Rev. Wang Yi and faithful disobedience

The church in China is growing dramatically, but in the meantime the government in Beijing is renewing its persecution of Christians. Last month members of the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, including Pastor Wang Yi, were arrested and taken into custody. Anticipating his likely arrest, Wang Yi wrote My Declaration of Faithful Disobedience, to be published in the event this did take place. Here is an excerpt:

If God decides to use the persecution of this Communist regime against the church to help more Chinese people to despair of their futures, to lead them through a wilderness of spiritual disillusionment and through this to make them know Jesus, if through this he continues disciplining and building up his church, then I am joyfully willing to submit to God’s plans, for his plans are always benevolent and good.

Precisely because none of my words and actions are directed toward seeking and hoping for societal and political transformation, I have no fear of any social or political power. For the Bible teaches us that God establishes governmental authorities in order to terrorize evildoers, not to terrorize doers of good. If believers in Jesus do no wrong then they should not be afraid of dark powers. Even though I am often weak, I firmly believe this is the promise of the gospel. It is what I’ve devoted all of my energy to. It is the good news that I am spreading throughout Chinese society. . . .

Those who lock me up will one day be locked up by angels. Those who interrogate me will finally be questioned and judged by Christ. When I think of this, the Lord fills me with a natural compassion and grief toward those who are attempting to and actively imprisoning me. Pray that the Lord would use me, that he would grant me patience and wisdom, that I might take the gospel to them.

Reading such a fearless statement should prompt those of us living in safer environments to consider what we ourselves would do under similar circumstances. In the meantime, let us pray for the safety of Pastor Wang Yi and the members of his congregation. Let us also pray that the Holy Spirit will change the hearts of their persecutors.

Everything Changed: the impact of the Great War

You can see the differences in the old photographs. Before the war, cities were filled with horses pulling buggies, pedestrians filling the streets, women in long skirts and dresses and men in dark suits with ample facial hair.

But after the bloodletting had ended, everything had changed. Automobiles plied the thoroughfares. The “crime” of jaywalking was invented, and pedestrians were banished to the sidewalks. Young women shortened their hair and their dresses alike, advertising their sexuality in ways that shocked their parents. Men were clean-shaven. Jazz was in the air, and a hint of craziness had descended on a previously staid society. The reigning philosophy was an echo of the biblical Preacher: “eat, drink and be merry” (Ecc. 8:25). Life is short, so let’s enjoy ourselves while we can.

This new nihilistic philosophy spawned by the war had another more lasting effect: it accelerated the secularizing trends that had beset Europe since the 18th century. During the 19th century, especially in the English-speaking world, attending church was the respectable thing to do on Sundays, even if not everyone in the pews was equally devout. The Continent, which had been more affected by the French Revolution, was already experiencing the effects of this secularization, yet the vast majority of Europeans still wore the Christian label.

The Great War managed to erode European Christendom in a remarkably brief time. Why?

Political Visions & Illusions, new edition online

Although the new edition of Political Visions & Illusions is not due out until May, the publisher's page is now live. Do check it out.

Statement on Social Justice, a final assessment

Now that we have evaluated in some detail each of the affirmations and denials of the Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel, it is appropriate to make a final assessment of the statement as a whole.

To begin with, it seems to me that we are manifestly living in a moment of manifesto fatigue. Too many statements are published to persuade people to come onside of a particular issue or set of issues. Forty-five years ago the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Concern was published and garnered a number of signatories, including such mainstream stalwarts as Carl F. H. Henry, Richard Mouw and Lewis Smedes, but also those more evidently associated with the so-called Christian left such as Ron Sider, John Howard Yoder and Jim Wallis. I was particularly excited about this document, although I never had the opportunity to sign it, which was more difficult to do before the internet age.

Then came the 1976 Hartford Appeal for Theological Affirmation, spearheaded by Richard John Neuhaus and Peter Berger, and signed again by Mouw and Smedes, among others. This statement attempted to combat a number of defective views concerning the relationship between religion and modernity. I could list more, such as the Manhattan Declaration (2009), the Nashville Statement (2017), and now the Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel. Since the most recent statements cover much of the same ground, it is unclear why some people think that new statements are necessary, apart from the fact that they emerge out of different organizations with somewhat different emphases and constituencies. Some people have signed one of these statements but feel unable to sign the others for various reasons. Dare I ask whether there should be a moratorium on the making of new manifestos? If they appear too frequently, they will tend over time to lose whatever impact they might have had as singular documents tailored to specific circumstances.

Nevertheless, as this document is now "out there", I will indicate right off that I cannot sign it for several reasons, despite my agreement with much of its content. Why?

Statement on Social Justice, 14: Racism

Here is what the Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel has to say about racism:

We affirm that racism is a sin rooted in pride and malice which must be condemned and renounced by all who would honor the image of God in all people. Such racial sin can subtly or overtly manifest itself as racial animosity or racial vainglory. Such sinful prejudice or partiality falls short of God’s revealed will and violates the royal law of love. We affirm that virtually all cultures, including our own, at times contain laws and systems that foster racist attitudes and policies.

We deny that treating people with sinful partiality or prejudice is consistent with biblical Christianity. We deny that only those in positions of power are capable of racism, or that individuals of any particular ethnic groups are incapable of racism. We deny that systemic racism is in any way compatible with the core principles of historic evangelical convictions. We deny that the Bible can be legitimately used to foster or justify partiality, prejudice, or contempt toward other ethnicities. We deny that the contemporary evangelical movement has any deliberate agenda to elevate one ethnic group and subjugate another. And we emphatically deny that lectures on social issues (or activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture) are as vital to the life and health of the church as the preaching of the gospel and the exposition of Scripture. Historically, such things tend to become distractions that inevitably lead to departures from the gospel.

Because I wholeheartedly agree with most of the affirmations and denials, I will focus on those near the end that I believe are wanting, beginning with this statement: "We deny that the contemporary evangelical movement has any deliberate agenda to elevate one ethnic group and subjugate another." Because movements are generally rather nebulous phenomena, it is difficult to ascribe a "deliberate agenda" to them. Are there racists among professed evangelicals? Undoubtedly, yes. Do some subordinate their evangelical allegiances to their racism? It is certainly possible. Many Greek Orthodox Christians maintain their ecclesiastical affiliations because they are Greek rather than serious followers of Jesus Christ.

Statement on Social Justice, 13: Culture

Section 13 of the Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel is titled, Culture.

