Global Scholars Canada 30th anniversary celebration

On thursday, 6 February 2025, Global Scholars Canada celebrated its 30th anniversary with a book launch for four affiliated scholars who have published recently, including Andrew Barron's Human Difference and Disability, Peter Schuurman and Angela Bick's Blessed Are the Undone, Michael Wagenman's The Power of the Church, and my own Citizenship Without Illusions. The event took place at Faith Baptist Church in nearby Oakville, one of the larger suburbs located between Hamilton and Toronto. There was a modest turnout for the event, and I was pleased to see some people I've known for nearly 50 years show up.

You can see my comments introducing my new book below: 

By Schisms Rent Asunder: The Four Seasons of Church Splits

Cateclesia Forum has published my essay: By Schisms Rent Asunder: The Four Seasons of Church Splits, occasioned by this year's 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, styled the First Ecumenical Council. An excerpt:

Although some may think that controversies within the church are a recent phenomenon, a reading of both the New Testament and subsequent church history will quickly reveal that church splits have been with us since the beginning. The major themes of these controversies have come at approximately semi-millennial intervals, revolving first around Christology, then ecclesiology, then soteriology, and finally anthropology.

Read the entire piece here.

Recent activities for February 2025

I have now posted my Global Scholars Canada newsletter for February 2025. Included are four more reviews of my new book along with my response to one of them, three radio interviews, one podcast interview, and a trip to the Big Apple.

Jimmy Carter's exemplary life

My regular monthly column in Christian Courier is titled, Jimmy Carter's exemplary life. An excerpt:

As a young adult citizen of the United States, I cast my first presidential vote in 1976 for Jimmy Carter, who had risen quickly from relative obscurity to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the White House. A Washington outsider, he became the first in a series of presidents lacking previous experience at the federal level. As such, Carter’s presidency was less than successful, but in the long aftermath he would become the best ex-president Americans have ever had, with the possible exception of Herbert Hoover, another one-term president who devoted his life to humanitarian causes.

Read the entire article here.

Executive orders versus genuine leadership

Most presidents of the United States have used—and abused—their executive powers upon attaining office. In a balanced constitutional framework, the monarchical powers of the chief executive can be used legitimately to address issues that need immediate attention and cannot wait for the slow deliberative process characteristic of the legislative branch. During the 20th century the presidency grew in its power during the back-to-back emergencies of the Great War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the ensuing Cold War. Both political parties were complicit in this accumulation of power at the expense of Congress. Indeed, national crises prompt virtually all governments to assume emergency powers, as we saw during the global COVID pandemic. Whether these powers are used properly is up for debate and the subsequent decisions of the courts, which function, sometimes only in retrospect, as the guarantors of the rule of law.

Montoya interview snippet

In recent weeks, Jason Scott Montoya has been posting snippets of longer conversations we have had in the past. Jason has a gift for bringing out the best in the people he interviews and deserves to get more subscribers to his YouTube channel. Here is one such snippet below on the subject of sovereignty:

INCHE proceedings published

In November 2023 I delivered a remote address to the Eighth Latin American INCHE Consultation. INCHE stands for International Network for Christian Higher Education, which began in 1975 in South Africa and now stretches around the globe. My topic was "The Christian university and public policy in North America." The proceedings of this event have now been published in Spanish, and my address is included.

 

'Amplify' interview

On sunday, 9 February 2025, I was interviewed by Fr. Ron Lengwin for his "Amplify" programme over Pittsburgh radio station KDKA. The topic was, of course, my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions. This was almost certainly the longest interview I have given, lasting from 9 pm until 11 pm with three breaks at the hour and half hour marks. Fr. Ron has been on the air for 50 years, and "Amplify" has run for 52 years. You may be able to listen to the interview here if you live inside the United States, although I don't know whether this link will remain active indefinitely.

As a boy I was fascinated with radio broadcasting, especially after my father gave me a shortwave radio enabling me to tune in the world. Thus I found it a minor thrill to be on what may be the oldest commercial radio station in the US, whose call letters antedate the assignment of initial "W" call letters to stations east of the Mississippi. KDKA went on the air in November 1920, only two years after the end of the Great War and before radio began to make its way into the homes of North Americans

Ordering our loyalties

Christian Courier carries a review of my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions, written by Ian DeJong: Ordering our loyalties. An excerpt:

In this book I see three takeaways on what it means to set our loyalties in order as Christian citizens. First, ultimate loyalty to God and loyalty to governments often go hand-in-hand . . . . However, this is not to say that we should politicize the church, nor does it mean that obeying the government always aligns with obeying God . . . . Second, ultimate loyalty to God should make us both appreciative and suspicious of partisan politics. “If we find ourselves always parroting one party’s agenda and vilifying the other party’s,” Koyzis writes, “I suggest that something is amiss.” . . . Third, ultimate loyalty to God requires political humility.

 Read the entire review here.

Carmen LaBerge interview

On 23 January Carmen LaBerge interviewed me for The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge over Faith Radio. The interview can be heard here or immediately below:

 

CRCD review

The Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy has posted an online review of Citizenship Without Illusions: Local Politics and Concrete Communities, by Stephen O. Presley. An excerpt:

The book is a wonderful complement to his earlier volume and both books should be read together. Christians today need to have some hard conversations about the notion of citizenship in the worlds where alternative political ideologies are proliferating. Christian citizenship and political loyalty are significant because Christians claim that ultimate citizenship is in the kingdom of God, but at the same time Christians “have responsibilities to the communities of which we are part.” For this reason, I pray that Koyzis’s work is read widely [and] motivates Christians to seek the welfare of the city.

