The Heidelberg Catechism in the RCUS

More than four decades ago, I purchased a little-remembered but significant book at an antiquarian bookshop in or near South Bend, Indiana: The Heidelberg Catechism in its Newest Light, by the Rev. Prof. James I. Good, and published by the Publication and Sunday School Board of the [German] Reformed Church in the United States in 1914. Good taught at the denomination's Central Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. As I noted in a previous post about the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the RCUS eventually united with the Evangelical Synod in North America in 1934 and later with the Congregational and Christian Churches in 1957 to form the United Church of Christ. However, one group within the old RCUS remained outside the merged body in 1934 and retained the denominational name. Originally the Eureka Classis within the larger body, today it is simply called the Reformed Church in the United States, a highly confessional body holding to the Three Forms of Unity.

Shaw on democracy

George Bernard Shaw

 

The internet is filled with websites listing famous quotes by famous people, but few of them bother to provide the actual sources for these quotes. In some cases, the quotes are falsely attributed to their supposed authors, but because the world wide web is effectively a planetary-scale rumour mill, the connection between a particular author and a particular saying multiplies endlessly until everyone believes it.

A case in point is an observation widely attributed to the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." Clever indeed and boasting more than a measure of truth. We might well include it in our standard undergraduate political science textbooks as an easily verifiable principle.

Daily prayer

My latest contribution to Christian Courier is titled, Daily Prayer, subtitled, "Devotions as daily practice taken from ancient patterns." Here is an excerpt:

When I was in my early twenties, I visited the bookstore of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and purchased a copy of The Daily Office, edited by Herbert Lindemann and published by Concordia in 1965. A small volume, it nevertheless runs to nearly 700 pages and includes liturgies for morning and evening prayer organized according to the church calendar. This ancient practice, usually associated with monastic communities, was unfamiliar to me, but it transformed my prayer life.

Read the rest of the article here.

February newsletter online

My Global Scholars newsletter for February has now been posted. Included is news about my forthcoming book, two recent podcast interviews, future opportunities in the US and Brazil, and a largely forgotten metrical psalter from the 16th century.

Rhapsody in Blue

I don't usually write about music in this blog, but I cannot allow this significant anniversary to pass without comment. Exactly one-hundred years ago tonight, George Gershwin's classic piano and orchestral work, Rhapsody in Blue, premiered at the Aeolian Hall in New York City. The composer was all of 25 years old, and his audience included the likes of Sergei Rachmaninov, John Philip Sousa, Jascha Heifetz, Leopold Stokowski, and actress Gertrude Lawrence. The occasion was a concert by Paul Whiteman's orchestra, titled, "An Experiment in Modern Music." Whiteman had invited Gershwin to compose a piece for this event, and Gershwin thought he had declined the offer. But Whiteman went ahead and included him in the lineup anyway, inducing something of a panic in George when he learned about it only weeks in advance. Here's the rest of the story:

The Christian Underground Podcast

At the weekend I was interviewed by Joseph Shehan for The Christian Underground Podcast, and the interview has now been posted. This is the description from the YouTube channel: "Does Political Ideology offer a false salvation? Can Christians fall prey to this form of idolatry? Our interview with Dr. David T. Koyzis, political philosopher, and author of Political Visions and Illusions, seeks answers [to] these questions and more."

Despite some technical glitches, we had a great conversation. I anticipate more such conversations with Shehan in the coming months, including after the publication of my next book.

Citizenship Without Illusions: updated table of contents

Here is an updated table of contents for my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions: A Christian Guide to Political Engagement, forthcoming in November. The manuscript is currently with the copy editors at InterVarsity Press.

Acknowledgements

1    Introduction

Belonging: benefits and responsibilities
A Clash of Ideologies
Plan of the book

Disarming Leviathan Podcast: part 2

Caleb Campbell has now posted the second part of his interview with me: The Political Visions & Illusions of Christian Nationalism (part 2). Campbell's book, Disarming Leviathan, is due out in July. I look forward to reading it.

