February tidbits

Here are links to three articles that have come to my attention in recent weeks. All have to do with religion's influence on public life.

The American Exception: How faith shapes economic and social policy, by Benjamin M. Friedman, in the January/February 2021 issue of Harvard Magazine. Excerpt:

Because it is true that economics emerged from the Enlightenment, and because the conventional image of the Enlightenment downplays the importance attached to religion in favor of humanistic thinking, the commonplace assumption is that economics in turn likewise stands apart from religious ideas. This is not true, nor has it been, ever since the inception of economics as a modern intellectual discipline. Taking account of the influence of religious thinking is essential to a full understanding of one of the great areas of modern human thought.

If evangelical Christians are called to live in truth, why do so many believe political conspiracies?, by Peggy Wehmeyer, in The Dallas Morning News. Excerpt:

People I know and care about still hold a shocking but unshakable belief that a deep state, involving the Supreme Court, federal judges, election officials and mainstream media, stole the White House from Donald Trump. But evangelical Christians are people who are called to live as though the truth is true, no matter the cost. I share my friends’ conservative moral values as well as their disdain for some of the progressive policies of the Democratic Party. But my fear of where President Joe Biden might take us doesn’t tempt me to swallow a web of conspiracy theories whole.

How the Civil Rights Movement Converted Liberal White Protestants to Secularism, by Daniel K. Williams, at Anxious Bench. Excerpt:

After the 1960s, mainline Protestant denominations experienced a decades-long continuous decline in membership. While the causes of the decline are complex, most analyses have pointed to one central factor: the failure of mainline Protestant churches to retain their children, first with the Baby Boomers, and then with Gen-Xers and millennials.  And while a few of these youth left mainline Protestantism for conservative evangelical or Catholic churches, most became nonreligious. Yet in many cases – especially if they pursued graduate education – they retained the progressive political commitments that some of their pastors had acquired in the civil rights movement. But now that they had the moral commitment that came from the civil rights movement, they no longer saw the need for organized religion – especially organized religion that was not quite as fervent in its social justice commitments.

The Enthroned Self: Carl Trueman’s Account of a Revolution

The Cateclesia Institute has published my review of Carl Trueman's recent book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution: The Enthroned Self: Carl Trueman’s Account of a Revolution. An excerpt:

In exploring the Revolution’s architecture in part one, Trueman draws on three twentieth-century figures—Philip Rieff, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre—whose categories he believes help us to understand recent history. Rieff, whose Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) anticipated current trends, analyzed western history in terms of three successive worlds. The first world is pagan, and its ethic is rooted in myth, such as the predictive power ascribed to the Delphic oracle. Human beings are subject to an impersonal fate that prevents them controlling the outcomes of their lives. Man in a first-world culture is political man (Trueman, 44). The second world is characterized by faith rather than fate—a faith in a God who has revealed himself in specific ways to specific peoples. Human laws are in some sense based on the will of this God, who underpins the customs and mores of entire societies. In a second-world culture, political man gives way to religious man. Both the first and second worlds justify themselves by reference to a transcendent sacred order.

Biden's Burden

The new issue of Christian Courier carries my monthly column, "Principalities & Powers," titled, Biden's Burden: Will the new American president be able to make good on his promises? An excerpt:

I’ve often said that an American president must function as both king and prime minister, and that few have played each role equally well. I believe that Biden’s address was a suitably regal speech, laudably attempting to unite a divided nation – something that his immediate predecessor seemed altogether incapable of doing. But what sort of prime minister will he make? Presidential promises to bridge divisions too often falter over the reality of divisive policies pursued in the Oval Office and in Congress. And these will inevitably hamper his efforts towards unity.

Historically Biden has been a moderate Democrat, shunning the more radical elements in his own party. But over the decades he has also shown himself to be flexible, or, to put the matter more negatively, irresolute, changing his convictions as the times and his party appear to demand. This makes Biden’s actual discharge of his duties somewhat difficult to predict. Will he expand and harden the Democrats’ non-discrimination regime, even at the expense of religious liberty? Or will he refrain from unduly interfering in the institutions of civil society and the standards they maintain as part of their core identities? How he approaches this will determine whether he is genuinely capable of reaching out to his political opponents.

Read the entire column here.

Christianity and Political Life

Just over a year ago, in November 2019, I spoke at the Indonesian Reformed Evangelical Church (IREC) Trinity in Toronto, pastored by the Rev. Joshua Lie, on the subject of "Christianity and Political Life." Here is the video of my talk, which I've also posted on my RECENT ACTIVITIES page. You may need to turn up the sound to hear it.

WSJ on Catholic social teachings

On 5 February this article by Francis X. Rocca appeared in The Wall Street Journal: Can Catholic Social Teaching Unite a Divided America? Subtitle: "President Biden, Sen. [Marco] Rubio and many non-Catholic thinkers see a way forward in the church’s long tradition of public discourse, even as they disagree in interpreting it." The article is behind a pay wall, but here is a brief excerpt:

What is Catholic social teaching? And why should it matter to the nearly 80% of Americans who do not belong to the church?

 

A body of doctrine on law, politics and economics developed by popes since the late 19th century, Catholic social teaching has historically been more influential in Europe and Latin America than in the U.S. But some on both sides of the aisle, not all of them Catholic, say its concepts are especially needed at this fractured moment in American politics. “If you’re looking for a way to bridge differences and find some unity and healing, Catholic social teaching offers a path forward that challenges both right and left and calls us to work together for the common good,” said John Carr, a former adviser to the U.S. bishops who teaches at Georgetown University and who endorsed Mr. Biden last fall. “In a society with very few strong moral paradigms left, Catholic social thought is a well-organized tradition that has something for both left and right,” said Adrian Vermeule, a conservative professor of constitutional law at Harvard University. “Catholicism, despite or because of our polarized age, is becoming something like an organizing common language for a great deal of American public life.” . . .