New York sojourn

I was privileged to spend the weekend of 25-27 January in New York City. This was in response to an invitation I received at the beginning of the month to come and speak to an assembled evening church service on the subject of citizenship, based, of course, on my new book. On saturday the 25th I flew from Toronto's Pearson Airport to LaGuardia Airport in New York's borough of Queens. I was picked up by Jay Harvey, one of my principal hosts for the occasion. I stayed at the Hilton Doubletree Hotel in midtown Manhattan, right across from Radio City Music Hall and within walking distance of St. Patrick's Cathedral and Rockefeller Center. This was the second time I had been to New York, as our family had taken a holiday there ten years ago.

YouTube channel organized

Over the past two months I have uploaded quite a large number of videos to my @ByzantineCalvinist YouTube channel, mostly guitar performances of the Genevan Psalm tunes and a very few hymns and canticles. But I have also posted videos relevant to my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions. Last week I reorganized the material in my channel, grouping them into playlists devoted to 

• Political Visions and Illusions
• Interviews and conversations
• Commentaries and lectures
• Citizenship Without Illusions
• Hymns for guitar
• The Niagara Psalter, and
  
• The Genevan Psalter

Some of these playlists include videos from other channels relevant to my work, including reviews of my books and personal interviews. I will be adding more to these lists over time. In the meantime, take a moment to click on some of the links immediately above and see what's on offer.

Citizenship Without Illusions: review 6

Another review of my new book appears at Sensus Divinitatis, the blog of Peter Schuurman, Executive Director of Global Scholars Canada: Christian Citizenship in an Age of Trump: Participation without Illusions, by Callum MacLeod. MacLeod is a fourth-year undergraduate student in political science at McMaster University here in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. An excerpt:

As someone who has benefited from [Koyzis'] mentorship, I can attest to his love for teaching and his desire to help the body of Christ think through complex problems surrounding faith and politics. This pastoral motivation is the undoubted impetus for this book, and his passion for empowering lay people shines through in his writing style. Instead of the pithy statements that so often characterize political commentary today, Koyzis articulates complex ideas in a winsome and engaging manner. He skillfully blends personal experiences with historical rigour, making his work accessible and thought-provoking. His ability to blend these elements and bring lofty principles to bear on everyday events results in a short and practical book that appeals to laypeople and political enthusiasts alike.

Once again the full interview can be found here.

Disarming Leviathan interview: citizenship and nationalism

Late last year I was again interviewed by Caleb Campbell, pastor of Desert Springs Bible Church and author of Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor, for his Disarming Leviathan podcast. The interview has now been posted and can be viewed here or immediately below:

Campbell, incidentally, is a native Phoenician, but not of the Sidonian or Carthaginian variety.

A more nuanced ecclesiology: a response to Wood

A fifth review of my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions, has appeared in World magazine: Faithfully political. It is written by James R. Wood, who teaches religion and theology at Redeemer University. Before proceeding to look at his review, I should indicate that I know Wood slightly. Some years ago, he came to our house to discuss my first book, Political Visions and Illusions, possibly after the publication of the second edition in 2019, although my memory of the exact timing is a little foggy. We subsequently crossed paths at a downtown church plant here in Hamilton.

FT's evolution: 'populism' overtakes 'highbrow'

I am a longtime reader of the journal First Things, to which I began subscribing in 1992, only two years after it published its first issue. Here is what I wrote about it over two decades ago in this space:

On friday I received in my campus mail box the latest issue of my favourite periodical, First Things, which is published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York and edited by the redoubtable Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. I suppose one might describe it as a largely Catholic journal, with significant confessional protestant and observant Jewish contributions as well. Its tone is probably best described as neoconservative. While I myself cannot in good conscience call myself a neoconservative as such, I am quite happy to admit that thoughtful articles of substance appear in every issue making it well worth reading.

Fixing what's broken

So soon after The New York Times alerted us to the need for electoral reform, Christian Courier has published my own take on the issue: Fixing what's broken. A brief excerpt:

If the United States were to adopt PR [proportional representation], the party system would become less rigid and more flexible. New parties could rise and take their place in Congress, and the old parties would disappear if they no longer served their original purposes.

Read the entire article here.

NYT gets on board with PR

This is good news indeed. The New York Times has published an extended discussion of proportional representation written by Jesse Wegman and Lee Drutman: How to Fix America's Two-Party Problem. An excerpt:

In less polarized political times, winner-take-all systems can do a decent job of reflecting public opinion and maintaining democratic stability, but when a nation is deeply divided and large numbers of people fear that they will not be represented at all, the result is an erosion of trust in government and rising extremism and political violence. As the political scientist Barbara F. Walter has observed, a majority of civil wars over the last century appear to have broken out in countries with winner-take-all systems.

Recent activities for January 2025

My Global Scholars newsletter for January is now posted. Included are four positive reviews of Citizenship Without Illusions, a podcast interview, and a 30th-anniversary celebration and book launch organized by Global Scholars Canada.

Citizenship Without Illusions: review 4

Joel Wentz reviews my new book immediately below. I am, of course, grateful for such a positive assessment of my work.

Citizenship Without Illusions: review 3

This review of my new book is posted at Faithful Intellect: Citizenship Without Illusions by David T. Koyzis. The author calls himself David without listing a surname. He presents a rather full outline of the book's contents along with several takeaways from each chapter. Here is an excerpt:

Writing about politics and religion requires navigating a mine field and Koyzis does it splendidly. He does a good job of presenting both sides while maintaining a nonpartisan perspective throughout the book. I also appreciate that the book is not too US centric. Koyzis is an American who lives in Canada and had family in Europe. This global perspective adds insightful comparisons that highlight what is common across countries and what makes the US unique.

Here is another excerpt on an issue that I am pleased to see highlighted: