SEPTEMBER 2025 NEWSLETTER

In September our children and young people return to their studies following the summer months. Although I am no longer tied to this pattern, I nevertheless maintain a regular work schedule and will continue to do so for as long as God grants me sufficient strength. I have three major projects for which I am seeking publishers. I hope to have more to say about these at some point.

In the meantime I am pleased to report that my latest book is still being read and reviewed. The most recent such review is written by my esteemed Calvin University colleague, Micah Watson, for Christian Scholar's Review: A Review of David T. Koyzis, Citizenship Without Illusions: A Christian Guide to Political Engagement. It's a quite positive review, I am happy to say. I especially liked this paragraph:

This book is a conversational and welcoming invitation to consider a host of enduring challenges for Christians engaging the public square. Koyzis’s voice is personal, and he draws from his own life and experiences in helping the reader grapple with topics like the different roles of citizenship, law, and the competing (and often idolatrous) ideologies that vie for our attention. He moves fluidly from personal reflections based on his own history to more academic (but rarely jargony) mentions of thinkers like Patrick Deneen, Hannah Arendt, Yoram Hazony, and Alexis de Tocqueville. The reader feels almost like Koyzis is engaging us in a conversation on his front porch, drawing from local life in his home of Hamilton, Ontario, as well as from his relatives in Cyprus, his boyhood in Chicago, and his connections in Brazil through the translation of his earlier work into Portuguese. 

I appreciate Watson's comment, because it indicates that my effort to bring the feel of my classroom lectures into the text has met with success. Indeed this is a book for the classroom—primarily the undergraduate classroom, but I believe it will be profitably used in other settings as well, including adult church education programmes, theological seminaries, and perhaps even upper level secondary schools.

For several years I have maintained a page at academia.edu and have posted various written works there for a general reading public. Admittedly, I do not visit this site all that frequently, but I do receive email notifications when someone has read something of mine. Based on these notifications, my two most popular writings appear to be my Notre Dame dissertation, Towards a Christian Democratic Pluralism: A Comparative Study of Neothomist and Neocalvinist Political Theories (1986), a pdf copy of which is available in its entirety; and Israel's Precarious Democracy, which grew out of a blog series I posted in the months before the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Given that we are viewing the horrors of the Gaza war nightly on our televisions, it is not surprising that many people seek a greater understanding of what is happening there and what led up to the current protracted crisis. It is not easy to maintain a measure of balance in assessing the longstanding dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, but I have tried to do exactly that in this series. Readers can judge for themselves whether I've been successful.

One of the figures I explored in my dissertation was the French-American political philosopher, Yves René Simon (1903-1961), whose writings on authority influenced my second book, We Answer to Another. Steeped in the neo-Thomist tradition of Pope Leo XIII, Jacques Maritain, and many others, Simon rarely mentioned his own Catholic faith, although one need not look very far to detect its impact. Not long ago I posted something of relevance to his work, which was cut short by a too early death: 'Our enemies' enemies are our friends': Simon's insight. This was prompted by a post written by my Institute for Christian Studies colleague Bob Sweetman.

I am, of course, grateful for your ongoing support for my work. If you have contributed financially on a one-time basis in the past, please consider a regular monthly contribution, as it makes it easier for Global Scholars to set an annual budget, including the modest salary I receive from the organization. GSC's page for giving can be found here. Once you are in the page, scroll down to the heading marked DONATION DETAILS, and then choose one of the options under FUND. Americans may donate through our sister organization in the US.

Or, if you prefer, Canadian donors can donate publicly traded securities (shares or mutual funds) directly to charities without having to pay the capital gains tax. This is a cost-effective and painless way to make a donation that comes with a substantial tax incentive. By donating securities, donors pay no tax on capital gains, receive a tax receipt for the fair market value of the securities, as well as reduce their taxes. Watch this video for more information about this option: Link Charity Canada: Donation of Securities. If interested, please visit the Link Charity Canada Inc. website, and call for details at 1-800-387-8146. Link Charity Canada is a partner organization of Global Scholars Canada, so Link Charity can easily direct funds for my work. Thank you!

Yours in God's service,

David Koyzis, Global Scholar