Schuman Talk

Yesterday Jeff Fountain interviewed me for the latest episode of Schuman Talks, under the auspices of the Schuman Centre for European Studies. Robert Schuman (1886-1963) was a French statesman born in Luxembourg and one of the founders of the European Union in the 1950s.

The Last Caravan

In November of 1950, when he was 22 years old, my father travelled with a camel caravan from Kano, Nigeria, where he was living at the time, to Timbuktu, then in French West Africa. He seems to have stayed in the latter city through January of 1951, apparently growing a beard at a time when beards were far from fashionable. Timbuktu is a fabled city at its height during western Europe's late Middle Ages, when it was a centre of learning and commerce in the heart of Islamic west Africa. Today it contains a huge number of ancient manuscripts which residents have kept safe from invaders for centuries, most recently during the troubles of the second decade of the 21st century. It's still a largely Muslim city, with its glory days behind it. But my father was determined to see it, recounting his experiences in the form of a lengthy epic poem, mostly in a very rough iambic tretrameter in 660 quatrain stanzas in English. The accompanying photograph is one he took during his trek through the Sahara.

My father died in August of last year at the good old age of 92.

Order of Malta

I've long been fascinated by the Order of Malta, formally known as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, because of its unusual status as a holdover from a much earlier era and its one-time connection with my father's native island of Cyprus. Established almost a thousand years ago in 1048, it was once headquartered successively in Jerusalem, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Malta. As such it functioned as a sovereign territorial entity with its own military, led by a grand master. Sovereignty over Malta ended when Napoleon captured the islands in 1798 during his Egyptian expedition. Now located in the Grand Magistral Palace, on Via Condotti in Rome, the Order of Malta still retains some of the trappings of statehood and maintains diplomatic relations with 110 states. It mints its own coins, produces its own stamps, and issues its own passports. However, without territory many would judge that it cannot be considered a state, as James Kerr-Lindsay concludes in this video:

In 2008 the Order established diplomatic relations with Canada, although the two did not exchange ambassadors as such. Canada's contact with the Order is through this country's ambassador to the Vatican.

Laymen's Lounge interview

My recent conversation with Mike Wagenman has been posted at The Laymen's Lounge: Civil Society in a Time of Cultural Division. An excerpt:

I would love to see Christians and other likeminded citizens mobilize to launch a public justice movement. What would it look like? Unlike liberals and socialists, it would unequivocally affirm the institutions and communities of what collectively is often called civil society. Rather than attempt to have government solve every problem, it would recognize that a healthy society requires a variety of communal formations to function according to their respective callings. Businesses take seriously their stewardship of the limited resources of the earth. Families nurture the next generation and care for the aged. Schools educate children and youth. Churches gather people together to worship God and serve their neighbours. Labour unions protect workers in the workplace. Political parties formulate policy agendas seeking public justice and the common interest. You get the idea. Government would be less about solving problems and more about maintaining the legal space for a variety of agents—both individual and communal—to do what they do best.

Read the entire conversation here. Learn more about The Laymen's Lounge.

Joseph's 'Little Bible'

My January column for Christian Courier was just posted online two days ago: Joseph's 'Little Bible'.

As I was preparing a chapel meditation on Job some weeks ago, I read a commentary that described Job’s story as a microcosm of the entire biblical redemptive narrative. It begins with an idyllic life of one of God’s servants, takes him through the darkest valleys of affliction, brings in his friends’ proposed solutions to his plight, and ends with God restoring Job’s fortunes. This prompted me to look at other examples of “little bibles” in the Scriptures, and I believe several can be found in the first book of the Bible, one of which I will explore here.

The story of Joseph always moves me emotionally when I read it, as it recounts a tale of reconciliation and forgiveness in a severely dysfunctional family. Yet it has some peculiar features which make for a complicated relationship with the larger biblical narrative. Joseph is the hero of the story. Or is he?

Read the entire article here.

Cristianismo e ideologias políticas

 As minhas aulas para o Seminário Jonathan Edwards agora estão disponíveis.

Schuman Centre talk coming up

The Schuman Centre for European Studies will be hosting this online event next week. The time will be noon EST in North America. I'll be speaking with Jeff Fountain.

Electoral reform at last? The case for representation

The institutions of democracy are supposed to represent the citizens' political convictions, but all too often they fail at this central task. The chief problem is that elections are more about winners and losers than about representation. And this could be exacerbating the current political crisis in the United States.

Both Canada and the United States operate according to what political scientists call a single-member-plurality (SMP) system, or what the popular media call first-past-the-post. In a single-member constituency candidates compete for one office, the winner being the one receiving the largest number, or plurality, of votes. Where three candidates are evenly matched, it is possible for one to win with only slightly more than a third of the total number of votes cast. In the last Canadian federal election in 2019, Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party received 33.12 percent of the votes cast--just under a third of the total! Yet Trudeau remains prime minister leading a single-party minority government against the preferences of two-thirds of Canadian voters. That this is considered acceptable in a democratic country skirts the edges of insanity.

A path away from Kant?

Someone has been reading my second book, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God: A path away from Kant? Koyzis’ provocative thesis on authority and liberty. Chris Krycho writes:

It’s early pages yet, but the idea is striking: not simply that we’ve been getting it wrong with liberalism, but quite specifically: that the key mistake of liberalism is to ground all our ideals in liberty as such rather than to see individual liberties as a proper response to the authority of a human person qua human person: that abridgements of liberties are abridgements not because liberty is itself the supreme ideal but because it is violating another’s rightful authority over her own person (an authority that itself stands under the authority of God the creator).

