Rev. Prof. Matthew J. M. Coomber
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mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Rev. Prof. Matthew J. M. Coomber
@mjmcoomber.bsky.social
3K followers 900 following 1.6K posts
Professor/Episcopal priest studying anti-imperial resistance in the ancient world while practicing anti-fascist resistance in the modern | 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ ally | https://www.amazon.com/author/coomber | he/him | posts mine

Described as “dope teacher” in student eval
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mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Happy birthday and God rest, Dorothy Day 🩷
Art of Dorothy Day with Halo welcoming a family of color with halos, likely the holy family, into a house of hospitality
November 8, 2025 at 8:31 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Finished a draft of "Weights, Scales, and Luigi Mangione: Reading Micah 6:9–12 and Confronting Ableism in Late-Stage Capitalism."

If attending #AARSBL, I'd love to see you there!
Saturday, November 22, 5:00 PM - 5:20 PM at 109 (Plaza Level) Hynes Convention Center Proposal Abstract: While much outrage was sparked by Luigi Mangione’s very public killing of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, not all of the ire was directed toward the shooter: some celebrated Mr. Mangione as a folk hero. While a security video made the violence against Mr. Thompson clear for all to see, a hidden type of violence was thrust into the public discourse at the intersection of medicine and capitalism: the deaths and diminished-quality-of-life that result from deceptive business practices in the United States’ profit-driven healthcare system(s). While the author condemns Mr. Thompson’s murder, the Hebrew prophetic corpus contains a number of texts (e.g., Isaiah 59:1–8; Jeremiah 22:1–3, 15–17; Micah 3:1–4; Amos 3:10–11; Zephaniah 1:7–9) that resonate with those who saw the blood of our society’s most vulnerable on the executive’s hands. A particularly poignant passage in this regard is Micah 6:9–12, which depicts the conduct of fraudulent merchants as violence (hamas). With a focus on the plight of disabled and elderly persons who are financially and physically burdened by denied claims or refused coverage for physician-prescribed medicines and procedures, this paper will explore how prophetic voices might offer responses to violent injustices that are suffered within our capitalist health-care system. Session Description: This session explores the intersection of poverty, minoritization, and biblical interpretation in this present moment of apocalypse—apocalypse as the revealing of capitalist and colonialist forces at work and/or apocalypse as disaster in current contexts of climate catastrophe, war, political precarity, state-sanctioned violence, and mass migration. We invite scholars to examine critically how biblical texts have been meaningful for these minoritized peoples (via the nexus of gender, race, indigeneity, debility/disability, etc.) amidst their struggle with poverty and/or how biblical texts can themselves become sites of struggle. Sat, November 22, 4:00 PM - 6:30 PM, 109 (Plaza Level) Hynes Convention Center Other papers include: 4:00 PM 4:20 PM Prophetic Voices in Criminal Justice: How the Prophetic Genre Impacts Young Adults Transitioning Out of Penitentiaries Kenna Curry, Southern Methodist University; Haley Simental, Lone Star Justice Alliance 4:20 PM 4:40 PM The Son of Man Has No Place to Lay His Head—Just Like You: Reading Biblical Texts among Houseless Village Residents in Portland Ron Clark, George Fox University 4:40 PM 5:00 PM Interpreting “Homelessness” Prophetically: Disrupting the Drama of Contemporary Nomenclature Raymond Morehouse, Inherit the Earth Outreach 5:00 PM 5:20 PM Weights, Scales, and Luigi Mangione: Reading Micah 6:9–12 and Confronting Ableism in Late-Stage Capitalism Matthew J.M. Coomber, St. Ambrose University 5:20 PM 5:40 PM Are "Disabled" and "Able-Bodied" People Equal? Paul's Letter and Japan's Employment System for People with Disabilities Daiki Rakuman, Graduate School Division of Theology Doctoral Course in Theology, Seinan Gakuin University 5:40 PM 6:00 PM Patronizing the Poor: The Other's Pronouncement, Pretentiousness, and Passivity in the Book of Job's Poetry Caleb Keokolo Wachsmuth, Boston College 6:00 PM 6:30 PM
November 7, 2025 at 4:51 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
A bit of beauty, and theological wisdom, for your timeline
Kelly Latimore Icons of Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez Quote: "The freedom to which we are called presupposes going out of oneself, the breaking down of our selfishness and of all the structures that support our selfishness; the foundation of this freedom is openness to others. The fullness of liberation - a free gift from Christ- is communion with God and other human beings." ~Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez
November 3, 2025 at 11:58 AM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Good one
Single frame cartoon with three figures standing. Elderly man with a cane who is supposed to represent God on the left, Jesus with a crown of thorns covering his mouth and giggling in the middle, and a bedsheet ghost on the right with his arms crossed and scowling. God is saying, “So what are you going as this Halloween?”
October 31, 2025 at 2:36 AM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Read this a few years ago