We affirm that some cultures operate on assumptions that are inherently better than those of other cultures because of the biblical truths that inform those worldviews that have produced these distinct assumptions. Those elements of a given culture that reflect divine revelation should be celebrated and promoted. But the various cultures out of which we have been called all have features that are worldly and sinful—and therefore those sinful features should be repudiated for the honor of Christ. We affirm that whatever evil influences to which we have been subjected via our culture can be—and must be—overcome through conversion and the training of both mind and heart through biblical truth.

We deny that individuals and sub-groups in any culture are unable, by God’s grace, to rise above whatever moral defects or spiritual deficiencies have been engendered or encouraged by their respective cultures.

I see the authors addressing two issues here. First, the popular notion that all cultures are equally good and that differences among them are a matter of legitimate diversity rather than better or worse. Second, that human beings are simply products of their respective cultures.

Statement on Social Justice, 12: Race/Ethnicity

We are now in the final sections of The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel. Here is number 12 on Race/Ethnicity:

We affirm God made all people from one man. Though people often can be distinguished by different ethnicities and nationalities, they are ontological equals before God in both creation and redemption. “Race” is not a biblical category, but rather a social construct that often has been used to classify groups of people in terms of inferiority and superiority. All that is good, honest, just, and beautiful in various ethnic backgrounds and experiences can be celebrated as the fruit of God’s grace. All sinful actions and their results (including evils perpetrated between and upon ethnic groups by others) are to be confessed as sinful, repented of, and repudiated.

We deny that Christians should segregate themselves into racial groups or regard racial identity above, or even equal to, their identity in Christ. We deny that any divisions between people groups (from an unstated attitude of superiority to an overt spirit of resentment) have any legitimate place in the fellowship of the redeemed. We reject any teaching that encourages racial groups to view themselves as privileged oppressors or entitled victims of oppression. While we are to weep with those who weep, we deny that a person’s feelings of offense or oppression necessarily prove that someone else is guilty of sinful behaviors, oppression, or prejudice.

There is no doubt that people are different from each other and that some of these differences run along group lines. Yes, individuals differ in a variety of ways, but some individuals share characteristics that place them together in a particular group. That group may be a concrete communal structure such as marriage, family, state and church institution. Or it may be a very loose society based on common patterns of interaction, customs and mores. Greeks, Italians, Iranians and Kashubians would fall into this category.

Statement on Social Justice, 10 & 11: Sexuality and Marriage, Complementarianism

Now we come to the sections of the Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel that will likely elicit the most discussion between supporters and opponents:

We affirm that God created mankind male and female and that this divinely determined distinction is good, proper, and to be celebrated. Maleness and femaleness are biologically determined at conception and are not subject to change. The curse of sin results in sinful, disordered affections that manifest in some people as same-sex attraction. Salvation grants sanctifying power to renounce such dishonorable affections as sinful and to mortify them by the Spirit. We further affirm that God’s design for marriage is that one woman and one man live in a one-flesh, covenantal, sexual relationship until separated by death. Those who lack the desire or opportunity for marriage are called to serve God in singleness and chastity. This is as noble a calling as marriage.

We deny that human sexuality is a socially constructed concept. We also deny that one’s sex can be fluid. We reject “gay Christian” as a legitimate biblical category. We further deny that any kind of partnership or union can properly be called marriage other than one man and one woman in lifelong covenant together. We further deny that people should be identified as “sexual minorities”—which serves as a cultural classification rather than one that honors the image-bearing character of human sexuality as created by God.

A generation ago, I doubt that the above affirmations would have caused controversy, but developments over the past half century in the larger culture have had their influence even on the church. The most momentous of these is the Sexual Revolution, which originated more than a century ago but accelerated its influence in two waves separated by depression and war: the 1920s and the 1960s. The latter of these decades proved to be the most enduring in its long-term impact and corresponds to the beginning of what I have termed the choice-enhancement state in Political Visions and Illusions. In this stage of the liberal project, human beings are increasingly defined, not by an intrinsic nature, but by their capacity to choose, full stop. What began centuries ago with an effort to reduce political community to a mere voluntary association (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, &c.) has now found its way into our social institutions as well, including marriage and family.

Statement on Social Justice, 9: Heresy

We are just over half-way through our journey through the recently published Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel, which now addresses heresy:

We affirm that heresy is a denial of or departure from a doctrine that is essential to the Christian faith. We further affirm that heresy often involves the replacement of key, essential truths with variant concepts, or the elevation of non-essentials to the status of essentials. To embrace heresy is to depart from the faith once delivered to the saints and thus to be on a path toward spiritual destruction. We affirm that the accusation of heresy should be reserved for those departures from Christian truth that destroy the weight-bearing doctrines of the redemptive core of Scripture. We affirm that accusations of heresy should be accompanied with clear evidence of such destructive beliefs.

We deny that the charge of heresy can be legitimately brought against every failure to achieve perfect conformity to all that is implied in sincere faith in the gospel.

The very notion of heresy is not a popular one these days, because it implies that someone or some community knows the truth and is willing to penalize those who persist in denying it. In a society that claims to value free expression of unpopular ideas, the image of a group of straight-laced men gathering together in a synodical body to test the orthodoxy of one of its members elicits scorn. Not long ago a mainline protestant denomination here in Canada found itself looking into the beliefs of one of its ministers who denies outright the existence of God. Harbouring an atheist in its midst was apparently too much for even this extremely nonconfessional denomination. Nevertheless, many of her fellow ministers came to her defence.

Heresy trials are not pleasant, to be sure. But where a church eliminates even the possibility of disciplining one of its officeholders for heresy, it will likely drift away from the gospel over the long term. Examples of this phenomenon are not hard to find.

Statement on Social Justice, 8: The Church

Although I am by profession an academic political scientist, in recent years I have become more interested in ecclesiological issues, as reflected in the forthcoming second edition of Political Visions and Illusions, which will contain "A Concluding Ecclesiological Postscript." The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel also treats the church:

We affirm that the primary role of the church is to worship God through the preaching of his word, teaching sound doctrine, observing baptism and the Lord’s Supper, refuting those who contradict, equipping the saints, and evangelizing the lost. We affirm that when the primacy of the gospel is maintained that this often has a positive effect on the culture in which various societal ills are mollified. We affirm that, under the lordship of Christ, we are to obey the governing authorities established by God and pray for civil leaders.

We deny that political or social activism should be viewed as integral components of the gospel or primary to the mission of the church. Though believers can and should utilize all lawful means that God has providentially established to have some effect on the laws of a society, we deny that these activities are either evidence of saving faith or constitute a central part of the church’s mission given to her by Jesus Christ, her head. We deny that laws or regulations possess any inherent power to change sinful hearts.

