My new Open Access article! For some reason it felt relevant to discuss the Bible and the LONG history of leaders telling stories about how things used to be great before moral, ethnic, urban, gender, and family corruption bigly happened. #EduSky #Election #Bible journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

So, @vox-magica.bsky.social's new book is an awesome rethinking of not just early Christianity, but how ancient Christians wrote abt Christian history & heroes by developing their own self-serving ways of talking magic, miracles, orthodoxy, and heresy Check out the publications she found helpful!

🧵[CW Sexual violence] William Yoo's book on Presbyterian history doesn't beat around the bush, but explains that most white Presbyterians in 18th-19th cent were ghoulishly immoral and tried to turn the brutalizing and rape of enslaved humans into an issue of Biblical interpretation #AwesomeWork 1/10

🧵[CW Sexual violence] William Yoo's book on Presbyterian history doesn't beat around the bush, but explains that most white Presbyterians in 18th-19th cent were ghoulishly immoral and tried to turn the brutalizing and rape of enslaved humans into an issue of Biblical interpretation #AwesomeWork 1/10

I want to begin a series of posts on scholarship in Biblical Studies & Christian history that does things right! As in, work that's not just interesting & ruthlessly truthful, but activist in disrupting the bullshit paradigms that made racism, enslaving, sexism, homophobia, etc feel ok #AwesomeWork

If you want to learn some awesome and nerdy scholarly stuff, get Dr. Patel's new book. Fellow academics, email your librarians so they can acquire it too!

Since Trump is concerned about getting to heaven, maybe he could do what Jesus told a rich dude who had similar concerns, "Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Mark 10:21). You'd think Trump's evangelical advisors could tell him?

It is a completely open 'secret' (b/c media don't discuss it) that Evangelical orgs openly fire professors, ministers, and staff who even think-aloud in a way that differs from leadership and donors. They make no apologies and demand they be given this exemption to cultivate their insular spaces.

It is a completely open 'secret' (b/c media don't discuss it) that Evangelical orgs openly fire professors, ministers, and staff who even think-aloud in a way that differs from leadership and donors. They make no apologies and demand they be given this exemption to cultivate their insular spaces.

The stuff Jeffrey Epstein’s friends felt comfortable saying and drawing in grotesque detail with their names attached knowing they would not face consequences is the kind of thing I think of when I think about rape culture and how sexual violence against girls and young women is actually glorified

I swear this #SCOTUS would rule 6-3 that the SS can continue their roving patrols to check if someone is a Jew: 'The questioning is typically brief and the non-Jews may promptly go free' while the SS loads the Jews onto the trains "for deportation."

Serious question: Is there a reason that the Governor and Mayor can't direct State/City law enforcement to monitor and arrest ICE agents for committing (checks notes) crimes like assault and kidnapping?

Interesting. Didn’t know Thiel was working on a memoir.

ON THE WAY! The volume @alexichantz.bsky.social, Paula Fredriksen, & I edited is @fortresspress.bsky.social for pre-order. TOC Below. Truly awesome contributors. Big thanks to all involved. Feels like we've been having a party and finally get to invite everyone! www.fortresspress.com/store/produc...

Coming your way soon-- a great collection with an amazing line up of scholars! More details to come! @slyprofessor.bsky.social @alexichantz.bsky.social 🤓 www.fortresspress.com/store/produc...

As a bright professional spotlight, my third book, Scandalous Christian Histories, is now under contract with the University of Edinburgh Press. Onward!

when people say "this isn't what I voted for" they should be forced to list what they DID vote for

Keep in mind: the NEH’s budget is 0.01% of the entire federal budget. This is not about savings - it is about the destruction of the Humanities and the critical thinking abilities that they teach. 🗃️

Four years after initial inception, and we have a hard copy! I cannot express just how grateful I am for the work that our contributors put into this volume. Cheers, @apocalypsenow5.bsky.social and @drmjcwarren.bsky.social!

💰CHARTS: Since Reagan, the rich have gotten much richer (especially white folks) Now Republicans want to cut programs for the poor and let people at the top keep even more. A redistribution of wealth has been going from bottom to top for decades. www.cbpp.org/research/pov...

The new Trump administration has illegally removed far more people from their jobs because of speech and beliefs in the last month than the entire list of cancelled or pressured people (many of whom were criticized, not fired) compiled by FIRE and others over years. It’s not remotely close.

Was writing about Sirach and misogyny. File this passage (25:23-26) under "Patriarchy is Uncreative Loser Energy." Though from an ancient Jewish text now in Catholic Bibles, it reads like a manosphere bro manifesto about how women exist for the comfort & pleasure of men. 🤮 #BiblicalStudies #Classics

If this reporting stands up (and it appears confirmed by multiple sources): devastating. The EIS is the front-line SWAT team of disease detection in the US and globally, and also the training ground for new generations of public health workers. No EIS, no boots on the ground for outbreaks. ->

The main beneficiaries of the Department of Education are disabled kids (IDEA) and working-class and poor Americans (Title I, Pell Grants, work assistance), so of course Trump wants to do away with it.

