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Joel Pierce

@joelpierce.bsky.social

Theologian and ethicist in Scotland. Minister's husband. Baker. Librarian.

447 Posts337 Follower498 Folgt
Dylan@dyl057.bsky.social · 2w ago

I can't overstate that if you and like five friends (ideally, but not necessarily, under age 60) become active in your local Mainline church, particularly if you're in an urban area, you could build one of the most effective forces for good in your community

Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · 2w ago

I wonder how many of Advance Financial's executives go to church every Sunday and just tune out everything that Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles have to say about not exploiting the poor.

ProPublica@propublica.org · 2w ago

Advance Financial’s Flex Loan charges 279.5% interest, trapping thousands of borrowers in debts that end up in court, where the company has won over $200 million in judgments since 2015. (Published May 2025 w/ @tennesseelookout.com)

Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · 4w ago

One of the conclusions I came to after three years thinking about rights for my PhD is that rights are really as much a protection for institutions they bind as the individuals who can claim them. Institutions need to be kept from their own worst impulses to survive and rights help to do that.

AAUP chapter @UT Austin@utaustinaaup.bsky.social · 4w ago

✴️Tenure is neither a privilege or a right. It is a time-tested safeguard of academic excellence, awarded only to faculty who undergo a rigorous review of their research, teaching, and service. A fair and transparent practice that respects the opinion of experts is essential to UT Austin’s stature.

Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · last mo.

One of my fantasies is to someday gather every male Christian influencer for a week long read-through of the LOTR, so that they can finally understand that Frodo and Sam are the primary heros of the story, not Aragorn.

Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · last mo.

Future generations are going to look back at us sweating through smoke-clouded summers and puzzle at why companies threw unimaginable sums into the most energy-intensive approach to AI instead of, say, renewable energy that would actually address the real crisis we're facing.

Sir Almaviva@ilcontealmaviva.bsky.social · last mo.

"Today, stripping citizenship requires no criminal conviction. It is done by the executive rather than the courts, at the stroke of a home secretary’s pen." Very important article, a must read at a time when far-right parties have embraced plans of remigration (i.e. ethnic cleansing).

Samira Shackle@samirashackle.bsky.social · last mo.

"As far as the government is concerned, they’ve washed their hands of us. Would they do that to a white person?" For a @prospectmagazine.co.uk feature on Britain's citizenship-stripping boom, I spoke to families of people who have had citizenship revoked www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/uk/...

Sir Almaviva@ilcontealmaviva.bsky.social · last mo.

1 in 6 people in the UK were born abroad. Yet we almost never feature in discussions about immigration; rather, a significant part of the media and politicians spend each day debating ever more extreme ways to make our life difficult or how to kick us out of the country. It's not a good feeling.

Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · last mo.

See the Guardian series on how the US demands that their military personnel be tried in US court martials for crimes committed off base in the UK for a similar contempt for the sovereignty and independence of law not made in America.

‘They said: wear angelic white’: British women who accused US airman of rape tell of American military trial

Two women who alleged they were raped by Tyrion Davis in Suffolk had to testify at an invasive court martial on a US base

theguardian.com

Bill@bill-of-lefts.bsky.social · last mo.

the answer is bexause the author of this article is party to many crimes of an international nature

lil Marco explains “why we’re dismantling the international criminal court”
Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · last mo.

I find it pretty amusing that: 1. People are still putting flowers on Adam Smith's grave 230+years after his death. 2. They've left the price tag on them to advertise just how much they value the Father of Capitalism. 3. That value extends only to the cheapest bouquet at Tesco.

Flowers on Adam Smith's graveAdam Smith's grave
Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Farage probably wins this by-election, but it baffles me that his solution to so much scrutiny of his finances is to set off a process which will result in even more scrutiny of his finances. I guess if you're an attention-addict, the solution is always more attention.

Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I'm not going to say that everything that's wrong with the USA is summed up in commentators who are okay shredding precedents and rules if it means Balogun is going to give the US a marginally better chance of winning tonight, but maybe an awful lot of it is?

Kevin Hargaden@kevinhargaden.bsky.social · 2mo ago

After the riots in Belfast last week, I took the unusual journalistic route of talking to people who do the opposite kind of thing in that city, then I wrote about it for America Magazine (I didn't write the headline): www.americamagazine.org/politics-soc...

‘Troubles’ 2.0 in Belfast? How anti-migrant violence connects to a more complicated history

The June riots were explicitly directed toward migrants, such that some public figures suggest a more accurate term for what happened would be “pogrom.”

americamagazine.org

Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf@revdrmichaelwoolf.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Today, I'm thinking about the fact that 50% of mainline Protestants polled by PRRI were OK with undocumented people being sent to internment camps until they can be deported. What a failure of discipleship. It's a shocking number. So much work to do in churches. prri.org/research/the...

The New Immigration Crackdown: Where Americans Stand

A new PRRI report considers how receptive Americans are to the second Trump administration’s handling of immigration and their support for several different immigration-related policies.

prri.org

Katie Cross@drkatiecross.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Theology in Scotland @theoscot.bsky.social is launching an early-career public lectureship competition on “Church in a changing society.” 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Open to late-stage PhDs+recent grads (Scotland) 🏆 £500 honorarium+public lecture+publication in the journal 📅 Deadline: 15 July 2026 See further info below!

[Abbreviated information for alt text] Early Career Scholar Public lecture Competition 2026. We invite proposals in the form of a 500-word abstract from early-career scholars working in areas including, but not limited to, systematic theology, theological ethics, ecclesiology, missiology, religious studies, and political theology. See full conditions below. Topic: The Church in a Changing Society The landscape of Christianity across Scotland is changing. What does faithful witness look like when the church can no longer assume cultural authority or social embeddedness? Does the current moment call for a new ecclesiology, or a recovery of older ones? And how should the church engage political and public life when it can no longer speak from a position of establishment or majority? Contributions might address, but are not limited to, theologies of revival and ecclesial decline; the church’s public and political vocation; the cultural deployment of Christian identity; or the resources that Scripture, tradition, and theological ethics offer to the church in this moment. These topics are understood broadly, and proposals engaging the theme from other angles are warmly welcomed. Eligibility: The competition is open to third- and fourth-year PhD students and early-career scholars within two years of completing their doctorate by the submission date. Submission Requirements: Applicants should submit: - A 500-word abstract outlining the proposed lecture; - Institutional affiliation and contact details; - A short academic CV or a sample of previous work if published works are unavailable. Selection Criteria: Proposals will be assessed according to: - Quality - Relevance to theme - Originality - Suitability for a public lecture - Potential for development into an article for Theology in ScotlandDeadline: The deadline for submissions is 15th July 2026. Applicants will be notified of the competition result by 1st August 2026. Please send submissions to Samuel Norman at sn200@st-andrews.ac.uk with the subject line “Public Lecture Competition 2026”. Conditions: The winning entry will receive a £500 prize/honorarium. This sum is inclusive of any travel and accommodation costs required to deliver the lecture. The successful applicant will be expected to deliver the public lecture in St Andrews in autumn 2026, on a date to be confirmed, and to develop the lecture into an article for publication in Theology in Scotland. Publication of the article is guaranteed, subject to the successful applicant completing the article in a form suitable for publication and in accordance with the journal’s editorial requirements. The lecture should be suitable for a public audience while maintaining scholarly rigour. It is expected to last approximately 45 minutes, followed by a period of audience Q&A. The organisers reserve the right not to award the prize if no submission is deemed suitable. Any questions or queries about the event should be directed to Samuel Norman at sn200@st- andrews.ac.uk.
Ed Davey@eddavey.libdems.org.uk · 3mo ago

The Trump administration is attacking our democracy. Not in secret, but openly on social media. Starmer needs to show some backbone and call this out today. We can’t turn a blind eye to this blatant interference any longer.