Every prior critical treatment of liberalism I’ve read has had a fundamental failure: it had no answer for why we should see individual liberties as goods worth preserving. Koyzis, it seems, does. . . . Color me deeply, deeply intrigued.

 Keep reading, my friend! Prospective readers can obtain We Answer to Another from the publisher or from the usual online vendors.

Misreading Kuyper? Stewart, Hawley, and The New York Times

Shortly after this month's uprising in Washington, DC, journalist Catherine Stewart published this piece in The New York Times in which Abraham Kuyper's name came up: The Roots of Josh Hawley's Rage. I have just posted a response here: Misreading Kuyper? Stewart, Hawley, and The New York Times. An excerpt follows:

Enlisting Kuyper into the contemporary North American culture war has a certain plausibility, because there really are battles to be waged in the larger culture. . . . However, and this ought not to be forgotten, the antithesis between belief and unbelief does not run quite so tidily between different groups of people. Any effort to assess in a spiritually discerning way the true character of the various ideological visions and illusions on offer cannot be content to point fingers. On the contrary, we must begin within ourselves. True knowledge begins with self-knowledge, and without the latter, our efforts to remove the speck from our neighbour’s eye will be unpersuasive.

Read the entire article here.

Context appearance

Last week I was interviewed by Maggie John for the programme Context which airs over Yes TV in Burlington, Ontario. The topic was the storming of the Capitol two weeks ago.

Defending ordinary politics: video commentary

Defending ordinary politics: Crick's contribution

In 1962 British political scientist Bernard Crick (1929-2008) wrote a book that quickly became a classic, In Defence of Politics. Receiving a knighthood late in life for his contribution to citizenship education, Sir Bernard was a partisan of an unusual sort. A professed socialist, he was an advisor to Neil Kinnock's Labour Party in the 1980s. 

Yet he was often mistaken for a Burkean conservative, due primarily to his expressed conviction that politics is a distinctive enterprise that ought to be valued, not only for its ability to deliver desired goods, but for providing a framework in which potential opponents can work out their differences in peaceful fashion. Crick defined politics as

the activity by which differing interests within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving them a share in power in proportion to their importance to the welfare and the survival of the whole community. And, to complete the formal definition, a political system is that type of government where politics proves successful in ensuring reasonable stability and order (21).

For Crick politics serves an important purpose, but one that cannot be reduced to the provision of, say, economic benefits to the greatest number of people, as many of his fellow socialists would assume. After defining politics, Crick goes on in his book to defend politics against a variety of potential threats, including ideology, democracy, nationalism, technology, and false friends such as “the anti-political socialist.”

Madison's nightmare

James Madison & John Adams

This week the venerable British newsweekly, The Economist, has published an editorial drawing on two and a half millennia of political philosophy: Madison's nightmare: Political theorists have been worrying about mob rule for 2,000 years. An excerpt:

The Founding Fathers argued that democracy could avoid becoming mobocracy only if it was hedged with a series of restraints to control the power of the people. Power was divided between the branches of government to make sure that nobody wielded too much. Citizens were given extensive constitutional rights. Senators were given six-year terms to insulate them from fads. They were also initially appointed by state legislatures rather than directly elected. Supreme Court judges were appointed for life, ensuring they cannot be removed by people from other branches.

 

Alexis de Tocqueville added his own worries about mob rule in ‘Democracy in America’. For him the constitution alone is not strong enough to save democracy from the mob. A vigorous civic culture rooted in self-governing communities (he was particularly keen on New England’s townships) and a self-reliant and educated population are also necessary. So too is a responsible elite that recognises that its first duty is to ‘educate democracy’.

Capitol Hill Insurrection

Christian Courier has published a slightly modified version of my blog post from last week: Capitol Hill Insurrection. An excerpt:

Until recently I had assumed that a political culture of respect for the rule of law was securely established in the United States, due largely to its debt to the English constitution and to the long experience of representative government extending back to colonial times. While we might expect to hear of an attempted coup d’état in Pakistan or Bolivia, we knew that it couldn’t happen here. Not in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or the U.S. We’re too politically stable and our constitutional traditions too resilient for that to happen. Yet what we must learn from January 6’s events is that we can never afford take our political culture for granted.

The Emperor and the Bible

Brazil is unusual among western-hemispheric nations for having begun as a constitutional monarchy, sharing this status with only Canada and a few Caribbean island states. There was no Simon Bolivar or George Washington for Brazilians. Rather the king of Portugal, Dom João VI, appointed his son Dom Pedro I, to rule Brazil in his stead while he returned the Portuguese throne to Lisbon after a period of exile during Napoleon's occupation of the Iberian peninsula. In his father's absence, Pedro declared Brazil an independent empire under his own rule in 1822. When Pedro abdicated the imperial throne in 1831, his son, Dom Pedro II, took his place and reigned for decades until he was ousted in 1889 following his abolition of slavery the previous year.

The Emperor's name comes up in this story: O imperador Dom Pedro II e seu amor pela Bíblia (Emperor Dom Pedro II and his Love for the Bible). The Emperor attended one of D. L. Moody's revival meetings in New York in 1876, responding affirmatively, but silently, to his message. This quotation has been attributed to the Emperor:

I love the Bible, I read it every day and the more I read it the more I love it. There are some who don't like the Bible. I don't understand them. I can't comprehend such people, but I love it. I love its simplicity and I love its repetitions and reiterations of the truth. As I said, I read it daily and each time I do so I like it more.