Dear the Media, When something bad happens in an area under the executive branch's purview, and the White House goes "uh... a Black or gay person must've done it," you do not need to accept that. You're allowed to follow up in pursuit of the factual reason, not the bigoted excuse. Love, The public

There are still bodies in the damn water.

"The Bishop hijacked the Prayer Service" is like saying "the pilot hijacked the plane"

We are like a week away from Elon going to Poland to announce that DOGE's official slogan is, "Work makes you free" ... and the NYT, CNN, and WaPo all telling us we did nazi what we saw.

Can we hear from the "I think about the Roman Empire" and "Gotta to teach Classics!" bros? Surely they can 'splain how Greco-Roman writers were obsessed with saying good leaders want advisors who speak truthfully instead of being sycophantic flatterers? Maybe our President can...oh shit, nevermind..

So I guess that’s a No on major corporate media bothering to explain that Trump’s “end birthright citizenship” Executive Order is an attempt to cancel one of the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution on (checks notes) MLK day … and Trump is throwing a party for it?

Yes, Polio has turned out to be a nonevent since the mid to late 20th century…so clearly it’s no big deal and RFK can nuke the vaccine. The NYT is a clickbait joke of a newspaper. Y2K “turned out to be a nonevent” b/c billions of $ of labor done by skilled workers to stop it from being “an event.”

*Speech in Gladiator II about how the True Rome wasn't about power but about creating a state where every man had their freedom* Me, in the theater: No, no, Rome was pretty much always about the power, team. 🗃️

A few important fact to remember: S. Korea lived under some form of military dictatorship from 1965-1988! Brazil lived under a military dictatorship from 1964-1985! Democracy is not an abstraction to these folk, it's a vulnerable thing that they want to protect.

Optimist: The cup is half full. Pessimist: The cup is half empty. Religious Studies Prof: Leaders competitively attribute meanings to the cup by adapting from established narratives abt gods, ancestors, authoritative teachings, and cosmic history to make their interpretation feel traditional.

Perfectly executed www.thebeaverton.com/2024/11/opin...

My book Immigration and Apocalypse will be at #AAR #SBL San Diego and bookstores / online everywhere Nov. 26 (pre-order avail now). Immediately, direly relevant, and I wish it were not so.

Post a non-religious photo you think of as holy.

We may have already reached the pinnacle of ancient historian Bkuesky-dom!

This is the rallying call that I've needed to hear since November 6th. From Roxane Gay in today's New York Times www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/o...

E) All of the above? It’s mostly important to avoid the last option: F) Fall asleep while sitting at the table … which I did once when I was sick 🤦‍♂️

🧵 Biblical studies bsky is arriving! Let's talk Jesus, the Bible, and trans people Trans people are dehumanized, blamed, demonized, and lied about. I'm not a political operative with clout, but I am a biblical scholar who studies gender in antiquity So how about the trans Jesus of Revelation? 1/12

i assign chapters from this book in two of my classes; students love it. nonbinary & trans students especially. this book is a classic & you should check it out! tbh, you could pick up anything dr. cobb writes. it’s all incisive, compelling arguments in beautiful prose.

I'll say it this way. The more I sit with it, the more my feeling is - the Dems were given a golden opportunity, four whole years, to stop this from happening. They comprehensively failed. They failed me, you, they failed our families. Centering their feelings about who is to blame is morally wrong

This is the energy we need when thinking about the election, what it looks like to go forward, and mustering as much “f*ck off!” as possible for centrist Dems and their consulting class who are telling us to “pivot right” on “LGBTQ issues.”

Do not let this happen. Activists will do their thing. Reporters have to now do theirs. Every R senator needs to be held to account for the arson that’s slowly unfolding

This is a @vox-magica.bsky.social thread to follow about early career scholars in Early Christianity who are doing really interesting and innovative work. Feast!!!

The editors of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, @srollens.bsky.social & Robert Myles, have made it a space that does history in really *interesting* ways. Its articles are often resources for thinking critically not just about Jesus, but history and religion, and why they matter. 👍

We have one duty. We figure out who has the least power and we stand with *them.* 🔥🔥🔥 Fernando Segovia left a powerfully disruptive legacy in my field.

People will be like "Oh! These trans people want outrageous things!" and the "outrageous things" are literally just • legal protections against discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, public accommodations, etc • the ability to update identity documents to accurately reflect name/gender

Introduce yourself with some jobs you've done apart from what you do now: -camp counselor -lifeguard -movie theater box office, concessions, cleaning -projectionist -clothing store cashier and stocker -receptionist -roofer