Disarming Leviathan Podcast: part 1

Last month Caleb Campbell, author of the forthcoming book Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor, interviewed me for his Disarming Leviathan Podcast: The Political Visions & Illusions of Christian Nationalism (Part 1). From his website:

Pastor Campbell graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Masters of Arts in Ministry from Phoenix Seminary in 2015 and is currently a doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary.

He has served at Desert Springs Bible Church, in Phoenix, AZ since 2006, serving as Lead Pastor since 2015.

He also serves on the board of United Pastors of Arizona and as the state-wide regional director of the Surge Network. He has spoken at events hosted by Acts 29, African American Christian Clergy Coalition, the Surge Network, Grand Canyon University, Converge Arizona, Young Life and Phoenix Seminary.

I will link to part 2 once he has posted it.

January newsletter online

I have now posted my Global Scholars newsletter for January on this blog. Included are news about my forthcoming book, a visit to an Indonesian church in Toronto, and three posts on matters liturgical. Thanks for your support for my work.

Seeking our roots

Lucy Jane with three of her children

My January column for Christian Courier has just been posted online: Seeking our roots, with the following subtitle: "Each life found on a genealogy is a miracle that shows God's goodness." An excerpt:

Since childhood I have wanted to know who my ancestors were and where I came from. This flowed out of a general interest in history. I knew the major milestones such as the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages and the exploration and settlement of the Americas. But where did my own family enter the picture?

Fortunately, my maternal great-grandmother, Lucy Jane Bentley Hyder (1875-1948), had the foresight to record two reminiscences of her own forebears extending back to the late 18th century. These included her grandfather David Wells (born c 1815), of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, who, on the day the American Civil War ended, was murdered by “the Raiders or Ku Klux Klan as they were sometimes called.”

Incidentally, I discovered through my genealogical research that I am distantly related to Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, Abraham Kuyper's 19th-century mentor in the anti-revolutionary movement in the Netherlands.

Liturgical standards and living faith: the case of the Evangelical and Reformed Church

My latest post in Kuyperian Commentary can be found here: Liturgical standards and living faith: the case of the Evangelical and Reformed Church. An excerpt:

So what was this Evangelical and Reformed Church? It was created by the merger of two predecessor bodies, the (German) Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) and the (German) Evangelical Synod of North America. The German Reformed were the descendants of Reformed Christians who had immigrated from German-speaking Europe, especially Switzerland and the Palatinate, the latter of which was once ruled by Elector Frederick III “the Pious” (1515-1576), who commissioned the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563. The German Reformed began in 1725 and were initially under the care of Classis Amsterdam of the Dutch Reformed Church until 1793. During the late 19th century, efforts to unite with the (Dutch) Reformed Church in America were unsuccessful.

Read the entire article here.

Anna's unexpected blessing

Christian Courier has published my latest column, titled, Anna's unexpected blessing, and subtitled, "The forgotten character of Jesus' story." Here is an excerpt:

How Anna becomes a prophet we do not know. What we do know is that, in addition to experiencing the subjugation of her own people, she has seen sorrow in her personal life as well. She married, likely in her youth and perhaps to a much older man, who died seven years later, after which she remained a widow, a status that makes her particularly vulnerable to abuse.

From then on, she has devoted her life to prayer and fasting and appears to have taken up residence in the temple. Perhaps it is here that she was endowed by God with her prophetic gifts. One can imagine her reputation growing with the years, with visitors to the temple seeking out the wisdom of this remarkable woman of God.

Read the entire article here.

Your support makes a difference

Dear Global Scholars support community:

It's now been settled. My forthcoming book will be called Citizenship Without Illusions: A Christian Guide to Political Engagement. I have just received word that InterVarsity Press's publications committee approved the title. The book will be out in November 2024.

In these final days of 2023, please consider making a financial contribution to my work with Global Scholars Canada, a registered charity with the Canada Revenue Agency.

GSC's page for giving can be found here. Once you are in the page, scroll down to the heading marked DONATION DETAILS, and then choose one of the options under FUND. Americans may donate through our sister organization in the US, a registered charity in that country.