Cultural dysfunction and public policy

I have a new post at Kuyperian Commentary: Cultural dysfunction and public policy. The first paragraph:

Hours before the failed insurrection of 6 January, I had finished reading J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, the young author’s absorbing autobiography of growing up in an extended Appalachian family in a failing industrial town in Ohio. Reading it prompted me to consider the unique features of specific cultures and subcultures, deeply rooted factors that make for flourishing and those that obstruct it over the long term. In recent decades we have come to assume that all cultures are equal and that the different ways of doing things that separate distinctive groups of people are equally valid. If one group suffers disproportionately from poverty and social instability, we are generally loathe to examine internal contributing factors for fear of being accused of blaming the victim. Nevertheless, if we take seriously the status of our fellow human beings as responsible agents, we cannot afford to overlook these factors. This has profound public policy implications.

Read the entire post here.

Mauldin's grieving Lincoln

I remember all too well when the late Bill Mauldin published this cartoon after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Now I'm seeing it again following the events of wednesday, 6 January, in Washington, DC. Most appropriate.

Six Cents Report

Several weeks ago I had a conversation with these two very fine gentlemen, Darnell Samuels and Joel Nicoloff, on the Six Cents Report. The link to our talk has now been posted here: Unmasking America’s Political Idolatry with Global Scholar: David Koyzis - 6CR #103. My apologies for the sound quality on my end, which I suspect is due to my beard rubbing against the microphone of my headphone. According to the website, "The Six Cents Report is a weekly podcast that reports on events related to Canadians from an economic and theological perspective."

The Tempering of Democracy

Five years ago I wrote something for First Things which I believe continues to have relevance for today, especially after the events of two days ago: The Tempering of Democracy: How Recovering the Classical Mixed Constitution Could Affect the Way We Vote. Attempting to more thoroughly democratize a constitution can backfire and lead to would-be authoritarian leaders coming out on top. An excerpt:

The need for democracy is satisfied by giving citizens a choice between two or more candidates thoroughly vetted by their respective party organizations and presented to the people as the best persons for the job. The aristocratic principle—necessary in all political systems—should come into play within the parties themselves as would-be candidates are screened in accordance with established criteria to insure a high level of competence and personal integrity. Only then would they be brought before the public for their verdict.

Read the entire piece here or here.

Common Good conversation: uprising aftermath

Yes, it's time for another conversation with Ian Simkins and Brian From at WYLL, AM 1160, Chicago. Who knew men of the cloth could be so much fun to talk to? Guest: David Koyzis, Political Scientist and Author - Response to the Siege on the US Capitol - January 7, 2021.

Capitol Hill insurrection: the day after

In AD 410 Alaric led his army of Visigoths into Rome and ransacked the city. By then Rome was no longer the capital of the western Roman Empire, but this single event sent shock waves throughout the known world. How could the founding city of the greatest empire in history be so vulnerable to barbarian tribes who could scarcely be called civilized? As we know, pagan Romans argued that, because Rome had abandoned its ancient gods, the latter had abandoned the city to its fate. Many thought Christians especially culpable, because, a generation earlier, the Emperor Theodosius had proclaimed Christianity to be the state religion, thereby angering the gods. Augustine, bishop of the north African city of Hippo, took up the challenge to defend the Christian faith from pagan accusations. The result became a classic of western literature, De Civitate Dei, known in English as the City of God.

I thought of this historical event as our family watched on television the events unfolding in Washington, D.C., on 6 January. We were, of course, horrified. It hardly seemed possible that a band of hooligans, egged on by the President of the United States, could invade Capitol Hill, breaching what we had assumed to be an effective security perimeter, and vandalize the offices of members of Congress. This is the sort of thing one associates with the Russian Federation in 1993, or a nonwestern country unschooled in the customs and constitutional procedures of democratic governance. In English-speaking democracies we have come to expect that all political actors of whatever partisan sympathies will play by the rules, acquiescing in the smooth transition of power once the electorate has made its decision at the polls. No one pretends that it's a perfect system, but, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, it is almost certainly the least worst of the political systems on offer in today's world.

Barbara Martha Calvert (1935-2020)

Barbara Martha Calvert (née Finstrom), born 5/18/1935, died 12/29/2020. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Barbara Finstrom was raised in a Scandinavian sea-faring family which emigrated to the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Barbara recalled childhood days roller skating on the sidewalks of Brooklyn, attending Public School 102, and worshiping at the local Episcopal Church. She later attended Fort Hamilton High School where she won awards in mathematics and vocal performance.

She later worked at Macy’s and as a secretary for Pfizer in Manhattan where she met Roy L. Calvert (1925-2019). They were married on February 12, 1956. No matter where she lived, she always proudly said she was from Brooklyn when asked. Most recently, she resided in Downers Grove, IL, and Hillsdale, MI.

Barbara’s brother, Ronald G. Finstrom, survives her, as do her children Nancy Lynn Calvert-Koyzis (David), Kenneth Roy Calvert (Beth) and Emily Calvert Moran (Bill), as well as seven grandchildren.

Barbara’s parents, Borghild Alvilda Finstrom and Axel George Finstrom, who served as a Captain in the Merchant Marine in World War II, preceded her in death, as did her older brother George Finstrom.

She will be remembered for her hard work and determination, her love of family, her stellar homemaking, and her eye for detail, particularly during the many years she spent as Editorial Coordinator for Today’s Christian Woman at Christianity Today Publications. She found great comfort in her faith and was involved in many church congregations over the years. 

Rod Dreher's jeremiad

The Cateclesia Institute has just published my review of Rod Dreher's Live Not By Lies: Living in Truth: Rod Dreher’s Jeremiad. An excerpt:

Could too expansive a nondiscrimination regime produce a climate in which faith-based communities, with their distinctive standards for membership, will be suppressed? Could a therapeutic focus on the expressive individual create an inhospitable climate for churches which by their very nature call members to subordinate their own wills to God’s word? We would be unwise to deny such possibilities.

