ANAJURE lecture 2024

On monday, 8 July, I was privileged to address the seventh annual meeting of the Associação Nacional de Juristas Evangélicos (ANAJURE), or the National Association of Evangelical Jurists in Brazil. This was at the invitation of the organization's president, Edna V. Zilli. ANAJURE is made up of legal professionals and students committed to the cause of Jesus Christ in the world. The subject of my address was "Citizenship Without Illusions: hearing the Word, confessing the faith," taken from the eighth and final chapter of my next book. As always, I was heartened by the participants' expressions of gratitude for my work and for my ongoing interest in their beautiful country and its people.

I hope that a Brazilian publisher will see fit to translate Citizenship Without Illusions into Portuguese in the near future. As I do touch on Brazil's political experience in that book, it would be appropriate for its people to have access to Cidadania sem Ilusões in their own language.

Israel and Gaza: nine months later

The war between Israel and Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, has lasted for nearly nine months with no signs of ending. In the meantime, innocent Palestinian civilians are caught in the crossfire. Until now I have not commented on the conduct of the war, because I am not sure I have any additional wisdom to offer beyond what others have. However, I will call readers' attention to a four-part series I wrote last year on Israel's precarious democracy. I wrote it a few months before the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.

The ex-vangelicals' idiosyncratic faith

Christian Courier has published my monthly column under the title, Draw near. An excerpt:

In North America today there is a certain first-person narrative that frequently grabs the attention of the secular media . . . . Those telling such stories are often called “ex-vangelicals,” distancing themselves from their conservative religious past. However, not all such people become atheists or agnostics. Many retain belief in God and perhaps even in Jesus Christ, but their faith has become more idiosyncratic – a matter of adjusting what they were taught as children to who they feel themselves to be today. They have made themselves the arbiters of what is and is not acceptable in the faith.

Read the rest of the article here.

June newsletter online

My Global Scholars newsletter for June is now online, featuring news about my forthcoming Citizenship Without Illusions, podcast interviews, and a talk with seminary students about politics and the pulpit.

Seven essential qualities of a political leader

Last week Jason Scott Montoya interviewed me on the subject of seven essential qualities of a political leader, which he had gleaned from a previous post of mine. You can access the interview, along with ancillary material, by clicking on the link in the previous sentence. Or you can watch it here:

This is the third interview that Montoya has had with me. The others concerned my Political Visions and Illusions and the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Entre Amigos interview

Two years ago I appeared on the Entre Amigos podcast hosted by my friends José (Zé) Bruno Pereira dos Santos and Rodolfo Souza, whom I met nearly eight years ago during my visit to Brazil. Last evening I appeared again on this podcast to discuss my forthcoming Citizenship Without Illusions. My translator was Lucas Vianna, who has translated for me on previous occasions. Also present was Jacira Monteiro, author of O Estigma da Cor. Here is our conversation, which lasted not quite an hour and a half.

Although it was mentioned towards the end, I have not yet been approached about a Brazilian edition of my next book. I hope that it will indeed become a reality.

Local action

My monthly column appears in Christian Courier under the title, Local action. Subtitle: "Living as a responsible citizen in a way that glorifies God." An excerpt:

Several years ago, a good friend in North Carolina suggested during a phone conversation that I write a book on citizenship. At the time I was revising my first book, Political Visions and Illusions, whose second edition was released five years ago this month. I decided to take him up on his suggestion, submitting a proposal in the autumn of 2022 to InterVarsity Press. IVP accepted the proposal, and I signed a contract in January. I wrote steadily over the next months and had a more or less complete manuscript by late spring. Interviews with people featured in the book continued over the summer, and I submitted the final manuscript in September, 2023.

Read the entire article here.

Trump's verdict and the American political crisis

Yesterday we received word that the jury in the Trump hush money trial has found the former president guilty on all 34 counts. Every media outlet that I've read or heard has pointed to the unprecedented nature of the conviction of a former president and current front runner in a presidential election campaign. We are in uncharted territory, as Trump is scheduled to be sentenced shortly before his party is expected to nominate him for president. Sad to say, the Trump verdict and its predictable fallout highlight nothing less than a serious crisis in America's political institutions.

Citizenship education

Writing for the Christian Scholar's Review blog, Perry L. Glanzer, professor of Educational Foundations at Baylor University and a Resident Scholar with the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, has posted something of relevance to my forthcoming book: Christian Universities Do Little to Help Students Contemplate Excellent Christian Citizenship: Here’s the Evidence. An excerpt:

Since it is an election year, I wondered if I could find evidence that Christian universities help their students contemplate excellent Christian citizenship. As mentioned in an earlier post, my research team examined the general education requirements at 231 Protestant colleges requiring at least one Bible or theology course. We chose these institutions because they showed evidence of operationalizing the Christian identity in their general education.

May newsletter online

I have now posted my Global Scholars Canada newsletter for May. Included are a tribute to Bob Goudzwaard, news of my next book, suggested books for students, and a forthcoming article on Christian nationalism.

Suggested books for students

During my recent visit to Grove City College, I was given the opportunity to have lunch with some students in the cafeteria, along with Michael Coulter, my principal host in the political science department. During our conversation, Michael asked which books I might recommend the students to read. As I had just discussed Dietrich Bonhoeffer's witness the previous evening in response to a question from the audience, the first book I thought of was his Life Together, a magnificent book that emphasizes the need to love the existing Christian community, with all its warts and flaws, over our own aspirations for such community.

Where would I be without Bob Goudzwaard?