Prior to drafting this section, the statement's authors would have done well to read Abraham Kuyper on the church, especially his sermons contained in Rooted and Grounded: The Church as Organism and Institution. Kuyper's ecclesiology is exceedingly helpful in enabling us to sort our way through the issue of the church's ongoing mission in the world. On the one hand, we see denominational assemblies pronouncing on such political issues as the $15 an hour minimum wage and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and many of us, rightly to my mind, conclude that this is inappropriate for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, we also confess that our whole lives belong to God in Christ and that this includes our life together in political community. We definitely should be concerned about the poor and international justice. Is this a paradox with which we must simply live and move ahead by trial and error, valiantly attempting to avoid the opposite perils of politicizing the gospel and walling it off from the rest of life?

Statement of Social Justice, 6 & 7: the Gospel and Salvation

As we make our way through the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, we come to the heart of the biblical story, the gospel and salvation. Here is the sixth set of affirmations and denials:

We affirm that the gospel is the divinely-revealed message concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ—especially his virgin birth, righteous life, substitutionary sacrifice, atoning death, and bodily resurrection—revealing who he is and what he has done with the promise that he will save anyone and everyone who turns from sin by trusting him as Lord.

We deny that anything else, whether works to be performed or opinions to be held, can be added to the gospel without perverting it into another gospel. This also means that implications and applications of the gospel, such as the obligation to live justly in the world, though legitimate and important in their own right, are not definitional components of the gospel.

And now the seventh:

We affirm  that salvation is granted by God’s grace alone received through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. Every believer is united to Christ, justified before God, and adopted into his family. Thus, in God’s eyes there is no difference in spiritual value or worth among those who are in Christ. Further, all who are united to Christ are also united to one another regardless of age, ethnicity, or sex. All believers are being conformed to the image of Christ. By God’s regenerating and sanctifying grace all believers will be brought to a final glorified, sinless state of perfection in the day of Jesus Christ.

We deny that salvation can be received in any other way. We also deny that salvation renders any Christian free from all remaining sin or immune from even grievous sin in this life. We further deny that ethnicity excludes anyone from understanding the gospel, nor does anyone’s ethnic or cultural heritage mitigate or remove the duty to repent and believe.

At the risk of disappointing readers who waited three days to see what I might have to say, I can only indicate that I agree with both of these sections and have nothing of substance to add here. Salvation is in Jesus Christ alone. The gospel is open to everyone everywhere. The call to do justice is by no means optional for the believer, but efforts to fulfil this call cannot save us. The authors are correct.

Next: The Church, on which I will have more to say. This will be posted at 9 am tomorrow.

Statement on Social Justice, 4 & 5: God's Law and Sin

In treating the recently released Statement of Social Justice & the Gospel, I have concluded that it is sometimes appropriate to treat two sets of affirmations and denials together in a single post, which I did last Thursday and am doing again today. Here is the section on God's Law:

We affirm that God’s law, as summarized in the ten commandments, more succinctly summarized in the two great commandments, and manifested in Jesus Christ, is the only standard of unchanging righteousness. Violation of that law is what constitutes sin.

We deny that any obligation that does not arise from God’s commandments can be legitimately imposed on Christians as a prescription for righteous living. We further deny the legitimacy of any charge of sin or call to repentance that does not arise from a violation of God’s commandments.

I can only applaud the authors for affirming the continuing legitimacy of God's law at a time when many Christians misunderstand the relationship between the old and new covenants. The allure of Marcion's heresy has not gone away, as exemplified in this recent post. Of course, many misconstrue St. Paul the Apostle's writings on the Law, despite his affirmation that the Law is holy and good (Romans 7:12). In Reformed liturgies in particular, the reading of the Decalogue often follows the general confession of sin and the assurance of pardon. Here the Law functions as a guide to the new life in Christ for those who are truly repentant. I will not here get into the distinction often drawn amongst the moral, ceremonial and civil laws, but suffice it here to indicate that the church has always understood that the moral law is still binding on the Christian community, thereby recognizing the so-called third use of the law.

Statement on Social Justice, 2 & 3: Imago Dei and Justice

Here are the second and third series of affirmations and denials:

We affirm that God created every person equally in his own image. As divine image-bearers, all people have inestimable value and dignity before God and deserve honor, respect and protection. Everyone has been created by God and for God.

We deny that God-given roles, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, religion, sex or physical condition or any other property of a person either negates or contributes to that individual’s worth as an image-bearer of God.

This is wholly correct, as I see it. The only thing I would add is that the image of God entails a grant of authority—an authority that is dispersed over a variety of settings and manifests itself in the different offices to which we are called. God has called us to be fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, teachers, students, employers, employees, citizens, political leaders, members of a gathered church institution, elders, deacons, ministers, sellers, buyers, and so forth. None of these exhausts who we are as persons created in God's image. Therefore we might better speak of our callings, in the plural, as we seek to fulfil these simultaneously.in the many spheres of life, including family, marriage, state, school and church.

Statement on Social Justice, 1: Scripture

Welcome to the first instalment of a series dedicated to the recently released Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. As we make our way through this, I will first post the affirmations and denials and then proceed to my own analysis below. Here is the first, titled "Scripture":

We affirm that the Bible is God’s Word, breathed out by him. It is inerrant, infallible, and the final authority for determining what is true (what we must believe) and what is right (how we must live). All truth claims and ethical standards must be tested by God’s final Word, which is Scripture alone.

We deny that Christian belief, character, or conduct can be dictated by any other authority, and we deny that the postmodern ideologies derived from intersectionality, radical feminism, and critical race theory are consistent with biblical teaching. We further deny that competency to teach on any biblical issue comes from any qualification for spiritual people other than clear understanding and simple communication of what is revealed in Scripture.

All confessional protestants can resonate with the affirmation of the Bible as God's Word. Moreover one needn't be a protestant, as Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians also recognize the Bible to be verbum Dei, the Word of God. Although some might question on epistemological grounds the use of inerrant to describe Scripture, the mainstream of the Christian tradition confesses that it is inspired by God and does not err in what it teaches. Scripture is trustworthy and can be believed because it is God-breathed.

What is missing from the affirmations is the recognition that the Bible is more than a set of true propositions but a grand story in which all of humanity is caught up. It begins with God's creation, of which man stands at the pinnacle, followed by man's fall into sin, followed by God's ages-long plan to redeem humanity by calling out a peculiar people to embody his righteousness and mercy, culminating in the person of Jesus Christ, whose second coming will bring all things to fruition. This redemptive narrative is not an insignificant omission from the affirmations, although something of this can be seen in section 6 on the Gospel, which we will examine later.