Kuyper on education

A good friend alerted me to this quotation from one of Abraham Kuyper's parliamentary speeches delivered in his last months as Prime Minister of the Netherlands:

FEBRUARY 1, 1905 

Mr. Van Houten and I appear to disagree very little on the meaning of justice, but not on what freedom means. His freedom leads only to state tyranny. He wants the government to operate schools that teach young people to practice critical thinking even if it goes against their faith. In other words, it is to be a school that satisfies Mr. Van Houten and his like-minded friends and with which all who think like him are content. That school, he says, must be financed from the public treasury, hence must receive favored treatment, because that is the only real school. Everybody else has full freedom to establish other schools, provided they do not ask for money from the public treasury. You are entirely free, but you will have to pay for it yourself. Thus the honorable member first takes [through taxes] from the purse of those who do not support public education the money needed tor the government schools that he supports, and when the nonsupporters have spent all they could on education he says to them: "Now that I have pumped you dry you are welcome to establish schools with your own money." 

December newsletter online

My Global Scholars newsletter for December is now online. Items include: a publication date for my next book (November 2024), podcast interviews, and even a visit to a local high school class.

City on a Hill podcast: We Answer to Another

Not quite two years ago, I appeared on Aeric Estep and Scott Reavely's City on a Hill podcast to discuss my first book, Political Visions and Illusions. Last week the duo interviewed me on the subject of my second book, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God: We Answer to Another: An Interview with David Koyzis. I found my conversation with them most enjoyable and hope others will as well. I expect that I will be talking with them again after my forthcoming book is published next November.

Estep and Reavely are pastors at New Life Church in West Linn, Oregon, United States.

Parental rights

Who has the major responsibility for determining the education of children? Plato thought it was the polis, or city state, a conviction echoed by Aristotle and many others down through the centuries. However, following the example of our Jewish forebears, our Christian faith tells us something different, as affirmed in the Scriptures (e.g., Psalm 78:4-8; 145:4). Christian Courier has now posted my own thoughts on the subject: Parental rights. An excerpt:

Recently the Canadian media have been puzzling over the notion of parental rights, a concept they appear to regard as strange and unusual. Generally, the commentators take a condescending tone, assuming that all right-thinking Canadians would naturally defer to their betters in the provincial public education bureaucracy. The flurry of articles surrounding parental rights has come in response to the 1 Million March 4 Children protest in September, which the media have portrayed in a largely negative light, depicting the protesters as disseminators of hate.

In a secularized Canada such caricatures are not unusual, but they are certainly unfair.

Read here for more.

Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now a Christian

I love to read conversion stories. Decades ago, I read John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua in which the 19th-century cleric and Oxford Movement luminary recounted his departure from the Church of England for Roman Catholicism. Many of us know C. S. Lewis's story of his own conversion to Christianity in Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. However, there are few available stories of Muslims or ex-Muslims converting to Christianity, mostly because abandoning Islam is a punishable offence in many predominantly Muslim countries. There are indeed such converts, but for obvious reasons they prefer to keep a low profile.

Earlier this month, Ayaan Hirsi Ali put aside such reticence and published this statement: Why I am now a Christian. Ali's story may not be familiar to everyone, but here are the basics: Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, to a politically active father who fell afoul of the Marxist regime, she and her family moved to Nairobi, Kenya. After fleeing a forced marriage, she wound up in the Netherlands in her early twenties. She became a Dutch citizen and even served in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament before moving to the United States and becoming an American citizen. By the turn of the millennium she declared herself to be an atheist, having become disillusioned with her Muslim upbringing.

November newsletter online

I have now posted my Global Scholars Canada newsletter for November. Included is a statement on terrorism, an address to a Latin American consultation on Christian higher education, an analysis of pro-life setbacks in the United States, and a brief update on my forthcoming book.

Where are the pro-life majorities?