Having studied and written about political ideologies for decades, I believe that all ideologies have totalitarian potential. They may not lead to forced labour camps or mass murders, but they do make claims which compete on a basic level with the traditional religious faiths, and they do require sacrificial victims, if only in damaged reputations and fewer career opportunities. This is why we need above all to be spiritually discerning in our assessment of them.

Yet, political ideologies do not operate in a contextual vacuum. All of us, whatever our ultimate convictions, live and work within the larger panorama of God’s creation. Even if a Supreme Court justice proclaims that “[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992), the cosmos itself remains stubbornly unpersuaded, impervious to our subjective notions of its meaning or lack thereof.

Read the entire review here.

Innes: Christ and the Kingdoms of Men, a review

Voegelin View has published my review of David C. Innes, Christ and the Kingdoms of Men. Innes teaches political science at the King's College in New York, and I've known him for several years, although we've not met personally. This is a very fine book, with one significant flaw: the lack of an in depth treatment of justice, which I believe illustrates the limits of political theology as a discipline. An excerpt from my review:

If political theology begins with Scripture, political science as an empirical discipline begins with the raw data of political life. To be sure, political science is not religiously neutral, and the practitioner does not and cannot park her ultimate beliefs on the sidelines before plunging into the subject matter. Nevertheless, the empirical nature of the discipline means that one must attend to the ways governments actually function in the real world. Every government balances the various interests within its jurisdiction. Even the political realist preferring to banish justice to the separate realms of morality and religion will speak of a balance of powers—language by which justice sneaks in the back door. Weighing interests in the balance is quite simply what governments do. They may get the balance wrong in small or large ways, yet the jural task of government—of rendering to each his or her due—is always present, if sometimes in distorted form.

Link for American donors

Global Scholars Canada informs me that prospective American donors should contribute through the website of its American counterpart by clicking here: Global Scholars. I have added a link in the right sidebar to reflect this change. Thank you for your understanding. May you enjoy God's blessings in the new year.

Matt Crummy's 'Six Insightful Reads'

I am pleased to see Political Visions and Illusions make the list of Matt Crummy's 6 Insightful Reads To Help Make Sense of Our Culture and Historical Moment. About the blogger: "Matt is a multidisciplinary creative director, designer, musician, & writer. Husband & father. Drake U grad. Walk aficionado. Jesus follower."

A busy year

"Staying at home because of COVID resulted in global opportunities." See my latest column in Christian Courier: A Busy Year. An excerpt:

Occasionally I had travelled to speak at various places, including the United States, Brazil and Germany. I was all set to fly to Wake Forest, North Carolina, in March to lecture at Southeastern Baptist Seminary when COVID-19 compelled a cancellation amid a global quarantine. I should have travelled to Germany and Finland last month, but, once again, the pandemic changed our plans. Thus I have spent most of the past year at home, but a huge number of opportunities have come my way since the lockdown began.

What happened? Prior to March many of us had not heard of Zoom and similar platforms, although I was already using Facetime and Google Hangouts to talk with friends one-to-one. But suddenly everyone was using Zoom, which quickly became almost a generic word to describe the virtual meeting drawing people together online. Not surprisingly, many people apparently figured out that they could have me address public gatherings without having to take the trouble to fly me in and feed and billet me for several days. That’s when the invitations began pouring in. . . .

The message of the kingdom of God is one that covers the whole of life, as [Abraham] Kuyper understood and spent his life disseminating within the Netherlands. Now Christians around the world are inspired by this message and are hungry to see its implications lived out in their own countries. I have been privileged to be a part of this with my teaching and writing.

For just over a year I have been part of a wonderful organization called Global Scholars Canada. While GSC originally began as a means of placing Christian scholars at universities overseas with financial support coming from home, in my case I remain at home most of the time while connecting with interested people remotely and, eventually I hope, in their own countries on a short-term basis. With the proper backing, in terms of both financial and prayer support, I hope to continue to serve God with the gifts he has seen fit to give me.

There is still time to donate before year's end. Click here for options.

Hebraic exceptionalism

A friend alerted me to this article written by Paul Krause in The Imaginative Conservative: Hebraic Exceptionalism and Western Exceptionalism. To those who believe that the Bible is simply a collection of ancient literature little different from other ancient writings, Krause responds:

The Hebrew Bible, however, is exceptional. It is exceptional in its Near Eastern context not for what it shared in similarity with other Mesopotamian and North African texts but what it radically differed in. It is also exceptional in the mere fact that it survived in its fullness for posterity, something that cannot be said for much of the literature of Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, however inspiring these antecedent texts are and were.

Regardless of how we wrestle with Scripture, the reality remains: The Bible is exceptional precisely because the Bible persevered into modernity while its many competitors did not. As a result of this, Western history and our intellectual traditions are tied to the Bible whether we like it or not, or whether we want to admit it or not . . . .

Students of philosophy will tend to recognize that much of Western sensibilities and values—the dignity of persons (made in the image of God); liberation against forces of oppression; social justice; compassion for the widow, orphan, resident alien, and sick; equality before judge, jury, and law; the true understanding of democracy as national self-determination to cultivate a national destiny—has its very roots in the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible.