The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel, introduction

Earlier this month, a group of church ministers and leaders of parachurch organizations published a Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel. It appears to have been spearheaded by the Rev. Mr. John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and radio preacher on Grace to You. According to MacArthur's wikipedia profile, he "is considered a Calvinist and a strong proponent of expository preaching. He has been acknowledged by Christianity Today as one of the most influential preachers of his time and was a frequent guest on Larry King Live as a representative of an evangelical Christian perspective."

Throughout the history of the church, occasions have arisen calling for creedal statements setting forth the substance of the faith. The Nicene Creed, for example, came out of the christological controversies of the early centuries of our era. In the sixteenth century, the Reformation produced a number of confessional documents such as the Augsburg Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the two Helvetic Confessions. These were often, if not always, generated during the heat of conflict and were intended to draw boundaries around orthodoxy.

If this new statement is not exactly an ecclesial confession in the classic mould, it does represent an effort to steer Christians away from certain dangers its drafters believe have infected the larger evangelical church. Accordingly each of the sixteen articles takes the form of a series of affirmations and denials. In the coming weeks I will be devoting space to each of these, pointing to their respective strengths and weaknesses while bearing in mind the overall framework within which the statement is set. My intention is not to give readers a series of idiosyncratic likes and dislikes, but to evaluate the statement in light of the larger Christian tradition, and particularly its Reformed expression. As I have been strongly influenced by Abraham Kuyper and his heirs, my analysis will reflect this.

My first post in this series will be published at 9 am EDT next Monday, 1st October, and will cover the first set of affirmations and denials on Scripture. Thereafter I will post every Monday and Thursday until we have completed the statement. My final post will be a general evaluation of the whole.

Here is the link to the section on Scripture.

Canada’s established religion

Since the adoption of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, the accepted narrative tells us that Canadians are better protected than they were under the statutory Bill of Rights (1960) and the centuries-old Common Law tradition. But are we really? In the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decision in the Trinity Western case we have reason for doubt.

Section 2 of the Charter claims to guarantee the fundamental freedoms of all Canadians, including “freedom of conscience and religion.” However, section 1 also tells us that the Charter “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” Because this limiting clause is expressed in such vague language, it is up to the courts to decide which limits are reasonable and which not. However, the courts are under no obligation to admit that their criteria for doing so are rooted in an unstated religious worldview placing the individual at the centre of life.

Trinity Western University, an evangelical Christian post-secondary institution in British Columbia, attempted to establish a Christian law school but ran into difficulty when the law societies of Ontario and BC declined to accredit the institution. Why? Because its community covenant prohibits students from engaging in sexual activity outside of a biblical understanding of marriage. There once was a time when such a requirement would scarcely cause controversy, because the larger society understood the distinctive character of marriage as a unique and lifelong covenant between a man and a woman, capable in principle of bringing forth and nurturing the next generation. As such, marriage deserved protection as a matter of simple justice, because, without it, society as a whole would suffer.

Interview published in Brazil

I was recently interviewed by Guilherme Piton of Santo Antônio de Jesus, Bahia, Brazil, and he has posted the interview here: Fé Cristã e Política: uma pequena entrevista com David T. Koyzis. Here is the same interview in English. Piton's questions are in italics.


First, a brief presentation. Who is David T. Koyzis and how did he get involved with Christian faith, philosophy and politics?

I was born near Chicago and grew up in a Christian family that was politically aware. One of my earliest memories was of the assassination of President John Kennedy and of the huge impact that had on the American polity. As a young man I was fascinated by the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon. At virtually the same time, my paternal relatives in Cyprus became refugees after Turkey invaded the island state in 1974. All of these influenced me to study politics in a more focused way. When I was about nineteen I began reading Abraham Kuyper and his intellectual and spiritual heirs on Christianity and politics, and I was deeply impressed with their conviction that our faith has implications for public life. This conviction has animated my own work over the decades, including graduate studies and university teaching.

The Glorious Revolution, American royalists and the War for Independence

One of the more fascinating books I've read recently is Eric Nelson's The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding. On this Independence Day it is worth recounting Nelson's argument, which differs somewhat from the conventional histories Americans are taught in their schools. The standard account has it that Americans disliked King George III and fought to free themselves from his tyranny. A surface reading of the Declaration of Independence supports this interpretation, as it charges the King with a list of offences, to wit: "repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." In this reading, Americans are Whigs—heirs of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which unseated King James II and established parliamentary government in the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland.

But what if the Glorious Revolution inadvertently prepared the ground for revolt in the colonies nearly a century later? What if Americans were actually Tories and supporters of the king?

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

For my first 12 years, the map with which I was familiar showed a small Israel, some of whose territory was precariously thin, caught between its hostile neighbours and the sea. This all changed in June 1967, when Israel, attacked by those neighbours, pushed them back and occupied the territories west of the Jordan River. For the first time in nearly 20 years, Jerusalem was no longer a divided city bisected by a tense no-man’s-land. Israel had restored the unity of its capital city.

Yet to this day few countries recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, maintaining their embassies in the coastal city of Tel Aviv. But wait. Doesn’t a country have the right to name its own capital city? Shouldn’t other countries with which it enjoys diplomatic relations honour this right without question? Ordinarily this would be the case.

Yet few things are normal in the Middle East, especially where Israel and Palestine are concerned. My visit there in 1995 confirmed this for me. Tension hung constantly in the air, and military personnel armed with machine guns were ubiquitous. Moreover, that was at a time of optimism in the wake of the Oslo Accords.

Humour vs mockery

Political life has always had its humorous side. Policy-making is, of course, serious business, and it has a huge impact on large numbers of people. But in the midst of so many grave matters of war and peace, crime and punishment, we have always found ways to make light of difficult circumstances. After all, laughter is an all too human means of coping with our troubles. Some of this humour amounts to gentle ribbing of otherwise hard-working people whose offices we respect. But some humour is destructive, effectively coarsening the larger conversation and contributing to a culture contemptuous of duly constituted authority.

The German-born Thomas Nast (1840-1902) was the first of a long line of political cartoonists in the United States, famously originating the Republican Party’s elephant and popularizing the Democratic Party’s donkey. An ardent abolitionist and supporter of the Union during the American Civil War, Nast’s cartoons mercilessly lampooned the racism of the secessionists. He hated white supremacy and turned his pen against those who sought to exclude Chinese immigration into the U.S. Nast was succeeded by other political cartoonists, whose caricatures of prominent political leaders simultaneously amused the public and irritated the powerful.

