iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Did Franklin Graham put Michael Scott in charge of the posters for his Manchester (UK) meetings?

The poster has listed “No purpose; no hope; no love; know Jesus” with “know” listed over “no.”

Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Jinger Vuolo of the Duggar family fame and a speaker at the MAGA/MAHA adjacent Share the Arrows conference is now realizing certain things have been going on that is not good for her kids’ health. I just hope she also asks who caused it.

Her post:

I read the labels. I buy organic when I can. We filter our water. And I still feel like I'm one search away from spiraling about what's actually in our food and air.
So I stopped spiraling and started getting nosy. Turns out a lot of the protections that are supposed to catch this stuff-the testing, the tracking, the rules-have been quietly getting rolled back. Forever chemicals in water. Pesticides on produce. Air that hits our kids with asthma the hardest. I'm not a scientist. I'm just a mom who wants "safe" to actually mean safe.
So here's my one ask: be a little nosy with me. Look up YOUR neighborhood-your water, your air quality, what's near you. That's the whole thing.
Sources + where to start linked in my bio.
#commonsourcepartner

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I'm thinking of ways to show students how AI can help them *sound* like a certain kind of scholarship but still be wildly off, and I might just show them this.

The prompt was: "Write an outline for a[n] academic article on evangelicals on Mars and how they clamor for oysters for lunch."
Proposed title: "Oysters in the Red Desert: Evangelical Foodways, Colonial Longing, and Liturgical Appetite on Mars."

Potential Primary Sources for the Fictional Archive

Sermons from the First Evangelical Habitat Church.
Minutes from the Mars Settlement Council.
Ration cards and weekly lunch menus.
Focus-group interviews with settlers and food-service workers.
Children’s devotional curricula on “God’s Creation on Mars.”
Promotional material from a Martian aquaculture company.
Social-media posts using slogans such as “No Colony Without Cuisine” or “Oysters Are a Creation-Care Issue.”
Letters between settlers and relatives on Earth describing meals, deprivation, and homesickness.

Abstract

This article examines a hypothetical community of evangelical settlers on Mars whose recurring demand for oysters at lunch becomes a focal point for negotiating faith, scarcity, technological dependence, and earthly cultural memory. Drawing on scholarship in religion and food, space humanities, environmental ethics, and settler-colonial studies, it argues that the settlers’ clamoring for oysters is not reducible to culinary preference. Oysters function as a sacramentalized object of nostalgia: a materially scarce food through which colonists reproduce ideas of providence, abundance, status, and Christian dominion in an extraterrestrial setting. The article asks how a seemingly mundane lunch demand becomes a dispute over resource allocation, moral authority, communal identity, and the proper meaning of creation beyond Earth.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Om this Friday night, I can’t stop thinking about how my institution, four years after ChatGPT was first launched, managed to finally announce its new AI policy(ish) the same week the world truly started talking about how AI could kill us all. Slow clap.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I just cannot quite grasp the dramatic life story of the missionary Lulu Fleming that Sylvia M. Jacobs packed into this short paragraph. And this is just the first 25 years of Fleming's life!

"Lulu Fleming was the first black woman to be appointed and commis-
sioned for career missionary service by the Women’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West, an auxiliary of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Born a slave in Hibernia, Clay County, Florida, on January 28, 1862, Fleming converted in 1876 and was baptized on January 14, 1877, in Jacksonville, Florida. She attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating as class valedictorian on May 27, 1885, from the Estey Seminary Course. On March 17, 1887, Fleming set sail from the United States, reaching Palabala in the Congo, formerly the center of work for British Baptist missionaries, on May 16."

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Life in academia. Sometimes you run into this kind.

Image from Arrested Development of people dressed up as magicians. They have a Stern look on their face. Gob Bluth is holding a sign saying “We Demand To Be Taken Seriously.”

