula White preach🧵

Declaring a fatwa against so-called “Dubai chocolate” for so many reasons, many of which should be self-evident. It also tastes terrible, but this isn’t the most important reason why you shouldn’t buy it.

And another one bites the dust

You should read Peter Arnade’s books about civic republicanism in the late medieval and early modern Burgundian Netherlands. He says the civic patriotism of the Dutch Revolt was not an invention of Calvinist theology *or* Italian humanist republicanism, but drew on local traditions of urban guilds.

Just finished a new draft of the introduction. The next two weeks will involve a thorough rereading and revision of every chapter plus the conclusion and epilogue. Every word matters for an audience of four people.

Friends from Iran have started asking about how long the medication that need refrigeration can last if the electricity cuts off… :( This is such a desperately frustrating thing. Sitting & waiting if a criminal mad man decides to murder thousands & perhaps millions of ppl, & we can’t do anything.

Increasing sympathetic to Tooze's critiques of those who chart a standard structure of the rise and fall of hegemonic orders; has become increasingly clear to me that we need to think of empires as composed of multiple parts & understand the importance of contingent events.

I think many of us are waiting for justice to come. Such violence, such impunity, horrors that harken back to the second quarter of the twentieth century—all of this—raises the problem once again of cheap grace. “Forgiveness,” as it often does, will be used to mask the urgent need for vindication.

"Matthew Goodwin has been paid a salary of up to €10,000 a month [from Hungary's state-funded MCC], according to leaked documents obtained by Hungarian investigative journalists Direkt36 and reported by the Good Law Project" That could all end if Orbán loses... open.substack.com/pub/democrac...

Iran: "A ceasefire needs to include actually ending the war." Newspaper: "Iran refuses ceasefire."

hard for me to say, Captain Kirk said a lot of wise things.

Unsustainable. Outrageous. Maybe even criminal. But I’m not a lawyer!

Advance of History by Mark Tobey, 1964 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137544

Getting tired of computers again but can’t justify my analog notebook hysteria and mess. Has anyone experimented with this line of products?

If you want to understand the political stakes of Barth studies today—and you also want to be right—you have to read Bruce McCormack, David Congdon, Paul DeHart, and Christiane Tietz. This constellation resists the postliberal domestication of Barth (faux progressive and conservative).

Watch the whole thing. A deeply humanizing portrait.

We seem to be at a point of disintegration—a moment when things fall apart.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Just as there are multiple temporalities, there are multiple kinds of collapse taking place, transpiring at different rates. We are experiencing an acute political crisis, now part of the polycrisis.

It would be funny if AI slop destroys citation indices and makes personalized blog posts more important.

Why is Trump so enthusiastic about destroying Iranian civilian infrastructure? It won’t win the war. It is likely for another reason: to provoke an Iranian response that Trump can use for his own purposes. (2/17)

“At all times and in all places there is knowledge of Jesus Christ as there is knowledge of His revelation, of the homecoming of the Son of Man fulfilled on the way of the Son of God into the far country and revealed in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.” – Barth, CD IV/2, 154

The one time I take a good photograph of myself I have to be wearing a backpack…

“Jesus said, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him, ‘Rabbuni!’ (which is Hebrew for ‘Teacher’). ‘Do not cling to me,’ said Jesus, ‘for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers, and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” – Jn. 20:16–17

Tax the churches. Signed, A mainline anti-Christian nationalist Christian

🌄

Jésus le Christ, lumière intérieure Ne laisse pas les ténèbres me parler Jésus le Christ, lumière intérieure Donne-moi d'accueillir ton amour

One of my favorite songs ever, by Lescop, about Los Angeles, in French.

“We thank you, O God, for the water of baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. From it we are raised to share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the power of the Holy Spirit.” – BCW

“Deus pro nobis means simply that God has not abandoned the world and man in the unlimited need of his situation, but that He willed to bear this need as His own, that He took it upon Himself, and that He cries with man in this need.” – Barth, CD IV/1, 215

Someone needs to create the Postmodernism Generator but for Atlantic articles that blame “the left” for everything under the sun.

Krisis Barth requires us to dwell in the negation of Good Friday. Late Barth (CD IV and ET) requires us to read Good Friday from the vantage point of Easter. Which one you choose largely depends on what your heart most needs today.

*glares rhizomatically*

Jafar Panahi’s films (and Iranian neorealism more generally) represent some of the best art of the last 100 years. This is not an exaggeration.

By night, we hasten in darkness to search for living water, only our thirst leads us onwards, only our thirst leads us onwards.

An appropriate reading for Good Friday: a lection from St. Jean Baudrillard.

@princetonupress.bsky.social coming out with banger after banger lately.

High quality, custom stationary is prohibitively expensive. I don’t think I’m important enough to justify spending >$1,000 on letterheads, envelopes, calling cards, etc. One day, though!

God's eternal self-determination in the primal decision of election means that God has always already chosen to be God for humanity and chosen humanity for God. Reconciliation is therefore the fulfillment of the covenant's inner logic. The cross enacts in time what God has eternally willed.

in fact, I wrote about it: "Bonnie Smith and the Mirror of History" FPCS 33:2 (2015). It's one of my favorite things that I've published and probably the least read.

This is really important to point out. You are allowed, even expected, to be cringe once you turn 30. I got my cringe card in November.

This looks amazing. Can’t believe I haven’t read it yet!

One of my favorite books.

Easily one of the loveliest Maundy Thursday homilies I have heard. "What if we acknowledged our own mortality, not morbidly, but meaningfully?" – My pastor

The US reportedly waited to strike the bridge in Iran a second time until rescue workers and others in the area gathered to help the wounded, which then killed at least eight people. Authorities in Iran are describing it as an act of terrorism.

One of our hymns for Maundy Thursday at First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor.

“The last night I was a pediatric resident, a child came in with Hib and promptly died by the next day. I didn’t work for 50 years to have everything destroyed by one man.” -Dr. Kathryn Edwards, Vanderbilt University This is what RFK Jr. and the anti-vaxxers have wrought.

I am a member of the Association for Iranian Studies. I am frankly disappointed by its radio silence in the wake of the American-Israeli invasion of Iran. Something that may surprise people is that the world of Iranian studies does, indeed, extend beyond the activities of Cyrus the Great.