Department of State @StateDept "Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline. They must be rejected across the West. The United States sends our condolences to the family of Henry Nowak and the people of the United Kingdom at this troubling time."
Atkinson@maddavenport.bsky.social · 3mo ago

For Pride month, I want to share the preface to my book “Coal of Fire,” a personal essay about gender transition, Bible translation, and the manifold ways God names our difference as belovedness. (1/2)

Preface: Names of an Egg I collect here a number of short literary translations from the Hebrew Bible,' interspersed with poems that touch in some way on translation and the sacred. I've been thinking about translating Hebrew over two decades of study in a variety of contexts. But most of this collection was drafted between 2018-21, while I was working on an MDiv at Yale Divinity School. During this time I was continually wondering what Christians mean when we call Jesus the Word of God or Logos. I was thinking about textual canons as an organizing feature of religious communities, and especially about the idiosyncrasies of the sacred texts that hold me closest: the Hebrew Bible, the wider literary culture into which it was born, and the onrushing tide of translation and interpretation which continue to pour forth from it. I was thinking about grammar as the building block of difference (or maybe distinction is the word, or alterity) —not man but woman, not green precisely but chartreuse, not must but may. I was considering how Christ invites us to encounter difference as belovedness, reconciled in His body. As I meditated on these things, sometimes in my mind's eye I could see a wide flat sea like the Great Lakes of my childhood, silver water melting horizonless into a silver sky. I began to imagine Jesus the Logos as a vast encompassing silence from which all words pour out and into which all words end. In liturgy or song or contemplation I sometimes found myself resting I write here primarily as a Christian, to other Christians. But I'm hoping also to be legible to those who claim other traditions. I follow the conventions of academic scholarship by using the term "Hebrew Bible" —not so much in pursuit of an impossible neutrality or (Heaven knows) to claim any authority, as to signal my allegiance to the values and strategies of this interreligious community that has been critical to my spiritual and intellectual life.lightly on this pearlescent ocean, breathing in the glorious tumult of every named thing, breathing out the overflow and gap of meaning—all that can be perceived but not named. I was discerning an ordained vocation in the Episcopal Church. At the same time, I was falling in love. My beloved was coming to understand herself and to make herself known as a trans woman. Thanks to the challenge of her courage, I was coming out to myself as queer. I was knocking on the door of my own interior differences: memory and mood issues, difficulty with embodiment, chronic suicidality. The world was in a pandemic. I was grappling with trauma fallout. I finished my degree, but in the end I did not become a priest. My prayer life was incandescent in those days, the sense of being held in God moment by moment appallingly vivid. I found myself continually turning in prayer to Genesis 32. Something was trying to emerge. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the dawn broke. When he saw that he could not prevail over him, be struck bim on the hip socket, so that Jacob's hip socket was dislocated while he wrestled with him. And he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go until you bless me." He said, "what is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."' He said, "You shall not be called Jacob any longer, but Israel; for you have contended with gods and with humans, and you have prevailed!." Jacob asked him, "Tell me your name." He said, "Why are you asking me for my name?" And be blessed him there. Jacob named the place Peniel, because "I have seen God face to face, and my life was spared." The sun rose over him as he passed through Peniel. He was limping because of his hip. 2 COAL OF FIREI read it in English, in Hebrew, in English again. I translated it into my own idiom and prayed with it that way. I will not let you go, Jacob says, until you bless me. The angel hurts him terribly, and gives him a new name, and blesses him. I will not let you go until you bless me. When I was discouraged and lonely in the ordination process, when I wondered whether I should give up and thought of what it was costing me, I found myself whispering Jacob's words fiercely between my teeth. I will not let you go until you bless me. When I felt torn apart between the church which was my religious home and the small interior voice which told me that Jesus wanted me to be valued better, I threw it back to God like a challenge. I will not let you go until you bless me. I expected this passage to fade from my prayers once my ordination process ended, but it did not. It haunted me whether I fled my grief or confronted it, until I came to see that it was not primarily the church 1 wrestled with. I was wrestling with God, and with the inconveniently embodied spark of God within me, which I myself continually doubt and abandon. Let me go, something inside me said, for the dawn is breaking. I will not let you go, I said, until you bless me. I came dimly to understand that there was something about the image of God in me which the life I led was erasing instead of honoring. I had been trying to express this something in one way through an abortive academic vocation, and in another through my first marriage. I had been trying to express it, too, in the ten years I had spent in ministry, and in my sense of call to be a priest. Now, in the crater of that loss, something more fundamental in me than even vocation began to shift.There came a day in March of 2024 when I lay on a couch and told my therapist that I couldn't be a woman any more. I didn't quite know what or who I was, and I was afraid to find out; but I could no longer dress up the paper doll of my body and call it belonging. I told him that I had decided to begin going by my middle name, Atkinson, and using different pronouns to refer to myselt. Afterward, I went to the monastery down the block. The sanctuary was cool and quiet and I was the only person there. I took my usual seat in a corner, near the little statue of Mary holding the infant Jesus. I prayed a decade of the rosary and then let my thoughts wander. I found myself speaking the words of Jacob once again: I will not let you go until you bless me. I began to cry. I didn't know whether I was making the right choice. I didn't know whether I was more fully uncovering the image of God in whom I was made or damaging and dishonoring it. I didn't know whether there was a person there inside me still, under the constant willful bodily amnesia of dysphoria and the imposed forgetfulness of dissociation. I didn't know if there had ever been anyone there at all. I lit a candle before I left, saying silently to Mary: I have been terribly hurt, contending with God and with humans; I have given myself a new name. Where is my fucking blessing? That night I got home late after choir practice. I sat out on the porch with a pipe and listened to the sounds of the evening. I smoked and cried some more, for all the years I had been a stranger to myself without knowing it. I prayed for a while, and eventually I went to get ready for bed. And as I looked in the bathroom mirror—I don't know quite how to say this—I saw him. 4 COAL OF FIRE
Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Yes! It seems that far too often VCs are content to preside over managed decline rather than call attention to the fact that the people who make up their institutions are performing an enormous public good. Those same people could also used to advocate for HE in political arenas, draft policy, etc.