Kuyperian Commentary has published my latest piece, Where are the pro-life majorities? In the wake of the recent poll in Ohio that entrenched abortion rights in the state constitution, some might wonder what happened to the pro-life cause, which many thought to have a demographic advantage. Here is an excerpt:

Peter Berger once observed that, if Sweden is the most secular country on earth and India is the most religious, America is a nation of Indians ruled by Swedes. This saying is appealing to those who prefer to think that their troubles can be attributed to unaccountable elites who are out of tune with the people they lead.

Yet this attitude fails to account for the complexities of human nature and draws too drastic a line between leaders and led, much as Marxists persist in positing a facile cleavage between oppressors and oppressed when in reality, each of us is both oppressor and oppressed, depending on the constantly shifting circumstances in which we find ourselves. George Bernard Shaw’s wry observation is closer to the truth: “Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” Leaders and led are inextricably connected with each other, and the gap between their respective worldviews is less than some would prefer to believe.

Read the entire article here.

Calling terrorism by name

Black Lives Matter is an organization seeking to defend the rights of African Americans, prompted by the tragic deaths of George Floyd and others at the hands of police in major urban centres. Unfortunately, it has not limited itself to such cases, as Newsweek reports: Black Lives Matter Org Praises Hamas, Sparks Backlash. After the recent horrific terrorist attack on innocent civilians, a Chicago chapter of BLM issued a statement supporting Hamas. Although the statement has since been deleted, controversy continues. Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, responded with outrage:

Mapping the globe

Ever since I was a small boy, I've had a fascination with maps. Read about it here: Mapping the globe. An excerpt:

One of my prized possessions is a 1901 Cram’s Modern Atlas of the World which I purchased at an antique shop in my hometown at age 16. It’s a hefty volume with numerous indices and other helps in addition to the maps of every country in the world. The United States had only 45 states. Canada had seven provinces. To my delight, this atlas boasted a large map of Cyprus, nominally part of the Ottoman Empire but administered by Great Britain. My paternal grandparents would have been quite young in that year.

So what’s the allure? For one thing, I think in terms of maps. Familiarity with maps allows one to navigate the surface of God’s good earth. As I write, we have just returned from visiting family in the Chicago area. I know by heart the roads in the western suburbs and could easily find my way around, despite all the changes that have occurred since my youth. If I navigated by landmarks, I’d be lost in my own homeland.

Read the entire article here.

October newsletter now available

My Global Scholars newsletter for October is now online. Included are articles on Israel and Palestine following Hamas' recent terrorist attack, an online event with a pan-European audience, and historical parallels to the current discussion here in Canada of parental rights in education.

The fight for parents' rights in Canada

First Things has just published my article, titled, The fight for parents' rights in Canada. Here is an excerpt:

Last month the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published an article with a rather condescending tone: “Where did the term ‘parental rights' come from?” Other media outlets have published similar pieces, all imbued with the notion that parental rights is a foreign concept invented by malcontents who should be trusting their betters in the provincial education bureaucracies. These articles are responding to a recent series of protests throughout Canada, a movement called 1 Million March 4 Children. The protesters are parents concerned about public school board policies that encourage gender transitioning and the use of preferred pronouns. The media have generally portrayed these protests in a negative light, with some going so far as to depict them as disseminating hate.

Sad to say, this attitude is not unusual in Canada, where secularization has largely emptied the historic Protestant churches, including Anglican and Presbyterian congregations and the United Church of Canada.

Read the rest of the article here.

Contributing factors in the Israel-Hamas war

Christian Courier has published my analysis of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in which I isolate three structural factors rendering the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian struggle almost perfectly intractable: Contributing factors in the Israel-Hamas war. Here's an excerpt:

Israel vs Hamas

I had just begun my undergraduate studies at Bethel College (University) in Minnesota when Israel's Arab neighbours launched a surprise attack on the country coinciding with Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar. This was the fourth major Arab-Israeli war and lasted from 6 to 25 October 1973. Half a century later, Israel is at war again after Hamas' surprise attack on Israel at the weekend. But the current situation is different from what it was fifty years ago. Over the ensuing decades Israel has managed to make peace with several of its neighbours, beginning with Egypt in the Camp David Accords of 1979. In 1994 Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan signed a peace treaty, and even the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized Israel under the Oslo Accords of 1993.