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Kyle Clark does an amazing job covering Colorado politics these days.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

For de interesserte: jeg har en artikkel ute hos Kirke og kultur der jeg skriver om kamoen om den amerikanske skolen og om det kristennasjonalistiske prosjektet: www.scup.com/doi/10.18261...

scup.com

Ta skolen tilbake til Gud

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Noen her som har skrevet NFR-søknad i humaniora og levert inn en søknad med fotnoter? Jeg tenker at våre fagfeller er vant til det, men vi får beskjed om å endre referansesystemet i søknaden av hensyn til leserne. Som jeg håper er relevante fagfeller.

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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

There's a major civil rights protest taking place in Selma, Alabama, right now in response to the SCOTUS decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing attack on Black Americans’ political power (video: defiancedispatch/IG)

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

The day I finally finish what I hope to be my second book, I will have explained the logic behind Allie Beth Stuckey’s post about phonics.

Post saying: Make phonics great again.
Image of Hooked on Phonics cards under the text: 80’s-90’s kids, remember the game “Hooked on Phonics”!

Text saying:
On the theological side:
Christianity is a word-based faith. God spoke the universe into existence.
He could have used any mechanism or no mechanism at all to create the world, but He used words.
He used language.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

There is no author mentioned for this piece, but whoever wrote it, knew how to rile up the PKs: "Promise Keepers make use of the techniques that built Mary Kay Cosmetics - get large groups pumped up and keep the spirit alive through grassroots efforts." Denver Post, July 24, 1994, A8.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

In 1991, James Dobson offended the evangelical cat community and had to write an apology in his newsletter. Here’s the start of it.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

I had a gap year in China before doing my MA. I sometimes went to a cafe run by American missionaries to get lunch and to buy bread and cheese. While eating my lunch one day, I started reading their magazines. That sparked my interest in evangelical print culture and “family values.”

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

During this week’s America Reads the Bible, Jerry, Billy, and Tommy will be reading the boobiest parts of the Bible. I hope they can keep it together better than they did when they first came across the book at church camp.

The schedule for Wednesday night’s reading of the Song of Solomon. All men.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Good thread. Also: I regularly have students read conservative writers such as Milton Friedman and Phyllis Schlafly. Even the more popular stuff like Marabel Morgan. I can’t imagine not doing that.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

So JD Vance says James Dobson shaped his conservative views growing up. If any of you wants to learn more about who this Dobson guy was, I have a book recommendation:

Book cover of Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family's Crusade for the Christian Home by Hilde Løvdal Stephens.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

I think there is some truth to this. The once cutting edge myth busters may now be the eatablishment worth critiquing. www.chronicle.com/article/how-...

chronicle.com

Opinion | How Humanists Helped Wreck the Humanities

Administrators, ideologues, and yes — professors too — share the blame. But all is not lost.

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alexis simpson @amutepiggy.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

this is art

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Echoes of the Southern California charismatic movement found in my parents’ attic. The book to the right discusses the theological implications of the 1960s charismatic movement.

Covers of Norwegian evangelical magazine for teens and twentysomethings depicting Jesus People-y folks.

Cover of a book asking; What is a healthy charismatic revival?

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I am talking about the 1990s as a turning point (?) in American history and suburban politics tomorrow, so I cannot resist including some references to the era's TV shows. I am so curious if they know about these!

Image of Full House, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and My So-Called Life.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Here's the state attorney in charge of the case against the son of the future queen of Norway trying to cheer people up by bringing some home-made pastries for everyone. Norwegians really believe in the power of pastries to make things better, if not only for a few minutes.

Picture of man with two trays (the kind you bring to an informal potluck) of pastries. He is surrounded by journalists.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

A great deep dive into the politics of vouchers in Texas. The spirit of Rushdoony lives on, it seems! Thanks, @haveyouheard.bsky.social I always enjoy your conversations.

podcasts.apple.com

#214 These Conservatives Are Furious About School Vouchers

Podcast Episode · Have You Heard · 5 March · 44m

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Help needed! I've assigned an article that we no longer have access to, so I'm up the creek. It's a piece by Peter Beinart from the Oct. 19 1998 issue of the New Republic. The title is "Battle for the 'Burbs." Pages 25-29.