European integration and political ideologies

Bad Liebenzell

Last month I was privileged to spend time in Germany at the Internationale Hochschule Liebenzell (IHL) in Bad Liebenzell, a beautiful village nestled in the Black Forest. The IHL is a ministry of the Liebenzell Mission, which was founded in 1899 and has its roots in a late nineteenth-century revival in Germany. It has branches in Canada, the Northern Mariana Islands, and six other countries around the world. The Mission is active in church-planting, Bible translation, education, evangelism, children and youth ministry, medical care, air service, substance addiction therapies, ministry to immigrants and community development in twenty-five countries. Remarkably, it also has monastic-like brotherhoods and sisterhoods, a fellowship of deaconesses, a retreat centre and a literature distribution ministry. It appears to be independent of any denomination, yet it does plant church congregations.

Political Visions and Illusions, second edition

The second edition of Political Visions and Illusions is due out early next year. In the meantime, the new cover can be seen at right.

The new edition will include a reworking of the chapters in the first, with the addition of discussion questions after each chapter. A key difference from the first edition is that the redemptive narratives underpinning the ideological visions will be brought more explicitly into the foreground. This theme was present in the first, but it will be more visible in the second, enhanced by a series of illustrations highlighting these stories.

Finally, recognizing that this book has been used profitably in theological seminaries, I have added "A Concluding Ecclesiological Postscript," in which I take up the question of the role of the institutional church—as opposed to the larger corpus Christi, or body of Christ—in addressing political life, with references to the Barmen Declaration (1934), Mit Brennender Sorge (1937) and the Belhar Confession (1986). A new foreword will be written by Richard J. Mouw, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary and author of many books, including He Shines in All That's Fair and Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction.

I will let everyone know when the book is published. Stay tuned.

Check the box and take the cash: Trudeau and Canada's summer jobs program

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is well over halfway through its statutory four-year mandate, and the prime minister continues to cause controversy by imposing his contestable interpretation of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The provocations began with his parliamentary caucus before the 2015 federal election, when he proclaimed that he would no longer permit pro-life candidates to stand for a seat under the Liberal label. This action produced a dilemma for pro-life Liberals, such as the Honourable John McKay, who had previously served under the convention that controversial moral issues, if raised in the House of Commons, would be settled by a free vote so as not to coerce members into violating their consciences. Trudeau, in effect, unilaterally changed this convention, making “reproductive freedom” for the first time a nonnegotiable element of the federal Liberal program.

In January of this year, the government announced that federal funding for the Canada Summer Jobs program—which subsidizes wages for small business, government entities, and nonprofits that employ young people who are full-time students—would be available only to groups that accept its reading of the Charter. At issue was the expectation that organizations applying for funding sign the attestation at the end of the application form, including these sentences:

Both the job and my organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights. These include reproductive rights and the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, national or ethnic origin, colour, mental or physical disability or sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.

Overlords and underdogs

No one can read the Bible without recognizing that God is concerned for the plight of the oppressed. The first five books of the Bible tell the story of God delivering his people from oppression in Egypt. So central is this story for both Judaism and Christianity that it has been cited as prototype for God’s deliverance of his people at several stages in the biblical narrative. Nevertheless, we need to be cautious in our use of oppression and liberation as political categories, because they can lead us astray.

Reformed theologians in particular have emphasized that the Bible is not simply a collection of pious ancient writings but a unified story of God’s redemptive acts in history, culminating in our salvation in Jesus Christ.

As we read the Bible through this redemptive-historical lens, we will recognize that, yes, God hates people oppressing others but that the primary form of oppression from which he liberates us is that of our own sinful nature. Indeed, it is sin against God and neighbour that fuels every other form of oppression.

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THE LAST TELEGRAM –(STOP)–

It always marked a turning point in those old movies from the ’30s and ’40s. Someone would receive a telegram, indicating that all was forgiven / someone had died / a couple had married / a ship had been lost at sea. In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1941 classic, Shadow of a Doubt, Teresa Wright’s family receives a telegram indicating that her Uncle Charlie would be paying them a surprise visit, little knowing the havoc he would unleash in their home and community.

On the last day of 2017, Belgium finally ended telegraph service, which had begun more than a century and a half earlier and was a fixture of daily life for so many people around the world. In so doing, it followed the earlier moves of Great Britain (1982), the United States (2006) and India (2013).

Remembering Expo 67

The past year’s celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday reminded me of another anniversary: that of my first visit to this country, which occurred 50 years ago. I was 12 years old, and my father had promised us that we would be seeing Expo 67, the world’s fair in Montréal. We had been expecting this all summer, but school rolled around and we hadn’t yet made the trip. We children knew that the fair would not last forever, and we feared missing it if we waited too long.

October rolled around and still no fair. As Expo would be wrapping up at the end of the month, we got more nervous. But then, on the fifth day of the month, I came home from school to learn that we would be getting in our family’s Buick Electra and leaving for the fair in only two hours! I can no longer recall whether my mother had already packed for all eight of us, but we soon headed off into the night, as prepared as we were ever going to be.

What’s in a name? Fundamentalism, evangelicalism and the fickleness of labels

A good friend of mine in graduate school was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). A confessionally Reformed Christian, he admitted to me that he sometimes liked to call himself a fundamentalist just to see how others would respond. Though we were on the same page in so many ways, I personally didn’t think I could go quite that far.

Nevertheless, I was raised in what might well be regarded as the first fundamentalist denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Established in 1936 by John Gresham Machen and others, it grew out of the controversies of the 1920s and ’30s in the former Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Confessional liberals, who elevated personal experience and rationalism above both the Bible and the Westminster Standards, gradually moved into the ascendancy, with the more conservative elements increasingly on the defensive. These trends had already begun in the post-Civil War era, gaining speed around the turn of the 20th century and achieving dominance after the end of the Great War.

The Queen's Christmas Message, 2017

Exactly sixty years after the Queen first aired her annual Christmas message on television, the Palace posted this fresh message:


We who have faithfully listened to her broadcasts year after year have noticed that their content is more explicitly christian than in the past, as pointed out in this article from The Guardian: How the Queen – the ‘last Christian monarch’ – has made faith her message. The turn of the millennium appears to have marked the start of this unmistakable trend.

