Keanu Heydari
LightNews LightNews
banner
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Keanu Heydari
@keanuheydari.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.5K following 1.9K posts
History Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Michigan | PC(USA) Deacon | Modern Europe & Iran | Apocalyptic & New Testament Studies
Posts Replies Media Videos
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Fortunately, my marājiʿ  only submit to the esteemed Chicago Manual of Style, of which I am also a muqallid.
Facebook post from AP Stylebook that reads, “Several years ago, the Stylebook advised that you heat your oven, because "preheat" is redundant. That might be true linguistically, but we heard you. Common usage in cookbooks calls for preheating. Our guidance now says preheat is acceptable to refer to heating an oven to a specific temperature before cooking.”
November 26, 2025 at 10:04 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
The Confession of 1967, Book of Confessions PC(USA), 9.17
*With apologies for not sharing from the inclusive language version
“God has created man in a personal relation with himself that man may respond to the love of the Creator. He has created male and female and given them a life which proceeds from birth to death in a succession of generations and in a wide complex of social relations. He has endowed man with capacities to make the world serve his needs and to enjoy its good things. Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be pursued with courage. Man is free to seek his life within the purpose of God: to develop and protect the resources of nature for the common welfare, to work for justice and peace in society, and in other ways to use his creative powers for the fulfillment of human life.”
November 26, 2025 at 3:12 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
L’évangélisme aux États-Unis est un death cult qui a été exporté dans le monde entier. Je recommande ce livre de William Connolly à tous mes amis. Il y parle de la « machine de résonance évangélico-capitaliste ».
Couverture du livre « Capitalism and Christianity, American Style » de William E. Connolly : un encadré noir central porte le titre en lettres blanches, sur un fond de petites croix bleues et de symboles dollar rouges disposés en grille, évoquant un drapeau américain stylisé.
November 26, 2025 at 1:19 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
The Confession of 1967, Book of Confessions PC(USA), 9.08
*With apologies for not sharing from the inclusive language version
“In Jesus of Nazareth true humanity was realized once for all. Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, lived among his own people and shared their needs, temptations, joys, and sorrows. He expressed the love of God in word and deed and became a brother to all kinds of sinful men. But his complete obedience led him into conflict with his people. His life and teaching judged their goodness, religious aspirations, and national hopes. Many rejected him and demanded his death. In giving himself freely for them he took upon himself the judgment under which all men stand convicted. God raised him from the dead, vindicating him as Messiah and Lord. The victim of sin became victor, and won the victory over sin and death for all men.”
November 26, 2025 at 12:56 AM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
“‘God’, I've just said. Yes, it’s true, isn’t it, that when we come to church, whether it’s to the Cathedral or to this chapel of ours, we hear this word ‘God’ over and over again. Who is God? What is he like, where is he, what is he? One or other of you may be wondering at this moment. What is meant by the word, what does it say to me, what am I supposed to do about it? Didn’t a great philosopher who lived here in Basel say that God was dead? Well, things are probably not as bad as that. Even if God were in fact a dead God for many people and sometimes for all of us, that is very far from saying that he is dead. But there is something in it; while the word ‘God’ is certainly not dead, it is ailing, ailing badly, because it has been wrongly used and abused so often, because it has become something of a worn coin. Now, however, the very word God does not appear in our text [Isaiah 54:10] at all. Instead we are told here very clearly who and what God is: he is ‘the Lord who has mercy on you.’” – Karl Barth, “The Lord Who Has Mercy on You,” 27 December 1959, in “Call for God”
November 26, 2025 at 12:20 AM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Cover of Talal Asad’s “Formations of the Secular.”
November 24, 2025 at 7:56 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
You know you’re gonna get your butt kicked when Asad asks “Is this account persuasive?”
Page from Asad’s “Formations of the Secular.”
November 23, 2025 at 11:58 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
iykyk… thanks to @nhold.bsky.social for bringing this classic back to mind.
