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.

I was particularly pleased finally to meet Anthony Bradley, who spoke on "Justice as Vengeance: Unpacking Kuyper's Antirevolutionary Ideals in Modern Law Enforcement." For years we have communicated with each other over social media. He had used my Political Visions and Illusions in his classes at the recently closed King's College in New York City.

My involvement in the second conference was greater. The Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics is located at Calvin and is named for the late Paul B. Henry, who taught political science at Calvin between 1970 and 1978, when he decided to seek political office. He served in both Michigan state houses and then in the US House of Representatives from 1984 to 1993, when he died at the young age of 51. His book, Politics for Evangelicals, was a seminal influence on my own intellectual formation as an undergraduate political science major. I was privileged to hear Henry speak on at least two occasions, one of which occurred at Bethel University, where I was studying at the time.

My first involvement was as a respondent to the Kuyper Lecturer, Hans-Martien ten Napel, Associate Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. His address was titled, "In Search of the Radical Middle: Navigating Populism and Progressivism." The other respondent was Ruth Melkonian-Hoover, who teaches political science at Gordon College, along with my protégé, Paul Brink. (Ruth's father and my father were classmates at the American Academy in Larnaca, Cyprus, during the 1940s.) The entire event can be seen immediately below:

The following morning I presented a paper titled, "Making Every Vote Count," in which I made a plea for adopting proportional representation, not as a panacea for our political ills, but as a modest means for improving the representative character of our institutions. This was adapted from a section in my forthcoming book, Citizenship Without Illusions.

Finally, on saturday morning, I served on a panel devoted to Kevin Vallier's new book, All the Kingdoms of the World. The subject was Catholic integralism, whose proponents favour state establishment of the Catholic Church. Vallier has written a carefully-crafted argument against integralism, effectively demonstrating its flaws with respect to history, symmetry, transition, stability, and justice. He then examines Confucian and Islamic anti-liberalisms before positing his own alternative in an epilogue. The other two respondents were Jeff Polet, Director of the Ford Leadership Forum at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, and Miles Smith IV, a colleague of my brother-in-law in the History Department at Hillsdale College.

The drive to and from Grand Rapids was nearly as memorable, due to the presence of my good friend Harry Van Dyke, who has translated many of the works of Abraham Kuyper and others from Dutch into English. Our conversation was so absorbing that I inadvertently missed the turnoff from the 401 to the 402, which meant that we had to enter the US at Detroit and travel somewhat out of the way. But I was happy to catch a glimpse of the incomplete Gordy Howe International Bridge, which will soon connect Detroit and Windsor, and, from a distance, Detroit's famous Michigan Central Station, recently upgraded by the Ford Motor Company. All in all, it was a profitable visit, which provided multiple opportunities to meet new people and to renew old acquaintances.