Kompassi book published

Kompassi is the think tank of the Finnish Christian Democratic Party, a member of the European People's Party group in the European Parliament. I had hoped to visit Finland last month, after a stay in Germany, but, like so many other events planned for this year, the COVID pandemic prevented it. The address I had planned to deliver has been published in full in a book produced by Kompassi this month, Kirkkojen Yhteiskunnallinen Opetus (Social Teaching of the Churches). Included in this volume are chapters on how the different Christian traditions address social and political matters. Given Finland's historic Lutheran roots, the Lutheran tradition is treated first, followed by the Orthodox, Pentecostal, and Catholic. I wrote the chapter on the Reformed tradition, which is all but unknown in that country. Here is a summary from this article about the event translated into English by Google translate:

In his video greeting, David T Koyzis, a Canadian professor who wrote a section on the Reformed Church, described how the first Christian Democratic Party was founded in the Netherlands in the late 19th century based on Reformed social education.

Although I was unable to attend the event, I did contribute a video summarizing the contents of my address, which I have set to start at the point where I come in.

Although I have deep Finnish roots on my mother's side, I can understand almost no Finnish whatsoever. Closely related to Estonian and distantly related to Hungarian, Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language. Google translate does a passable job of rendering these pages in English, although it does much better with Indo-European languages. Readers who do know Finnish are invited to set the video to the beginning to hear the entire conference.

Tribute to Wolters

My friend and colleague Peter Schuurman has posted a brief biography of my good friend and mentor Al Wolters: The Lucky Son of a Barber-Philosopher: The Serendipity of Al Wolters’ Worldview. Here is an excerpt:

Wolters’ first position was as a history of philosophy professor at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto (ICS), starting in 1974, after being a student recruiter there for two years. It was his introductory lectures in the Philosophical Prolegomena course that would eventually become Creation Regained [his best-known work].

Wolters actually never determined to write or publish this book. In fact, it was the encouragement of his peers, and specifically the late Bob Vandervennen that pushed him to start bringing his notes together in the early 1980s. In fact, it was Vandervennen that sent the manuscript to Eerdmans for publication. They saw the value in the book—as a key that explicitly connected the Bible to the Reformational philosophy that culminated in Herman Dooyeweerd. Wolters’ long-standing interest in the Bible, coupled with his training in philosophy, supported by his reading of Herman Bavinck which stretched back to his days in Victoria—this all came together in one short, accessible account: a summary of one book (the Bible) in three movements (creation, fall, redemption). All of reality, wrote Wolters, could be adequately understood through those three themes, and this framework could give direction to Christian endeavours in any cultural sector. In a word, it was a Christian world-and-life-view for enthusiastic but also critical participation in the arts, humanities, social sciences, engineering, and the natural sciences.

I have counted Al Wolters as a dear friend for more than four decades. Although I took only one two-week course with him at the ICS, he became something of an unofficial mentor, and I owe him a debt of gratitude as one of the key inspirations behind my own Political Visions and Illusions, in which I apply his insights into the implications of a Christian worldview to my own field of political studies.

Incidentally I still have the handwritten notes I kept during Wolters' ICS "bootcamp," the substance of which would become Creation Regained several years later.

Photograph by Hank Rintjema

UCCF Politics Network

Yesterday I was privileged to talk with a student group in the United Kingdom on the subject of my book, Political Visions and Illusions. Tom Kendall was my host, and we conversed for a little over an hour. The group is affiliated with Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, or The Christian Unions. May God bless these young people and use them to advance his kingdom in Great Britain and elsewhere.

God as Judge: Do we still pray the imprecatory Psalms?

Although I generally do not cross-post between my two blogs, I think that a recent post from my Genevan Psalter blog might interest readers of this blog as well.

Last week I posed these questions on this blog after posting a video of Psalm 3, which speaks of God smashing the teeth of the wicked: "What do you think? Do you have difficulty singing psalms with such language? How ought Christians to sing them and in what spirit?" Thank you to those who took the time to respond in the comments section.

Many Christians believe that there is such a gulf between the Old and New Testaments that the latter has entirely superseded the former with its preaching of forgiveness and love. Here are some historical examples that I mention in my Introduction to the Genevan Psalter:

At least since the Enlightenment many Christians have claimed to find the psalms something of an embarrassment. Even so indefatigable an apologist for the Christian faith as C. S. Lewis refers to some expressions therein as uncharitable and even “devilish.” The great Isaac Watts once wrote: “Some of them are almost opposite to the Spirit of the Gospel: Many of them foreign to the State of the New Testament, and widely different from the present circumstances of Christians.” In Dostoyevsky’s celebrated novel, The Brothers Karamazov, there is a scene in which the protagonist Alyosha’s recently deceased mentor, Father Zosima, is being memorialized prior to burial. Because Father Zosima was a “priest and monk of the strictest rule, the Gospel, not the Psalter, had to be read over his body by monks in holy orders” [thus implying the Psalter's inferiority to the Gospels].

Global Scholars announcement

Just over two weeks ago, I launched my Global Scholars Canada fundraising campaign to support my global educational work. The GSC announcement can be found here: David Koyis Launches Fundraising Campaign. Please consider making a year-end donation by clicking on this link. Canadians and Americans will receive CRA and IRS tax receipts respectively.

J. I. Packer

This past July the distinguished theologian J. I. Packer died just short of his 94th birthday. Read about him here: J.I. Packer: The impact and gift of J.I. Packer's legacy. An excerpt:

What we should most remember Packer for was his love of the Bible, which he confessed to be the Word of God. In fact, it was a youthful reading of his grandmother’s old King James Bible that moved him to a mature confession of faith and eventually to the priesthood.

May he rest in peace until the resurrection, and may our Lord continue to use his legacy to advance his kingdom.

T. S. Eliot on Christianity in a nonchristian society

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote prophetically more than eight decades ago on a matter of great import for us now, as we attempt to navigate the choppy waters of a society increasingly shaped (and misshapen) by secular redemptive narratives:

The Liberal notion that religion was a matter of private belief and of conduct in private life, and that there is no reason why Christians should not be able to accommodate themselves to any world which treats them good-naturedly, is becoming less and less tenable . . . .