A page from Raymond Williams’ “Marxism and Literature,” which reads as follows: 9. Structures of Feeling In most description and analysis, culture and society are expressed in an habitual past tense. The strongest barrier to the recognition of human cultural activity is this immediate and regular conversion of experience into finished products. What is defensible as a procedure in conscious history, where on certain assumptions many actions can be definitively taken as having ended, is habitually projected, not only into the always moving substance of the past, but into contemporary life, in which relationships, institutions and formations in which we are still actively involved are converted, by this procedural mode, into formed wholes rather than forming and formative processes. Analysis is then centred on relations between these produced institutions, formations, and experiences, so that now, as in that produced past, only the fixed explicit forms exist, and living presence is always, by definition, receding. When we begin to grasp the dominance of this procedure, to look into its centre and if possible past its edges, we can under-stand, in new ways, that separation of the social from the personal which is so powerful and directive a cultural mode. If the social is always past, in the sense that it is always formed, we have indeed to find other terms for the undeniable experience of the present: not only the temporal present, the realization of this and this instant, but the specificity of present being, the inalien-ably physical, within which we may indeed discern and acknowledge institutions, formations, positions, but not always as fixed products, defining products. […]
November 22, 2025 at 2:20 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Photograph of Jean Baudrillard.
November 21, 2025 at 10:22 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
This is an example of what I have in mind, building off of my own research: If you wanted to cut through all the bullshit and actually understand a topic, say, modern Iran, what should one read? What are the fault lines in the Iranian diaspora, globally speaking? I’d recommend these books…
Cover of Abrahamian, “Iran Between Two Revolutions.” Cover of Matin-Asgari, “Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah.” Cover of Moslem, “Factional Politics on Post-Khomeini Iran.” Cover of Cronin’s “Social Histories of Iran.”
November 21, 2025 at 9:46 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
I don’t think so, but it seems particularly relevant!
November 21, 2025 at 7:55 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Figured this new title would be quite important for my own (new) research projects. I haven’t really talked about it very much, but I’ve been very interested in the academic study of violence for quite some time. If any of you are scholars of violence, please let me know!
Cover of Marie Gottschalk’s “Crime and No Punishment: Wealth, Power, and Violence in America.”
November 21, 2025 at 2:21 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
ah, so she’ll be able to understand my dissertation…
Screenshot of a New York Times Facebook post about Danish author Solvej Balle. The post text explains that she has spent 30 years writing an experimental novel that has gained devoted readers and asks, “What comes next?” Below, a promotional photo shows Balle standing alone on a gray, windy beach, looking to the side, wearing a long dark coat, teal scarf, black leggings, and red boots beside the waves. Large white text over the image reads, “She Has Taken 30 Years to Write a 7-Part Novel About 1 Day. It’s a Sensation.”
November 21, 2025 at 12:59 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Want to start a new trend where you post there books you’re working through carefully. Show me what you’re reading, folks!
Photo of three books laid side by side on a dark tabletop. On the left is The Incarnation as God’s First Intention: Supralapsarian Christology for Faith and Practice by Edwin Chr. van Driel, with a cream cover and a small yellow botanical illustration. In the center is Repeating Revolutions: The French Revolution and the Algerian War by Timothy Scott Johnson, a hardback with a bright blue cover patterned with yellow and teal nodes connected by thin lines. On the right is The Writer’s Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France by Robert Darnton, with a dark cover featuring a large quill that contains a sepia cityscape.
November 19, 2025 at 1:33 AM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Nine years ago I met Prof. Charles Taylor. His work hasn’t ceased to influence me since.
Keanu Heydari standing next to Prof. Charles Taylor in a photograph (Nov. 2016) at a lecture delivered at UCLA. Prof. Charles Taylor’s autograph on his book, “A Secular Age.”
November 18, 2025 at 11:06 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Black square graphic with centered white text presenting a litany-style environmental confession prayer. Each petition names a specific sin against creation, such as indifference to the destruction of wildlife, greed for profit without respect for life, violence against the earth, silence before bulldozed forests and contaminated rivers, and consumption without regard for future generations. Repeated after each clause is the response, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.” The prayer then asks God to forgive human arrogance and self-centeredness, forgive the lack of passion to preserve creation, and to teach people to love God’s creatures and care for life in all its forms, concluding, “In the name of Jesus Christ we pray.” In the lower right corner, gold text reads, “Presbyterian Church, Book of Common Worship,” and in the lower left corner is the hashtag “#kindlequotes.”
November 18, 2025 at 2:48 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
The Beaune Altarpiece.
The Beaune Altarpiece, c. 1443–1451. 220 cm × 548 cm (excluding frames). Oil on oak, Hospices de Beaune, interior view.
November 18, 2025 at 1:35 AM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
From a prayer of confession in the Book of Common Worship.