Christian Courier has picked up my tribute to Bob Goudzwaard: Where would I be without Bob Goudzwaard? Subtitle: "Goudzwaard always emphasized the human side of economics. He passed away at age 90."

Catholic integralism: response to a response

During my time at Calvin University earlier this month, I was invited to respond to an important book by Kevin Vallier, titled, All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism (Oxford: 2023). The subject is Catholic integralism, a position calling for the state to establish the Roman Catholic Church, giving it a privileged position above other churches and religious faiths. In his book, Vallier, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University and a convert to Orthodoxy, makes a carefully argued case against integralism, effectively demonstrating its flaws with respect to history, symmetry, transition, stability, and justice. He then examines Confucian and Islamic anti-liberalisms before proposing in an epilogue his own alternative, which amounts to tolerance of "integration writ small," that is, local experiments in integralism within an adapted liberal order coupled with a more decentralized federalism: "Liberals must both unite to protect liberal order and concede some political independence to nonliberal communities of faith" (275).

Bob Goudzwaard (1934-2024)

This past weekend we learned that Bob Goudzwaard has departed this life at the age of 90. Goudzwaard was a political economist who was steeped in the Christian tradition, especially in that branch of the faith downstream from Augustine, John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Dooyeweerd. Born and raised in Delft, the Netherlands, he lived through the difficult war years. When he came of age, he studied at the University of Rotterdam and came under the influence of Johan P. A. Mekkes (1898-1987), an adherent of the school founded by Herman Dooyeweerd known as the Philosophy of the Law Idea. Eventually he would teach at the Free University of Amsterdam and also served for a time in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament with the Anti-Revolutionary Party.

April newsletter online

I have now posted my Global Scholars Canada newsletter for April, which includes travels to Calvin University and Grove City College, where I spoke on sections from my forthcoming book, Citizenship Without Illusions.

Grove City College stay

Not quite two weeks after my visit to Calvin University, I drove down to Grove City College, a Christian university in the Reformed tradition where my great friend Russell D. Kosits now teaches. I had, of course, heard of the place, but this was the first opportunity to see it for myself, and I very much liked what I saw. The drive from Hamilton is about four hours crossing the border via the Peace Bridge connecting Fort Erie and Buffalo. The weather co-operated quite nicely, and my time there coincided with two bright spring days, with trees on campus just beginning to flower.

Grove City College is nearly 150 years old, having been established in 1876. It once had a connection to the Presbyterian Church (USA), but no longer. It is a private liberal arts undergraduate university and has more than 2,000 young people enrolled as students.

An enduring hope

My regular monthly column for April has been posted at Christian Courier: An enduring hope. An excerpt:

When we are young, we don’t bother to think much about our eventual demise, assuming that a good half century or more stretches before us, if God is willing. During my own youth, I was more likely to worry about what I would fill those future years with so as not to waste the gifts God had given me. When I began writing this column, I was all of 35 years old, with most of my academic career still lying ahead.

But now that I approach the biblical three score years and ten, my vantage point has shifted. Over the past five years, I have lost both of my parents and both of my parents-in-law. A close friend of mine – younger than I by a good ten years or so – recently lost his wife and his father-in-law in short order. And now we have received the news that my father’s sister-in-law in Cyprus has departed this life.

Read the entire article here.

Mulroney's contested legacy

Christian Courier has published my assessment of our recently deceased prime minister: Mulroney's contested legacy. An excerpt:

Becoming leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives in 1983, Mulroney put together an unprecedented coalition of often fractious groups within the party, cruising to victory the following year. For the first time since Diefenbaker’s 1958 majority government, Mulroney brought Québec into the Conservative Party, winning 58 of the province’s 75 seats in the Commons. But rather than forming an enduring national base for his party, he succeeded only in stitching together a precarious patchwork that began to pull apart during his second term.

Read the entire article here.

Calvin University visit

I have just returned from nearly a week at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I attended two back-to-back conferences. The first was the annual Kuyper Conference, which lasted from tuesday, 2 April to thursday, 4 April. The second was the biennial Henry Institute Symposium, which ran from thursday, 4 April to saturday, 6 April. The Kuyper Conference was devoted to "Stewardship in the Kingdom: Business, Academy, and Society." It began with a plenary session consisting of a live podcast discussion among James Eglinton, Gray Sutanto, Cory Brock, and Marinus de Jong. This was part of their Grace in Common podcast, on which I myself appeared last year. My involvement with this conference was minimal, extending to hearing plenaries and short papers.

T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism

A new anthology has just been published, titled, T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism, edited by Nathaniel Gray Sutanto and Cory Brock. Published by T&T Clark, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, it includes essays by several scholars well known in the Neo-Calvinist tradition, including yours truly. I wrote chapter 33, titled, "Political Theology," pp. 415-425. The subheadings in my chapter are as follows: 

I. The Place of Politics in God's World
II. Every Square Inch
III. Sphere Sovereignty
IV. The Meaning of Public Justice: Constitutional Government and Federalism
V. Concrete Political Reforms

The hardbound volume sells for $249.75, the ebook for $199.80, although Amazon is selling the hardbound for $190 and the Kindle edition for $128.49. Sad to say, these high costs will limit its readership to a very few. (Even the authors do not receive a copy!) We can only hope that the publisher will eventually bring out a paperback edition at a substantially lower price.

In the meantime, I am pleased that IVP will be selling my next book for the eminently affordable cost of $18 US, which places it in the hands of readers of ordinary means.