To the royal household, it is known as the QXB – the Queen’s Christmas broadcast. To millions of people, it is still an essential feature of Christmas Day. To the Queen, her annual broadcast is the time when she speaks to the nation without the government scripting it. But in recent years, it has also become something else: a declaration of her Christian faith. As Britain has become more secular, the Queen’s messages have followed the opposite trajectory.

This is how she closed her message two days ago:

We remember the birth of Jesus Christ, whose only sanctuary was a stable in Bethlehem. He knew rejection, hardship and persecution. And, yet, it is Jesus Christ's generous love and example which has inspired me through good times and bad. Whatever your own experience is this year, wherever and however you are watching, I wish you a peaceful and very happy Christmas.

God save the Queen! Let us pray that, when the time arrives, her heirs and successors will see fit to continue this emphasis in their own Christmas messages.

Harry Blamires, 1916-2017

Harry Blamires (pronounced BLAMers) was not one of the best known of Christian apologists, overshadowed as he was by the likes of his mentor C. S. Lewis and, among Reformed Christians, Cornelius Van Til. Nevertheless, he was a scholar and theologian of the first rank, and he will be remembered for a single book he published in 1963, The Christian Mind. Because there have been so many books published in recent decades on the subject of a Christian worldview, we may forget that there was a time when the need to think in a distinctively christian way was unfamiliar even to regular church-goers, as it was to me when I was growing up. I acquired my copy back in June 1976 (so I wrote inside the front cover), and underscored those passages that leapt out at me. Blamires makes no mention of Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch polymath and statesman with whom I was becoming acquainted and increasingly sympathetic, but, with some exceptions, I saw them as co-belligerents in the effort to alert believers to the comprehensive sovereignty of God in Christ over the whole of life. Here is a wonderful sample of Blamires' writing:

It may be that the dominant evil of our time is neither the threat of nuclear warfare nor the mechanization of society, but the disintegration of human thought and experience into separate unrelated compartments. For a feature of the diseased condition of modern society is the parcelling out of human faculties—physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual—into distinct categories, separately exploited, separately catered for. Man is dismembered. In the high incidence of mental disease you can measure something of the cost of this dismemberment. In so far as the Church nurtures the schizophrenic Christian, the Church herself contributes to the very process of dismemberment which it is her specific business to check and counter. For the Church's function is properly to reconstitute the concept and the reality of the full man, faculties and forces blended and united in the service of God. The Church's mission as the continuing vehicle of divine incarnation is precisely that—to build and rebuild the unified Body made and remade in the image of the Father. The mind of man must be won for God (TCM, p. 81).

Christianity Today carries an obituary of Blamires here: Died: Harry Blamires, the C. S. Lewis Protégé Who Rediscovered ‘The Christian Mind’. May he rest in peace until the resurrection.

A troubled anniversary

Next year we observe – perhaps “celebrate” doesn’t entirely fit – the 370th anniversary of the modern state, which is generally said to have resulted from the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the devastating Thirty Years War and reshaped the map of Europe. According to this agreement, the European powers would henceforth accept the principle of state sovereignty, namely, that the state is sovereign within its own territory and exempt from interference from its neighbours. This new international order would replace the messy patchwork of feudal fiefdoms that had lasted for centuries in the western part of the continent.

Since that time we have come to see the state, not as a domain of a particular ruler, but as a community of citizens led by their government. But settling its territorial boundaries has been the tricky part. Where does France end and Germany begin? And what of the German lands where, say, Polish is the majority language? For as long as the modern state has existed there have been quarrels over its jurisdiction. Attempts to settle these quarrels have not always succeeded, with the two world wars of the last century among the most tragic of the failures.

One Year of Trump

Nobody expected him to win. He was too boorish and crude. He couldn’t hold his own in a debate, even as, by his sheer presence, he seemed to be trying to intimidate his opponent. He thumbed his nose at people he thought weak and made fun of the handicapped. Far from being a polished orator like his predecessor, his rhetoric consisted of monosyllabic words spat out with tremendous ferocity, coupled with monotonously repetitious outbursts of braggadocio. Read more.

The Queen would not be amused: Julie Payette’s ill-considered remarks

As one of the Queen's Canadian subjects, I personally doubt she would approve of the remarks her freshly-minted representative made last week. Some months ago Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had advised Her Majesty to appoint Julie Payette, a former astronaut, to the post of Governor General, an office which she assumed at the beginning of October. In a Westminster parliamentary system, the Queen and her representatives must remain impeccably nonpartisan and avoid even a hint of partiality. The monarch is the guarantor of the constitution and a symbol of unity for the entire nation. In her sixty-five years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II has discharged her weighty responsibilities admirably, more than living up to the vow she took in South Africa on her twenty-first birthday.

Sadly, not all of her representatives have managed to follow her example. Last week, Payette addressed the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa, and in the course of her speech appeared to belittle her fellow citizens who have the temerity to believe in a transcendent God:

Commemorating a revolution

Exactly one-hundred years ago, a small cadre of revolutionaries seized power in the then Russian capital city of Petrograd. After the Tsar's abdication earlier in the year, a provisional government had attempted to run the fractious country, unwisely attempting to continue the war against Germany that had brought down the imperial régime. While Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein would immortalize the storming of the Winter Palace in his famous re-enactment three years later, the actions that brought the Bolsheviks to power were much less dramatic. Nevertheless the long-term consequences of the Revolution would reverberate throughout the twentieth century, leading directly or indirectly to the deaths of scores of millions of people in the interest of implementing a political illusion based on a fundamental misreading of human nature.

On this anniversary we do well to acknowledge that human efforts to reshape the world according to the demands of the gods of the age are not without consequences. In particular, when human beings deny the one true God, they don't cease to believe. They simply redirect their beliefs elsewhere. While there is little to celebrate on this solemn occasion, it is appropriate to remember those who lost their lives to the scourge of Marxism-Leninism in the decades following the Revolution. Господи, помилуй! Lord have mercy!

How Socialism Suppresses Society

Last month I was privileged to visit the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where I lectured on "How Socialism Suppresses Society." A video of my lecture has been posted on YouTube with Portuguese subtitles for anyone interested. However,  as my delivered lecture was an abbreviated version of the text, I am posting the full text here:

Until last year's presidential election campaign, socialism had long been a nasty word in the American political lexicon. It had been associated with the worst forms of tyranny, especially those of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Thus many of us were surprised to see a certain United States Senator from Vermont gain a dedicated following among especially younger voters while proudly wearing the democratic socialist label. Their elders would have blanched at the prospect of a socialist president, while they themselves manifested no such fear of an ideological vision whose character and history is without doubt unfamiliar to them.

