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Stephen L. Young

@slyprofessor.bsky.social
4K followers 675 following 963 posts

#BLM | Professor in Mountains of NC | Nerd about Religious Studies - Mediterranean Antiquity | I study how ancient and modern Christians imagine history | Cycling | he/him | Writes @RDispatches | OpinionsMine

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Reposted by Stephen L. Young
Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Some of my 9/11 memories are vivid. It was just a few weeks into my first year of college at UNC, and I was in my Tue/Thur 8:00-9:15 Ancient Greece class. I'd already started a practice that stuck with me for the rest of college: a 2-3 min break during 75 min classes to walk to a water fountain 1/
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Some of my 9/11 memories are vivid. It was just a few weeks into my first year of college at UNC, and I was in my Tue/Thur 8:00-9:15 Ancient Greece class. I'd already started a practice that stuck with me for the rest of college: a 2-3 min break during 75 min classes to walk to a water fountain 1/
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Mina Kimes @minakimes.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Loser behavior from a guy who’s clinging like a shriveled old barnacle to a sport he doesn’t actually care about in a desperate bid for relevance. Do not cede one inch to him or anyone who acts this way.
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Evangelical cheerleaders for a white masculine LGBTQ-immiserating theocracy like Joel Webbon and Dale Partridge got their starts as shitposters on Twitter. Now they're getting mainstream media interviews because too many legacy media reporters are still on X and mistake prominence there for reality.
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Manisha Sinha @profmsinha.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Historian of abolition here, history tells us how we got here, to put it succinctly “John Brown was hanged for treason and Robert E. Lee was not.”
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Holy crap. "Paul Within Paganism," the book I co-edited w/ Paula Fredriksen & @alexichantz.bsky.social, got a long review essay in The New Yorker! Still sifting through the disparate threads Gopnik tries to tie together. Well earned shout-outs in it to @ryancollman.bsky.social @zafulotus.bsky.social
newyorker.com
St. Paul Remade Human History. How Did He Do It?
New scholarship reconsiders the apostle who turned a Jewish sect into a world religion—and whose legacy remains contested two millennia later.
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
it’s a great day for transphobes to eat shit
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Ok, I just laughed so hard that it woke up one of my children…
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Matthew Highton @matthighton.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Mel Gibson pictured with his doctor in 2004
It's the classic Mel Gibson and Jesus meme where Mel is on set in normal clothes casually chatting to a very bloody Jesus (for those of you who don't know it).
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Dr. Chance Bonar @chancebonar.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
In honor of today’s discourse: consider reading God, Slavery, and Early Christianity! Ch. 3 is esp. meaningful for showing how Paul’s language of slavery and the Holy Spirit gets read as “God the enslaver dwells within you & surveils you” www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...
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Ben Lyons @benlyons.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Looks like my book has a publication date - Misinformation and the Aging American coming from @academic.oup.com in October: global.oup.com/academic/pro...
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
literally your customer base was 90% parents of young children who want a good future for their kids in which they can be free to be themselves, no matter who they are. you told those people to go fuck themselves. they won't be back
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
I know the USA Men's hockey team won't hear me, but whatever... -Guys, your 🥇 win was epic & awesome, just like our women's team. Stop listening to US Hockey PR and say: "I'm sorry we laughed along with the President's misogyny. We need to be better. It's always wrong to belittle and mock women."
The epic and awesome US women's hockey team gold medal picture!The US men's hockey team gold medal picture, with a jersey for Gaudreau and one of his kids in the middle.
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Here @thomaszimmer.bsky.social captures a consistent feature of actually existing conservative movements: in history, almost nothing in them hits the brakes on going Far Right, violent, authoritarian b/c "the left" is always their bigger boogeyman even if their guy is building concentration camps...
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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Their allegiance was never to democratic principles, but to upholding (white, Christian) “civilization”. The question has always been: What if society moves away from that order? Do Conservatives accommodate – or seek to impose “civilization” against majority will?
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Meira Kensky @meirazk.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Friends, I am hiring two scholar-advisors this year! Come join the best advising team in the country (for real). Please help me spread the news about this great opportunity! This is a permanent, non-time limited instructional staff position, and I will be happy to answer questions!
jobs.virginia.edu
Advising Fellow, College of Arts & Sciences in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America | Student Services, Health, & Wellness at University of Virginia
Apply for Advising Fellow, College of Arts & Sciences job with University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America. Student Services, Health, & Wellness at University of Virg...
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Lauren Donovan Ginsberg @laurenginsberg.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Question: if it can log into canvas & see other students’ work… isn’t that a FERPA violation? Students can do waivers for their own products. But they can’t waive FERPA protections for classmates? We’re told we have to use canvas because of data privacy requirements…
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
A recent NYT op-ed blamed the Trump's regime's lawless violence on 'paganism' while conjuring Christianity as the source of good values. I think this is a terrible way to think about history and gets in the way of cleaning up the messes Christians have made. My latest from @religiondispatches.org
religiondispatches.org
Donald Trump's Violent Mentality is Quite Literally Biblical
One could be forgiven for coming away from Leighton Woodhouse’s “Donald Trump, Pagan King” op-ed in the New York Times with the nagging suspicion that he hasn’t actually read the biblical or ‘Pagan’ w...
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
One more time for those in the back: To the extent AI does any of the 'research' things dude 'splains.. 1) No, AI doesn't do actual research 2) AI is unreliable at them, which is why scholars have to check it 3) AI can only do a crappy job at any of this BECAUSE BIG-TECH FUCKING STOLE OUR RESEARCH!
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