Meeting with European young adults

On friday, 29 September I spoke to a group of young Christians with an interest in bettering their European homelands. I had already conversed with a subset of the larger group a few months ago at the invitation of my friend Samuel Vandeputte. This time I was invited by a new friend, Hildebrand Bijleveld, to speak to a somewhat broader group on the topic of Ideologies in Christian Perspective, followed by discussion. The participants in this group were from the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Poland, and Italy.

Whenever I meet with such a group, I wish that I could have been with them in person. Perhaps I'll have that opportunity one day.

A critic's gratitude

Christian Courier has published my article titled, A critic's gratitude. As academics, my wife and I were trained to be critical, but criticism has its limits. An excerpt:

As an academic, I freely admit that people in my profession share a rather unattractive quality: we are terribly critical. Worse, we tend to approach life in general from a critical posture. We get out of bed with criticism. We eat critically. And we retire for the night with criticism haunting our dreams.

How often have I settled down with Nancy to watch a period film, only to become distracted from the plot by what to me is an obvious historical error or anachronism. Of course, I have to mention it on the spot. Even in an exhaustively researched historical monograph, I tend to fixate on the misfires, a skill undoubtedly developed during three decades of marking student papers. Given that Nancy and I are both academics, we easily feed each other’s critical inclinations. Obviously we’re quite the fun couple at cocktail parties.

Read the entire article here.

September newsletter now online

My Global Scholars newsletter for September has now been posted. My completed manuscript is now with the publisher, a chapter of mine is in a newly published anthology, and I recommend two books I've recently read.

Discovering Dooyeweerd

Some time ago I was invited to contribute a brief chapter to an anthology on Herman Dooyeweerd's philosophy by my friend Danie F. M. Strauss. The chapter is called, "Political Idolatry: Assessing the Ideologies of Our Day," and runs for about five and a half pages. There are 61 chapters in total, among whose authors are Strauss himself (who wrote 25), Roy Clouser, Michael Goheen, Calvin Seerveld, Harry Van Dyke, Alan Cameron, James W. Skillen, and Gerit Glas. The book is Discovering Dooyeweerd and is now out from Paideia Press and available for purchase.

Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) was a Dutch Christian philosopher in the tradition of Abraham Kuyper who produced a voluminous amount of scholarship in his field. His magnum opus is A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, whose third volume I have found especially helpful for my own discipline of political science. My PhD dissertation at Notre Dame was on Dooyeweerd's political thought as compared with that of the Neo-Thomist philosopher Yves René Simon. See my Introductory Essay to Herman Dooyeweerd's Political Thought for more information on this important 20th-century philosopher.

Publishing Pasternak: a gripping account

Decades ago I read Boris Pasternak's celebrated novel, Doctor Zhivago, along with several other Russian literary classics from the 19th and 20th centuries. Years earlier I had seen David Lean's sprawling cinematic version, which won five Academy Awards and contributed a memorable musical theme to the popular repertoire. The plot follows the life of physician and poet Yuri Zhivago from 1902 until his death sometime after the Russian Revolutions and the ensuing civil war. As a typical Russian novel, its plot is complicated, brings in numerous characters with triple-barrelled names and less-than-obvious nicknames, and has dark overtones. For those unfamiliar with the twists and turns of recent Russian history, the novel can be confusing because Pasternak focusses so completely on the lives of Zhivago and the people around him that the historical events forming the backdrop often go without explicit reference in the text. Thus a preliminary acquaintance with the history is arguably a prerequisite for a satisfying read of the novel.

Mapping Atonement: an appreciation

In February I was privileged to visit Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, to deliver two lectures. This was at the invitation of my longtime friend Bill Witt, who teaches systematic theology and ethics there. We became friends during our graduate studies at Notre Dame in the 1980s and have remained such ever since. While I was at Trinity, he presented me with a copy of his book, co-authored with his colleague Joel Scandrett, titled, Mapping Atonement: The Doctrine of Reconciliation in Christian History and Theology (Baker, 2022). I have no intention of analyzing and critiquing the book, as I am not a theologian, and the subject matter falls outside my fields of competence. But I will say something about the contents and indicate that I learned a lot that I hadn't known or thought about before.