Timothy C. Baker@timothycbaker.bsky.social · 3mo ago

What most flummoxes me about the HE crisis (reading another article about how university students don't feel it's worthwhile) is that management teams very rarely defend the activity of universities. I'd like just one to say, in public fora, 'universities can be a good thing'.

Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I really hoped that electing a Labour govt would mean this sort of nonsense would stop happening. Demanding that parents sacrifice their relationship with their kids to satisfy your arbitrary immigration target is inhumane political idolatry.

Home Office sends letters to children as young as five saying they must leave UK

Children of those on care worker visas – who came legally before rule change – told to leave even if parents can stay

theguardian.com

Sir Almaviva@ilcontealmaviva.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I'd like all the "control and compassion" and "firm but fair" people to explain to me (with words or pictures) how this is compassionate or fair. We were lucky to escape this, because the old MIR was applied to us (and now I earn more anyway), but many families are separated by this requirement.

Sir Almaviva@ilcontealmaviva.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Even today, if you marry a foreign citizen but earn less than £29,000 a year, the UK won't let you live with your spouse in your own country.

Prof. Anthea Butler@antheabutler.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I know some of y'all are in your feelings pro and con about the encyclical but let me just say getting a Pope to admit the church was complicit and needs to be on the right side of an issue is huge for an institution responsible for a lot of really bad things.

Joel Pierce@joelpierce.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Is it just me or has MS Outlook got really bad at predicting when you might have forgotten an attachment? I get the 'Did you mean to include an attachment' pop up 7-8 times a day now and the answer is always 'no'.