My courses now (w/o accommodation letter) ban all devices in class, have only in-class handwritten or oral assessment, and require printed handouts of readings since university only provides e-versions of books. I often provide handouts, though it's been an enormous waste of my time to make them.
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
I write boring academic prose, but it too is an art that strains the brain, body, and soul to do well. Even more ‘artistic’ when it’s done on a laptop at the kitchen table with kids running around…
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Whoa! Nerdiness about cycling training to explain how to be an effective academic. Yes. Dr. Muehlberger speaks to my cycling and scholarly soul here. Give it a read! We may have seen the apex of BlueSky here…
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Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Good news alert: Just want to shout out Elana Meyers Taylor, the most decorated Black woman in the Winter Olympics, who won her sixth medal and first gold tonight, AND is also one of the only 8% of hearing parents who learn to sign for her deaf kid. Badass through and through.🥇
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Editor: You’re late submitting your manuscript. Me: The Dow is over 50,000 🤷‍♂️
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Elon Musk is claiming he’s risked everything to protect kids from sexual abuse mere weeks out from laughing while his AI chatbot was generating nearly 8,000 sexual abuse images per hour that overwhelmingly targeted girls and young women
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes your took in college Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Social Psychology Ancient Athens Modern Political Thought History of Education in America (This shaped me more as an educator down the road than the rest combined! May Prof Unks's memory be a blessing)
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
Some MAGA-sympathetic folks from my past who have kept that under wraps for a decade on social media somehow all decided to open the floodgates after Renee Good's murder. And yes, all of their arguments boil down to this...
Image of "Tank Man" from Tiananmen Square in 1989 with the meme caption, "Should have complied!"
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
I went to Brown University for grad school and routinely studied in the welcoming work spaces at Barus and Holley. Brown is a place full of humans who are wonderfully curious and creative, and now a mass shooting has torn through its thriving life. For shame to everyone who stirs up this violence!
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Maybe next year FIFA will rename it the "Peace and War Prize" and give it to Hegseth?
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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Stop appearing on far-right propaganda networks. Stop posting on their trash sites. Stop sitting on panels with them. Stop being friends with them. Don't shake their hands. Don't try to meet them halfway. Don't gotta hand it to them. Ever. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
With Black Friday approaching, there will inevitably be well-intentioned talk that these deals are only possible because workers are denied a livable wage. Don't buy into this. It's not low prices vs. fair pay. It's the demand for ever-higher profits and shareholder returns that forces deprivation.
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
It has always been so obvious that the backlash to MeToo isn’t about whether the abuse is happening but whether people are allowed to want it to stop
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 01/11/2024
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....
journals.sagepub.com
“Make Rome Great Again” Preceded “Make America Great Again”: The Ancient Romo-Nationalism of Biblical Writers - Stephen L. Young, 2024
The ideas about religious, sexual, gender, ethnic, urban, moral, and family decay that underlie “Make America Great Again’s” message have notable antecedents in...
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
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!
global.oup.com
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
🧵[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
wjkbooks.com
What Kind of Christianity - WJK Books
2023 Award of Excellence, Religion Communicators CouncilLike most Americans, Presbyterians in the United States know woefully little about the history of slavery and the rise of anti-Black racism in o...
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
🧵[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
wjkbooks.com
What Kind of Christianity - WJK Books
2023 Award of Excellence, Religion Communicators CouncilLike most Americans, Presbyterians in the United States know woefully little about the history of slavery and the rise of anti-Black racism in o...
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
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
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
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!
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
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?
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
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.
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
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.
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
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
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
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."
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
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?
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
Interesting. Didn’t know Thiel was working on a memoir.
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Stephen L. Young @slyprofessor.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
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...
fortresspress.com
Paul within Paganism: Restoring the Mediterranean Context to the Apostle
Leading and rising scholars introduce a burgeoning new approach to the study of Paul, which situates the Jewish apostle to gentiles within the wider world of ancient Mediterranean religion.
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Robyn Faith Walsh @zafulotus.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
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...
fortresspress.com
Paul within Paganism: Restoring the Mediterranean Context to the Apostle
Leading and rising scholars introduce a burgeoning new approach to the study of Paul, which situates the Jewish apostle to gentiles within the wider world of ancient Mediterranean religion.
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Jennifer Barry @jennisifire.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
As a bright professional spotlight, my third book, Scandalous Christian Histories, is now under contract with the University of Edinburgh Press. Onward!
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shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
when people say "this isn't what I voted for" they should be forced to list what they DID vote for
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Rebecca Brückmann @historleans.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
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. 🗃️
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