It’s frightfully timely
Cover of Gesine Gerhard’s NAZI HUNGER POLITICS: A History of Food in the Third Reich. Has an old propaganda poste did a mother happily providing food for children
October 30, 2025 at 2:33 AM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
The day started off beautifully
View of an episcopal church from the altar
October 27, 2025 at 2:06 AM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Bit of beauty for your timeline
(St. Hildegard of Bingen receiving a vision)
An illumination from the Liber Scivias. It depicts St. Hildegard of Bingen receiving and recording a divine vision onto a wax tablet. A bearded man (a monk, perhaps) watches. The vision is represented by orange/red flame-like strands coming down onto her head from above.
October 22, 2025 at 3:24 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Can’t wait for my copy of @maiakotro.bsky.social’s new book to arrive

dukeupress.edu/after-transf...
Cover and blurb on Dr. Maia Kotrosits’ new book, After Transformation: A Lyrical History of Christian Late Antiquity. In After Transformation, Maia Kotrosits offers a lyrical history of Christian late antiquity as it lives on in and with the present. Recasting the monumental changes that occurred between the second and fourth centuries, when Rome transitioned from pagan to Christian worship, Kotrosits presents a condensed and evocative meditation on the profound effects of Christian imperialism across time and geography. She employs a collection of forms ranging from micro-essay and vignette to poem and fragment to capture human struggles with time and change, showing how the mundane and intimate details of our lives can themselves be conduits of historical knowing. Arguing for lyricism as a method, Kotrosits reclaims vulnerability, urgency, and storytelling in historical work to model new ways of writing the past and experiencing ourselves more fully in time. Above all, After Transformation is about the ironies of the ways that history is written against the reality of the ways that history is lived.
October 21, 2025 at 4:23 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Could there be a better metaphor for his presidency?
Back hoe demolishing a section of the White House
October 20, 2025 at 11:47 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Beautiful day in Davenport, Iowa for today’s #NoKings demonstration (lots of bubbles!). Huge turnout marching around Vander Veer Park
Making bubbles at NoKings demo Folks marching around Vander Veer Park in Davenport, Iowa
October 18, 2025 at 7:09 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
I might have purchased 80 bubble wands to hand out at tomorrow's demonstration
No Kings logo, which has a yellow crown with a red x on it over a blue background
October 17, 2025 at 4:45 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
New book on my shelf
Looking like a good one!
October 14, 2025 at 3:45 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Interesting NYT article on purity culture and its symbolisms

If looking for an academic chapter on purity culture & Bible, I've used Dr. Jessica Keady's "Rape Culture Discourse and Female Impurity: Genesis 34 as a Case Study" with my students since it came out
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/s...
Title page of Jessica M. Keady's chapter, "Rape culture discourse and female impurity: genesis 34 as a case study." Title page of the edited volume, Rape Culture, Gender Violence, and Religion: Biblical Perspectives, by C. Blyth, E. Colgan, K. Edwards, eds. Publishing house: Palgrave Macmillan
October 14, 2025 at 3:35 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Reading campus emails when this snuck in from my kid's school. For a hot second I thought it was from my university 😂