White square graphic with black serif text displaying a prayer of confession from the Presbyterian Church PC(USA), Book of Common Worship. The text reads: “We have used our power to dominate and our weakness to manipulate; we have evaded responsibility and failed to confront evil; we have trusted false gods and listened to their promises; we have denied dignity to ourselves and to each other; we have fallen into deep despair. In our despair we have forgotten you, and have gone away from your path.” Attribution line at the bottom reads “Presbyterian Church, Book of Common Worship,” with the hashtag “#kindlequotes” underneath.
November 17, 2025 at 3:04 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Currently reading. It’s really good.
Book cover for “Living on After Failure” by Irving Goh.
November 16, 2025 at 10:27 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
“Their hearts hunger and thirst; they are aware that something of God’s eternity and truth should be revealed in us, but they don’t quite know what to do about it.” – Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt
Interior page from Action in Waiting showing page number 2 with a running header at the top right. The page is filled with justified black serif text and reads as follows: “A tremendous misunderstanding has come about wrich. regard to God's kingdom. Much has been said abour the church. Much has been said about the teachings that are preserved in the church, about the various denomina cions that have become a sacred good within the body of Christianity. Too much emphasis has been placed on forms by which we express ourselves as Christians. Thus today wre cannot deny that many people no longer really find the living qualities that our Father in heaven wanted to give us in Jesus Christ. They have neither seen nor experienced the life that comes from God, and so they are in a fix. On the one hand they cannot deny that they too need God, God's word, God's revelation, in their hearts. On the other hand they no longer quite believe in the means through which God's word is being proclaimed, and thus many of them no longer know what to do with themselves in regard to God's kingdom. Their hearts hunger and thirst; they are aware that something of God's eternity and truth should be revealed in us, but they don't quite know what to do about it.”
November 15, 2025 at 8:12 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Now reading.
Book cover for Action in Waiting by Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt. The top band, in muted gold, lists the author’s name. Below it, an impressionistic painting shows a small sailboat with a cream-colored sail cutting across dark, choppy blue water toward a hazy horizon lit by the setting or rising sun. The lower third of the cover is a cream panel with the title “Action in Waiting” in large serif type and the subtitle “With an Afterword by Karl Barth” in smaller text beneath.
November 15, 2025 at 8:02 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
Further evidence that everything in the world indeed circles back to Karl Barth. See below my translation from an interview with a former Iranian student activist conducted by one of my dissertation committee members in the late 1980s.
Screenshot of a text document showing two bulleted lines from an interview transcript. The first bullet reads “Interviewer: I can help you with that.” The second bullet begins with the speaker’s name blacked out, followed by a long paragraph. The speaker explains that in his youth, before the 28 Mordad coup, Mr. [name blacked out] had been a member of the Tudeh Party’s Youth Organization. They met in Europe, became friends, and through this connection linked up with a Munich group. To help save several condemned men, they undertook various efforts, including a trip to Switzerland where the speaker and a friend met six or seven prominent cultural figures and gathered their signatures in support of the prisoners. The paragraph notes that these figures included the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt and the Swiss theologian Karl Barth, described as then regarded as the leading Catholic theologian in the world. The speaker says they met some signatories in person and offers this story as an example of how such contacts led them into broader political activities.
November 15, 2025 at 4:26 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
If you’re looking for something to do today, take a look at my post on Barth and his “actualist ontology.” Link below.
A screen capture generated by Instapaper from my Substack post, “Karl Barth, ‘Happening,’ and an Actualist Ontology of God.” The quoted paragraph reads as follows: “At the heart of this linguistic subtlety lies Barth’s actualist ontology of God. The maxim “Gottes Sein ist in der Tat”—God’s being is in act—summarizes it succinctly. Barth rejects attempts to conceive God as a static substance or a set of properties to which activity is later appended. God is who God is precisely in the freedom of divine action. The perfections of God are determinations of it: holiness as holy loving, freedom as the freedom to be for us, immutability as the steadfast constancy of this free love. For Barth, the history of Jesus Christ is the decisive act in which God determines to be God for humanity. Election itself becomes the self-determination of God to be the God of this covenantal history.”
November 15, 2025 at 3:38 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
So well deserved! I loved reading “Black Knights!”
Cover of Rachel Schine’s “Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race.”
November 14, 2025 at 6:49 PM
keanuheydari.bsky.social
The audacity of Edwin publishing this book before I had the chance to write it first.
Book cover for “The Incarnation as God’s First Intention: Supralapsarian Christology for Faith and Practice” by Edwin Chr. van Driel, with the title in elegant black serif type on a cream background overlaid with faint gold botanical illustrations.
November 13, 2025 at 8:01 PM