August newsletter posted

I have now posted my August newsletter, which can be accessed here. Included this month is a link to a recent online interview, a link to a video of a June event on Russia in which I participated, and the table of contents for my next book. Thanks for your ongoing support for my work.

A spiritual wasteland

Canada and the United States seem to be outliers with respect to the proportionate growth of evangelical Christianity, as I report this month in Christian Courier: A spiritual wasteland. An excerpt:

In 2010, Operation World published a map showing the growth of evangelical Christianity throughout the world. In the vast majority of countries, including ostensibly secular Europe, the growth in the numbers of believers was outpacing population growth. But in Canada and the United States, the increase in the numbers of Christians was lagging behind population growth, apparently defying global trends. Thus our continent appears to be a spiritual desert as compared to the rest of the globe.

Read the entire article here.

Cardus NextGen event

I've lost count, but I think last evening marked the third year in a row that I have conversed online with Cardus' NextGen cohort on the subject of my book, Political Visions and Illusions, which is one of their assigned readings. The NextGen programme is for young professionals between the ages of 25 and 34. From Cardus' website:

The Fellowship is designed to create a supportive learning community for intellectual and spiritual growth. Fellows will engage in discussions with leading Christian academics and practitioners, as well as receive one-on-one mentorship. Over the course of a year, fellows will participate in four weekend events, one week-long seminar in Ottawa, and monthly Zoom Connects.

The participants posed some excellent questions which I hope I was able to answer to their satisfaction. Some of their concerns, prompted by the desire for practical applications, I will be addressing in my forthcoming book, Citizenship Without Illusions, which I will shortly be submitting to the publisher.

Letters from Moscow: video link

Two months ago I participated in an event titled, Letters from Moscow, organized around a series of letters written by my colleagues Adrian and Wendy Helleman, who taught in Russia for several years around the turn of the millennium. The video of the event is posted below, starting at the place where I come in. Feel free, of course, to set it back to the beginning.

Citizenship Without Illusions: contents

I have circulated the completed manuscript of my forthcoming book to a few trusted colleagues and friends, have made some suggested revisions, and will shortly be submitting it to the publisher. Here is the projected table of contents:

Acknowledgements

1    Introduction

2    To Be a Citizen

        Growing into Citizenship: A Personal Journey
        The Office of Citizen
        Citizenship: the Backstory
        A World of Independent States
        Dual Nationality

Grace in Common interview

Not long ago, I was interviewed on the Grace in Common podcast by my hosts James Eglinton, Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, Marinus de Jong, and Cory Brock. The subject is Neo-Calvinism and politics, with a special focus on my chapter in the forthcoming T&T Clark Handbook of Neo-Calvinism, along with my first book, Political Visions and Illusions. The podcast can be accessed here: Neo-Calvinist Politics with David Koyzis.

Keller's apology for the faith

Because most of my writing is addressed to people who are already Christians, I've not taken much interest in apologetics, which is aimed at sceptics and at those considering Christianity for the first time. Too often apologists assume they can argue people into the faith, whereas in my experience converts have come to Christ for deeply-felt personal reasons and out of a sense of God's leading in their lives. For this reason—along with having to budget my time while I was still teaching—I allowed this book to pass me by when it first appeared in 2008: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. Apologetics is someone else's business, I implicitly figured. However, only months after the author's passing, I have finally read the book, and I can now affirm that it is beautiful in virtually every way and a most satisfying read.

Remembering the life of a loving mother

A tribute to my late mother has been published in Christian Courier: Jane Koyzis (1931-2023). Trying to summarize a life lived for 91 years is no easy feat, and there is so much more that I could say about her. But here is a brief excerpt from my column:

One of my fondest memories is of my mother sitting on the double bed in the master bedroom, surrounded by her children, and reading to us from J. B. Phillips’ New Testament paraphrase. Her love of God was so infectious that her faith became second nature to her children.