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Christopher Deutsch @drchrisdeutsch.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

As a beef historian I also study horse slaughter in the 20th century. This is what happened. In 1915, total population in the US as counted by the federal government stood at 21+ million. By 1960 when counting stopped, it was 3 million. The pasture was for beef cattle, not unemployed horses.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Today I asked my students if they knew what a Trojan horse is. One out of twenty knew. Note to self: remember that you’re old and need to explain things.

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Idunn Victoria Rostøl @ivrostol.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Wrote a few words in @shcy.bsky.social's online exhibit Childish Things last week. Thanks @layla-koch.bsky.social for your helpful comments!

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

From the Christian nationalist/supremacist pastor and writer Doug Wilson’s visit to the Department of War this weekend.

Dep of war post saying: “We are gathered at the Pentagon for our monthly worship service. We are One Nation Under God.” Picture of Hegseth praying for Wilson. Picture of Wilson and worship leader.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Ulstein sier (jf. Minervas overskrifter i alle fall) at han ikke driver med kulturkrig, men heller tar partiet tilbake til røttene. Men det er jo ikke noen motsetning! Partiet er jo et resultat av 1930-tallets kulturkrig. www.uio.no/forskning/fo...

uio.no

Prester regnet svovel over svart scenegud - Forskningsnytt

Et påstått blasfemisk teaterstykke med en «neger» i hovedrollen ledet til krenkelsesdebatt, rettssak mot Øverland, ny blasfemiparagraf og at KrF ble til.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

A little bit of a timeline cleanse: I came across a digital copy of Gloria Steinem’s A Bunny’s Tale in her papers at Smith College. Such a fun piece to use in class! The entire thing is here: findingaids.smith.edu/repositories... Thank you archivists!

findingaids.smith.edu

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

The AI slop shaping evangelical boomers these days is just depressing.

AI-generated image of angry crowd facing ice officers. Posters with slogans such as: “No bolish ice” and “Bbolish ice.” A woman with a hijab is holding a poster saying “No borders. No nations.”

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

What a timing for a MAGA megastar to announce a cruise along the Norwegian coast.

As for a Michael W Smith-led cruise in Norway for the summer of 2027. “Norway’s Fjords Await!” Image of a fjords and Smith.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

I am talking to students about how to develop good master’s thesis projects today, and I have them looking at my own thesis after talking about the first paper I ever wrote about American evangelicalism and how it led me to where I am today. A bit unnerving.

Cover page of paper on evangelicalism and gender in the 1990s.

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Randall Stephens @randalljstephens.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

President Roosevelt, Dec 9, 1941: "There is no such thing as security for any nation—or any individual—in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism. There is no such thing as impregnable defense against powerful aggressors who sneak up in the dark and strike without warning."

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

I honestly hope he rolls out another one of those two-week plans he ends up just forgetting about, but I just can’t shake the feeling we are facing some truly terrible stuff.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Walking around Hobby Lobby is always a weird experience. And now this. While hearing a muzak version of A Mighty Fortress is Our God playing in the back. What would Def Leppard say?

A cutesy sign with the text “Pour some sugar on me — Coffee”

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Modern American History @modamhist.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

*Call for Applications* Would you be interested in editing an academic journal? MAH editors Sarah Snyder and Darren Dochuk will reach the end of their term in summer 2027, and Cambridge is looking for a new editorial team. More details below.

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

A very cool poster @randalljstephens.bsky.social made for my upcoming suburban history class.

Poster of a woman looking adoringly on a hat on top of a washer. Pink background. Key text: "American Places: The American Suburb." Questions that drive the semester are listed below: "How did the move to the suburbs shape American religion? How did feminist and antifeminist movements respond to life in suburbia? How did new immigrants establish communities in the sprawling suburbs? How did popular culture shape and reflect the suburban experience?"

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Hilde Løvdal Stephens @hildelstephens.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

My copy of Billy Graham's World Aflame (1965) is like a study of lived religion: The meticulous notes, the church service programs, and then this: a coupon for detergent saved for later in a section on the nature of Christ. Jesus might return soon, but you can't miss a good bargain! (Or, they did.)

Image of a coupon for Sani-Flush contrasted with a subchapter on "The Historic Reality of Christ."

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