Norman Thomas

Nevertheless, virtually all western democracies can boast a sizeable socialist party of some sort. Britain has its Labour Party, while Australia has its Labor (minus the “u”) Party. France has its Parti Socialiste, and Germany its Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. Even my own country of Canada has its New Democratic Party, which, while never having governed at the federal level, has managed at times to form the government in half of the country's ten provinces, including Ontario. The United States had a Socialist Party in the first decades of the twentieth century, under the leadership of Eugene Debs (1855-1926), who famously campaigned for the 1920 election from a jail cell, and the venerable Norman Thomas (1884-1968), a Presbyterian minister who stood six times unsuccessfully for the presidency. But the high water mark for the party came in 1932, after which it lost its support base to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. As a consequence, the United States remains virtually the only country lacking a major political party adhering to the principles of socialism.

Defining socialism

What exactly is socialism? Definitions vary widely, of course, and it is probably more accurate to speak of socialisms in the plural. Yet despite the differences, most manifestations of socialism have a number of characteristics in common.

October updates

Here are three updates:

• Last month I was privileged to visit Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where I spoke on "How Socialism Suppresses Society." My lecture has been posted on YouTube with Portuguese subtitles:

• An article of mine has been published in the Autumn 2017 issue of The Bible in Transmission, of the Bible Society (also known as the British and Foreign Bible Society): Populism in Christian Perspective.

An excerpt:

One cannot simply blame political leaders for the direction of an entire culture. George Bernard Shaw was perhaps more realistic in his observation that ‘Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.’ An overstatement perhaps. Yet it is true that political institutions and leaders alike are conditioned by a complex of cultural assumptions characterising the polity as a whole. A people accustomed to autocracy is very likely to be ruled by autocrats. A nation whose people are corrupt in their daily lives are highly unlikely to be governed by leaders careful to avoid conflict of interest in the conduct of public affairs.

• Finally, I have received word from InterVarsity Press that my first book, Political Visions and Illusions, has been approved for a second revised edition, which I will be working on over the next several months. I will keep everyone updated on its progress and projected date of publication. Thanks to the many readers who have made this book a success over nearly a decade and a half.
  

Abraham Kuyper and the Pluralist Claims of the Liberal Project, Part 4: The Kuyperian Alternative

Herman Dooyeweerd

In response to the evident defects of liberalism, we might well ask what the alternatives might be. We evidently cannot return to the religious establishments of old. Even the most dedicated communitarian is highly unlikely to make such an obviously retrograde proposal. Although at least one church body has long sought to amend the US Constitution to recognize the mediatorial kingship of Jesus Christ, no one would argue that, for example, the state’s coercive apparatus should enforce ecclesiastical judgements issued against recalcitrant members.

Everyone now presumably agrees that the execution of heretics handed over by the Inquisition to the civil authorities was not only a very bad idea but fundamentally unjust as well. Nevertheless, the major Reformed confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries charge the civil authorities with the responsibility to “protect the sacred ministry; and thus [to] remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship; that the kingdom of antichrist may be thus destroyed and the kingdom of Christ promoted.” By the beginning of the nineteenth century, this confessional charge to the political authorities was sounding less and less plausible in the increasingly pluralistic societies of Europe and North America.

Abraham Kuyper and the Pluralist Claims of the Liberal Project, Part 3: What Liberalism Implies for the Two Pluralisms

John Stuart Mill

In Part 2 we examined the implications of Kuyperian and liberal pluralisms for ecclesiology, that is, our understanding of the nature and authority of the institutional church. We noted, in particular, that liberalism, following John Locke, is compelled to reduce it to a mere voluntary association of like-minded individuals.

There are two implications to this liberal move. First, it is incapable of accounting for structural differences among an assortment of communities. State and church are not essentially different from the garden club or the Boy Scouts. Whatever differences appear to the casual observer can be ascribed to the collective wills of the individuals who make them up. Proponents are persuaded that, even if different groups of citizens operate out of divergent comprehensive doctrines, they must be made to look beneath these commitments to what are believed to be the raw data of human experience that bind all persons together. These data are, of course, the constituent individuals themselves.

Every community can be easily understood as a collection of individuals who choose to be part of it for reasons peculiar to each member. There is nothing unusual about this approach, the liberal insists. Michael Ignatieff believes himself justified in asserting that liberal individualism is not peculiarly western or historically conditioned; it is human and universal: “It’s just a fact about us as a species: we frame purposes individually, in ways that other creatures do not.” Therefore if the claims of groups and individuals come into conflict, as they inevitably must, Ignatieff confidently concludes that “individual rights should prevail,” despite the contrary claims of nationalists, socialists and many conservatives of a communitarian bent.

Abraham Kuyper and the Pluralist Claims of the Liberal Project, Part 2: The Church as Voluntary Association

John Locke

As we noted in Part 1, liberalism attempts to guarantee pluralism by empowering the individual, often at the expense of the very communities that go into shaping her. But in so doing, liberalism denies these communities any authority not reducible to the wills of the component individuals.

If, for example, we were to agree with John Locke’s definition of the church, we would find ourselves in territory foreign to the mainstream of the historic faith. According to Locke, “A church, then, I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such manner as they judge acceptable to Him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls” (emphasis mine). While there are undoubtedly many Christians, especially protestants in the free-church tradition, who would implicitly agree with Locke’s definition, the mainstream of the Christian tradition has viewed the church as the covenant community of those who belong to Jesus Christ, who is its Saviour and head.

Moreover, the gathered church, as distinct from the corpus Christi which is more encompassing, has been generally recognized to be an authoritative institution with the power to bind and loose on earth (Matthew 16:19, 18:18). As such it is more than the aggregate of its members but is a divinely-ordained vessel bearing the gospel to the world and especially to the church’s members.

Abraham Kuyper and the Pluralist Claims of the Liberal Project, Part 1: Liberalism and Two Kinds of Diversity

Although it can be misleading to seek the meaning of commonly-used words and expressions in their etymological origins, in the case of liberalism, the linguistic connection with liberty is all too obvious. The promise of liberty is an attractive one that holds out the possibility of living our lives as we see fit, free from constraints imposed from without. We simply prefer to have our own way and not to have to defer to the wills of others.

Yet even the most extensive account of liberty must recognize that it needs to be subject to appropriate limits if we are not to descend into a chaotic state of continual conflict, which English philosopher Thomas Hobbes memorably labelled a bellum omnium contra omnes, a war of all against all.