Read the entire article here.

July newsletter posted

My Global Scholars newsletter for July is now posted here. Among the items included are mentoring opportunities with which I've been blessed in recent years, the last meeting of a five-week online course for Brazil, the final instalment of a series on political ideologies, and an appreciation of the late Tim Keller. Thanks to everyone for your support for my work.

Letters from Moscow: afterword

Peter Schuurman, head of Global Scholars Canada, has posted an account of last month's event in Oakville, Ontario, including my own remarks: Letters from Moscow: The Opening and Closing of Russia, a Thousand Year History. From the introduction:

What is happening in Russia that it would sacrifice its young men, military budget, Ukrainian relatives, and Western relations in an attack on Ukraine? Global Scholars Canada asked a few of its scholars and some academic friends to weigh in on the larger historical, political, and ecclesiastical context behind the war that continues to rage in eastern Ukraine.

Although there is supposed to be a video of this event, it appears not to have been posted yet. When it is, I will link to it here.

Canada's unworn crown

Christian Courier has posted my most recent column, titled, Canada's unworn crown. Here is an excerpt:

As I watched the King and his consort receive their crowns, my first thought was how uncomfortable they looked. Charles received St. Edward’s Crown, made for his predecessor, Charles II, in 1661. Because it weighs 2.07 kilograms, it could not but place undue stress on our sovereign’s 74-year-old neck. He may need physiotherapy for the next little while as he recovers from the ordeal.

My second thought was how different the coronation was from the installation of King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands ten years ago. Since 1948, a Dutch monarch has served, not for life, but until retirement after several decades at the helm, leaving the throne to her heir. This precedent, set by Queen Wilhelmina, has now been followed by Spanish and Belgian monarchs, and even by Pope Benedict XVI. At Willem-Alexander’s installation, the Crown was certainly present in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, but at no time did it rest upon his head – much to his relief, I’m sure.

Read the entire article here.

Beyond liberalism

Since the middle of last year, I have been writing a series on political ideologies for the Politics Network of UCCF: The Christian Unions in the United Kingdom. Today the final instalment in this series is posted: Beyond liberalism. Recognizing that liberalism has failed to account for the true complexity of human society, especially the significant place of communities of all kinds,

has led many observers to abandon liberalism as an account of our society and to seek something different—something truer to reality. But post-liberals, as we might label them, are a diverse lot. The mere fact of moving beyond liberalism tells us nothing of a final destination. Some may embrace a form of socialism or even Marxism. Others may adhere to conservatism, although even the conservative label encompasses a variety of often mutually incompatible stances. Others may move towards a form of political authoritarianism, perhaps based on a traditional religious worldview, as in, for example, Catholic integralism.

Read the entire article here.

One-hundred years of Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism

Already a century ago, many Christians were noticing a seemingly subtle shift in the message issuing from Protestant church pulpits—a shift away from the gospel message and towards a focus on the religious experience of the individual person. This prompted one Presbyterian leader, John Gresham Machen (1881-1936), to write a book that remains relevant today. Here are my thoughts on One-hundred years of Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism, posted at Kuyperian Commentary. An excerpt:

During the 19th century, Princeton Seminary, founded in 1812, was a bastion of Reformed orthodoxy and remained so into the first three decades of the 20th. Nevertheless, by the turn of that century, the supporting denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), was already in the process of changing, and not for the better. Pulpits were increasingly occupied by ministers whose preaching was more influenced by the ideologies of the day than by sound biblical interpretation. The major ideology of the day was scientism, the conviction that the only genuine form of knowledge was that accessible by the scientific method. Other claims to knowledge were to be greeted by a general posture of scepticism. Even Scripture and the doctrines of the Christian faith must be subjected to the canons of science, which in turn were thought to determine what we can and cannot accept of that faith. Claims to miracles, for example, cannot be scientifically vindicated and must thus be relegated to the status of primitive myths. All that remains of Christianity is its supposed ethical core.

Read the entire article here.