 

We have less excuse than our ancestors for un-Christian conduct, because the growth of an un-Christian society about us, its more obvious intrusion upon our lives, has been breaking down the comfortable distinction between public and private morality. The problem of leading a Christian life in a non-Christian society is now very present to us . . . . It is not merely the problem of a minority in a society, of individuals holding an alien belief. It is the problem constituted by our implication in a network of institutions from which we cannot dissociate ourselves: institutions the operation of which appears no longer neutral, but non-Christian.

 

And as for the Christian who is not conscious of his dilemma—and he is in the majority—he is becoming more and more de-Christianised by all sorts of unconscious pressure: paganism holds all the most valuable advertising space. Anything like Christian traditions transmitted from generation to generation within the family must disappear, and the small body of Christians will consist entirely of adult recruits . . . .

 

I am not concerned with the problem of Christians as a persecuted minority. When the Christian is treated as an enemy of the State, his course is very much harder, but it is simpler. I am concerned with the dangers to the tolerated minority; and in the modern world, it may turn out that the most tolerable thing for Christians is to be tolerated.

Eliot wrote this in Christianity and Culture (1939).

The Kuyper Prize: David Brooks

New York Times columnist David Brooks was awarded this year's Kuyper Prize, sponsored by Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary. Like most such events this year, this was a virtual event, which we can watch below.

The cultural influence of missionaries

Andrew Spencer writes about Robert Woodberry and the Benefits of Protestant Missions. Although missionaries have had a bad reputation in recent decades due to their supposed connection with European colonialism, it turns out that their influence has been almost wholly positive. This was the finding of political scientist Robert Woodberry in his path-breaking article in the American Political Science Review eight years ago. Here is an excerpt from Spencer:

Christianity is a religion of the book, therefore Christians tended to teach people to read and write. They often brought in printing presses so they could publish religious literature. In some cases they invented alphabets for previously unwritten languages. This led to societal advances that enabled more people to prosper.

Not only did they educate people, but missionaries brought in the concept of private property so traders wouldn’t take advantage of them. They taught new skills, like carpentry and advanced agricultural techniques. Missionaries introduced new crops to countries, which gave indigenous people opportunities to engage in trade with products that were desirable in Europe.

Woodberry outlines multiple ways in which the presence of missionaries indirectly led to improved conditions in colonies.

In many cases, the impact of Protestant missionaries went beyond their direct actions. In order to compete with the missionaries, indigenous religions began to print religious texts and educate people to resist Christianity. Competition improved conditions for everyone.

The case Woodberry makes is convincing. When people selflessly live out the gospel, both through evangelization and through practical application, it changes cultures for the better. Though there are clearly cases of abuse and sin by missionaries, there is a strong correlation between the advance of gospel people and the common good.

 This article is posted on the website of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics.

Political illusions in Brazil

Na noite de sábado tive o privilégio de falar neste evento, Ilusões Políticas no Brasil. Vocês podem ouvir a conversa clicando no link abaixo. Meus comentários estão em inglês e traduzidos para o português.

On saturday evening I was privileged to speak at this event, Ilusões Políticas no Brasil. You can hear the conversation by clicking on the link below. My comments are in English and translated into Portuguese.

Providence review

Matthew Ng reviews the second edition of my first book in Providence Magazine: The Political Idols of Our Age: A Review of David Koyzis’ Political Visions and Illusions. An excerpt:

The arrival of the second edition of David Koyzis’ Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies is incredibly timely. So much of the divisiveness of our current political debates can be traced to differences over first principles, and Koyzis’ neo-Calvinist approach to political theory is helpful in digging to the fundamental issues that lay beneath the surface of our political rhetoric. To loosely quote John Maynard Keynes, so-called practical men who believe themselves exempt from intellectual influences are usually the slaves to some defunct economist or political philosopher. In this respect, Koyzis’ work is indispensable in preventing the church from becoming unwitting captives to defunct thinkers whom the average reader may only have faint knowledge of. . . .

I remember coming across the first edition of Political Visions and Illusions almost two decades ago. Rereading Koyzis’ book not only reminded me of how helpful his work was in clarifying issues of faith and politics, but it also provided me the joy of discovering fresh insights from a book that, like all great books, continues to teach new lessons with each reading. Unfortunately, except within the small confines of the Reformed world, Koyzis’ neo-Calvinist approach to political philosophy is not widely known. Hopefully, with the latest edition of Political Visions and Illusions, Koyzis’ work will no longer be hidden underneath a bushel, but instead, its brilliance will reach a wider audience.

It's always gratifying to receive a positive review of one's work, and I'm pleased that Ng continues to find the book helpful.

Meu amado Brasil (em português)

Muitas das minhas palestras e aulas recentes foram ligadas ao Brasil, o que levou alguns espectadores a se perguntarem como me tornei tão profundamente envolvido com seu povo, especialmente com a crescente população evangélica. Aqui está, então, o relato do meu atual romance – essa palavra é muito forte? – com um país notável que abrange uma parte enorme do continente sul-americano.

O Brasil é o quinto maior país do mundo, tanto em população quanto em área. De acordo com o WorldoMeter, o Brasil tinha uma população de 213 milhões em 2020. Isso o coloca atrás da China, Índia, Estados Unidos, Indonésia e Paquistão e à frente de todos os outros. Quando palestrei lá em 2016, percebi o quão extenso é o país. Meu avião pousou em Brasília e fiquei com uma jovem família lá. Mas então, fomos de carro até Goiânia para o evento no qual eu faria minhas palestras. Demorou quase três horas para percorrer a distância, mas no mapa isso cobre uma proporção muito pequena da área do país. Pessoas que eu já conhecia de antemão e esperava ver no evento me disseram que era muito longe de suas casas, o que eu dificilmente poderia ter imaginado antes. Mas seria o equivalente a falar em Toronto e esperar ver pessoas de Calgary ou Vancouver aparecerem.