Here I propose to compare two approaches to liberty, viz., those of liberalism and of the principled pluralism associated with the heirs of the great Dutch statesman and polymath, Abraham Kuyper. Although each claims to advance liberty, I will argue that the Kuyperian alternative is superior to the liberal because it is based on a more accurate appraisal of human nature, society and the place of community within it.

Happy AR Day! a holiday to counter Bastille Day

G. Groen van Prinsterer

Twenty-some years ago my sister was in France, studying Gregorian chant with the monks at the Abbaye Saint-Pierre in Solesmes. During her time there, the 14th of July rolled around, when the rest of the country celebrates la Fête nationale, better known to us as Bastille Day. But things were quiet in Solesmes and the surrounding countryside. Curious at this lack of merriment, my sister asked why they weren’t joining in the celebrations and was greeted with faces registering shock. In a heavily Catholic region, they would never consider observing a day that marked the start of a godless revolution that wreaked such havoc on the Church, France and the rest of Europe.

There are now 351 days remaining until the next Bastille Day. As we await its occurrence, I would like to propose for that day a counter-holiday to be titled AR Day, “AR” standing for Anti-Revolutionary. After the generation of war and instability set off in 1789 finally ended with Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, many Europeans, especially those still loyal to the gospel of Jesus Christ, set about attempting to combat the ideological illusions the Revolution had engendered. This entailed breaking with the modern preoccupation—nay, obsession—with sovereignty and recovering a recognition of the legitimate pluriformity of society.

In any ordinary social setting, people owe allegiance to a variety of overlapping communities with differing internal structures, standards, and purposes. These are sometimes called mediating structures, intermediary communities or, taken collectively, civil society. This reality stands in marked contrast to liberal individualism and such collectivist ideologies as nationalism and socialism, each of which is monistic in its own way—locating a principle of unity in a human agent to which it ascribes sovereignty, or the final say.

Recognizing that the only source of unity in the cosmos is the God who has created and redeemed us in the person of his Son, Christians are freed from the need to locate a unifying source within the cosmos. Thus the institutional church can be itself, living up to its divinely-appointed mandate to preach the gospel, administer the sacraments, and maintain discipline. The family is free to be the family, nurturing children as they grow to maturity. Marriage is liberated to be itself, free from the stifling constraints of the thin contractarian version now extolled in North America and elsewhere. And, of course, the huge array of schools, labour unions, business enterprises, and voluntary associations have their own proper places, not to be artificially subordinated to an all-embracing state or the imperial self.

This pluriformity is something worth celebrating! It may sound perfectly mundane when described in the way I have here, but the fact that the followers of today’s political illusions find it so threatening indicates that we cannot afford to take it for granted. Here are some suggested readings that highlight this dissenting anti-revolutionary tradition:

• Johannes Althusius, Politics (1614)
• Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
• Guillaume Groen van Prinster, Unbelief and Revolution (1847)
• Abraham Kuyper, Our Program (1880)
• Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891)
• Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (1951)
• Yves R. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government (1951)
• Friedrich Julius Stahl, Philosophy of Law: the Doctrine of State and the Principles of State Law (1830)

I could go on and list many more resources, but these will suffice for purposes of our new holiday. I propose that we celebrate it by holding public readings from these and similar works. The food would consist of such anti-revolutionary delicacies as boerenkool met worst, haggis, Brazilian pães de queijo and pamonhas, and, for the sake of all those Byzantine-Rite Calvinists out there, loaves of white bread with taramosalata, Kalamata olives, and cruets of extra virgin (Greek!) olive oil.

Music will consist of mass communal singing of the Psalms, preferably from the Genevan Psalter. Additional music will be provided by (why not?) the monks of the Abbaye Saint-Pierre in Solesme! Let’s do it!

This is a numerically altered version of David Koyzis's debut column at Kuyperian Commentary.

To my students: a reluctant farewell

When I began teaching thirty years ago, I had not anticipated how much I would grow to love the young people in my classes. At Notre Dame during my graduate student years, I had been just another teaching assistant, and thus one more obstacle for the ambitious undergraduates to get past on their way to (for most of them, it seemed) law school. All of that changed when I arrived at what was still called Redeemer College in the autumn of 1987.

In the first course I taught, an introductory political science course, I made a number of missteps—nothing serious, just the ordinary kind that come with inexperience. Nevertheless, at the end of the term, when I read the student evaluations, quite a number of them generously offered this assessment: “Has potential to become an excellent professor.” This could have become a deflating experience, but instead I took heart from their words, and it became an incentive for me to improve my performance in the classroom.

The early years were, of course, filled with the normal stresses of multiple preparations of courses from the ground up. Many a beginning teacher reports that her ambition is simply to keep up with the students from day to day, and that was my experience as well. Nevertheless, despite all the busyness, I made time outside the classroom to be with my students and to converse with them. In the process I found that I was developing a deep love for them which lasted for three decades.

Two episodes stand out for me.

Not long into my teaching career, I was sitting at a cafeteria table with several of my students. One young lady repeated to me something I had said in class as though it were gospel truth, and I was startled and somewhat alarmed at the influence I was already having on her. That night I was unable to sleep, as the words of James 3 echoed through my head: “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness.” I quickly recovered, of course, but I was beginning to comprehend the awesome responsibility that teachers carry for communicating truth to the young people in their care.

The second episode occurred after I was married and shortly after our daughter was born three months premature. Theresa had been in two successive hospitals for more than ten weeks after her early birth. Still less than five pounds when she went home with us, she was released from hospital on the very day that Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe was hit by a snowstorm of historic proportions. (Remember when Toronto’s mayor called on federal troops to help dig his city out?) Not knowing what to do, I phoned one of my students on campus, and he brought some of his friends over to our house. They freed our driveway in little time, and we were able to get to St. Joseph’s Hospital on schedule to bring Theresa home. This young man, now in his forties, is still a close friend.

To all of you whom I was privileged to teach over the decades, know that you have my undying affection and loyalty. I have sought above all to show you that the belief that our world belongs, not to ourselves, but to the God who has created and redeemed us has huge implications for political life and for the animating visions underpinning it. I hope I have communicated to you a hunger for justice, especially for the most vulnerable in our society as well as for the communities that support them. My greatest prayer for you is that you will continue to be agents of God’s kingdom in this world for whom Christ died.

In the meantime, although I am unwillingly leaving my current students behind, I fully intend to maintain the friendships I have formed over the years with so many of you. Do stay in touch!

After thirty years of service at Redeemer University College, David Koyzis’ position was terminated due to financial and curricular restructuring. He is currently seeking employment elsewhere and asks for readers’ prayers in the meantime.