Now I want to read a grad-level choose-your-own-adventure
Ad promoting a scholastic book fair. "Coming soon: Best. Week,. Ever. Volunteers wanted!"
October 14, 2025 at 1:48 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
It’s a sin for Christians to hold hatred toward their neighbor

It’s quite another to foster hatred of “the other” through spreading lies & delusion across society
Psychoanalyst sitting in a chair with a riot, police officer laying on his office sofa, in mask & full right gear holding a police baton across his chest. The psychoanalyst asks, “Do you see antifa in the room right now?”
October 12, 2025 at 8:50 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
The girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa
Mariah von Wedemeyer Weller & Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Weller was a Computer scientist and fiancé of Dietrich Bonhoeffer up until his murdered by the Nazi state.
October 9, 2025 at 3:10 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
The girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa
Bix Caleen and Cassian Andor, who is one (two) of the people that made the rebellion in Star Wars possible
October 9, 2025 at 3:10 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Visited mom‘s grave with my sister today & we saw this decoration. I don’t know the family, but I do love them 🥹😄
Grave with Halloween decorations, including a ghost saying boo!
October 5, 2025 at 5:21 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Pacifism’s a very difficult concept in the Gospels

But Hegseth calling it wholly naïve, ignoble, and unwise reveals a Christian faith used to justify, rather than challenge, our basest instincts
Pete Haggett, speaking to generals courtesy of New York Times Pool photo by Andrew Harnik
September 30, 2025 at 2:11 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
iykyk… don’ ‘cha know
(answer two posts, below)
Jeremy Clarkson on game a show with following question and choices presented below his image: The highest level of Midwest anger • A: Jeez Louise • B: For Pete's sake • C: Hold your horses • D: Listen here pal
September 27, 2025 at 12:03 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Excited to teach these undergrad courses I'm designing
Titles and catalog descriptions of two courses I'm designing: THEO 330: Sacred Scoundrels: What the Bible’s Baddies Can Teach Us. While the Bible’s heroes offer valuable lessons, its baddies are often overlooked as a source of effective instruction. In “Sacred Scoundrels,” students will look at the worst actors of the Bible to approach such timeless questions as “what is (or is not) the good life?” and “how should I (or should I not) face life’s challenges?” In addition to examining whom the biblical authors did not want its readers to be or become, this course will also examine how gender, cultural, and ethnic biases were projected onto some of the Old and New Testament’s primary villains. THEO 331: Sacred Subversions: Reading Bible in Colonial Contexts. The Bible has its roots in colonized communities that proclaimed a god of liberation. Many of their sacred texts not only challenged injustices suffered by tyrannical rulers, both foreign and domestic, they also undermined political and religious values that imperialists used to legitimize their own authority. This course will explore how these subversive biblical writings challenge authoritarianism in the contexts of the ancient Israelites, the early Jesus movement, and in communities that have since received them.
September 25, 2025 at 3:08 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
You cannot follow fascism and walk Christ’s path.
The Three Arrows (Drei Pfeile) is a German symbol that was used during the Weimar republic to protest against authoritarianism, most commonly associated as an anti-fascist symbol. The arrows in a circle pointing down and to the left from 2 o’clock to 7:00, represent 1. anti-monarchy, 2. anti-fascism, 3. anti-Soviet communism.
September 24, 2025 at 12:37 AM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
New faculty photo.
Might be time change my profile pic
*don't want to falsely advertise a longer beard!*
Headshot of Matthew Coomber. Silver hair and beard with curled mustache. Glasses and bowtie.
September 23, 2025 at 3:47 PM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Today’s 1st reading is tragically fitting 😔

When a nation’s economy is driven by the pursuit of individual wealth, the vulnerable become its prey
September 21, 2025 at 11:55 AM
mjmcoomber.bsky.social
Looking forward to diving in. Anyone read this yet?
Cover of Paul Seabright’s book the divine economy: how religions compete for wealth, power, and people
September 16, 2025 at 2:31 PM