Por favor, leia a postagem inteira aqui.

 

Today is the day!

Friends and alumni:

Today I am launching my Global Scholars Canada fundraising campaign.

As many of you know, I have been a member of Global Scholars Canada for one year, and under this organization I have been working at several projects drawing on my years of teaching, researching, and writing experience. Last year the second edition of the award-winning Political Visions and Illusions was published, and since then it has already gone into three printings, having sold out last summer after the Rev. Tim Keller endorsed it over Facebook and Twitter. I now have another completed manuscript, which I hope to submit to a publisher in the near future with the support of two high-profile endorsements.

Ironically, the COVID-19 pandemic, while restricting so many of us to our homes for months, has opened for me an amazing number of opportunities for online lectures and interaction with people around the globe. Prior to March of this year, I had travelled to Brazil, Germany, and various places in the United States to speak to specific audiences about my work and writings. I was set to go to North Carolina in late March, but this was cancelled the week before as quarantines descended upon the world. But quite suddenly, as knowledge of such platforms as Zoom took off, I was bombarded with invitations from all over, as people were coming to recognize that they needn't pay to bring me to them physically but could have what might be the next best thing—a virtual presence along with online interaction.

Trinity Western Chapel: Job 11

I was recently privileged to deliver a prerecorded chapel address to the faculty, staff, and students of Trinity Western University, Langley, British Columbia, Canada, on Job 11. This was posted just three days ago. I have set the video to begin where my talk begins, but feel free to go back and watch the full chapel service. A precis of my talk: The book of Job is, as it were, a "little Bible," encapsulating the biblical redemptive story in the life of a single person.

Unfortunately I cannot post the video directly here, but you can watch it on YouTube.

For love of Brazil

Next week I will be launching my Global Scholars Canada fundraising campaign to support my educational and research activities, which are increasingly taking on global dimensions. Here is the story of my relationship with Brazil which has deepened in recent years: Meu amado Brasil. The story can also be found under the PAGES title in the column to the right. From the introductory paragraph:

Many of my recent speaking and teaching engagements have been connected with Brazil, which has prompted some observers to wonder how I became so deeply involved with its people, especially the burgeoning evangelical population. Here then is my account of my ongoing romance (is that too strong a word?) with a remarkable country that spans a huge swath of the South American continent.

Please consider making a regular or one-time contribution to my ongoing work as a Global Scholar by clicking here. Thank you for your support.

Ilusões Políticas no Brasil

No dia 21 de novembro estarei participando do evento "Ilusões Políticas no Brasil", promovido pela Associação Reformada de Cultura e Ação Política.

On 21 November I will be participating in this event, "Political Illusions in Brazil," sponsored by the Reformed Association of Culture and Political Action.

Oak Centre conversation

Yesterday afternoon I was privileged to talk with a group right here in Hamilton sponsored by the Oak Centre for Studies in Faith and Culture, organized by my friend Don McNally. The invitation was originally for me to join the group in person at their downtown venue, but due to my 14-day mandatory quarantine, I had to settle for speaking with them remotely. By the way, I will be out of quarantine tomorrow at last. 

Common Good conversation, version 3.0

Today I had another great conversation with the exceedingly affable Ian Simkins and Brian From on "the Common Good" over Chicago radio station WYLL, AM 1160. Here is the link: Guest: David Koyzis Author and Political Scientist - Post Election - November 4, 2020.

Colonial Nigeria

Theodore in Kano, Nigeria

Last month I travelled to the United States to sort through my late father's office. While there I found a fascinating account of his years in British-ruled Nigeria some seven decades ago. I thought it worth posting here. He wrote this in 2010.

When I was 18 years old, I left Cyprus, my birthplace, for Benin City, NIGERIA, then a British colony, to take over a company owned by a family friend who was old and ready to retire. There were only forty families of white Europeans in Benin then, and they all lived a lonely, miserable and separate existence from the Nigerian natives.

From the first day of my arrival there, I noticed that the Europeans did not treat the natives fairly and humanly. They paid them very low wages, exploited them in every way possible and kept a social and cultural separation from them, something which I, the youngest of all the businessmen there, considered both cruel and ignorant. Understandably, I embarked on an endless campaign of heated and deliberate discussions whenever and wherever the occasion arrived.

Although privately several of the men and most of the women would agree with me, openly nobody would join or even support me during open discussions at dinners or other social gatherings restricted to Whites only. After six months in Benin City, I accepted an offer from a leading Greek businessman to join his organization and soon moved first to Lagos where I stayed for six months, then went North to Kano, Nigeria, where I spent two more years before I came to the United States.

Nigeria became independent in 1960, nearly a decade after my father left the territory to study in the States.

Genevan Psalter pages

Although I do not generally mention my other blog, The Genevan Psalter, here, I will nevertheless advise readers that I have restored several pages from my former Genevan Psalter website including the following:

• The Genevan Psalter: Introduction
  
• Bibliography
• Selected Annotated Discography
• Lord's Day Liturgy for Reformed Churches
• Genevan Psalter Project
• The Niagara Psalter

Those wishing to be informed of further updates are welcome to click the follow button in the right hand column. You may also wish to join the Lovers of Metrical Psalmody Facebook group. When requesting admission, please be sure to answer the questions posed. Thanks.

Why do white Christians vote Republican and black Christians vote Democrat?

Here's a fascinating historical analysis of the different voting patterns of two groups of American Christians. And, yes, this is the same Phil Vischer who created VeggieTales.