Tim Keller's faithful witness

I had intended to write sooner about pastor and author Tim Keller (1950-2023), whose passing was quickly followed two days later by my own mother's death. Now Christian Courier has just posted an article I wrote about him. It takes the form of a tribute and expression of personal gratitude: Tim Keller's faithful witness. An excerpt:

Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1950, Keller grew up in a Lutheran congregation but came to a fuller knowledge of the Christian faith while studying at Bucknell University through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. With his life now redirected towards serving God’s kingdom, Keller went on to attend Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Massachusetts and Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. He was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a confessional Reformed denomination currently observing its 50^th anniversary.

After serving as pastor of a small congregation in Virginia, the PCA in 1989 asked him to start and lead a church plant in America’s largest city. Of course, New York is not a heavily churched community, and trying to maintain a Christian ministry in the heart of a secular urban centre certainly looked to be an uphill battle. Nevertheless, we know that with God nothing is impossible, and he used Keller to grow a vibrant church community in an unlikely setting. Beginning with only 50 people, by the end of 1989, attendance had grown to 250.

 Read the entire article here.

KLC interview

In April Jason Estopinal and I interviewed Hannah Nation, who edited the book, Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement. The podcast has now been posted at the Kirby Laing Centre website: Learning from the Chinese Church Today with Hannah Nation. Indeed, we have much to learn from our brothers and sisters in a country that may one day become the global centre of Christianity.

June newsletter posted

I have now posted my Global Scholars newsletter for June. Among its contents: my recently completed series on Israel's precarious democracy, a new distance course for Brazil, a complete draft of my Genevan Psalter project, and a panel discussion on Russia sponsored by Global Scholars Canada. As always, thank you for your support for my work.

Israel's precarious democracy

My recent series on Israel's precarious democracy is complete. Here are all four parts:

1. Historical and demographic background
2. Institutional factors
3. Immigration and the Law of Return
4. Options for the future

There are undoubtedly factors that I have neglected to take into account, and I may come back to these at some point. But for now I have tried to set forth the basic contours of one of the most difficult political issues, which thus far has eluded all attempts at settlement, and to point to two necessary preconditions for moving forward.

Israel's precarious democracy, 4: options for the future

In the earlier instalments of this series, we discussed the historical, demographic, and institutional factors that condition the Israeli polity, along with the complicating factors of immigration and the 1950 Law of Return. All of these combine to make for a democratic system that is precarious at best, preventing domestic stability and a coming to terms with Israel's neighbours. In this final instalment, I will survey the options that the country's government could pursue, while recognizing that all of them bring dangers to its status as a Jewish state. I assume that the current status quo is unjust, but correcting this injustice will not come easily in any case, and each option threatens in a different way to worsen Israel's relations with its neighbours and to contribute further to domestic instability.

Israel's precarious democracy, 3: immigration and the Law of Return

Political stability requires a stable population living within a well-defined territory. The population should have long roots in the territory and share a strong enough sense of solidarity to enable people to work together for common purposes. They should share traditions and customs and a love for the land in which their forebears have lived for generations. Blessed with these preconditions, diverse peoples can become a nation, taking pride in their common history, with a determination to bequeath to their children what they have inherited from their ancestors. Once there is a sense of common nationhood, a people can develop political institutions embodying self-government, their durability secured by general agreement on the rules of the game. 

Pittsburgh pilgrimage

My monthly column has been posted at Christian Courier's website: Pittsburgh pilgrimage. Here is an excerpt:

In late February I travelled for work purposes for the first time since the pandemic began three years ago. My travels took me to the Pittsburgh area where I spoke at two Christian institutions of higher education. The first was Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, where a good friend of mine, Bill Witt, teaches. Trinity is an independent Anglican seminary that trains prospective clergy in several jurisdictions, including the largest Anglican provinces in Africa. My first lecture was on ideology and idolatry, in which I drew from my first book.

Read the entire article here.

Democratism: Making Too Much of a Good Thing

Here is the last-but-one instalment of my series with the Politics Network of UCCF: The Christian Unions: Democratism: Making Too Much of a Good Thing. Here's an excerpt:

Our democracies, in other words, are complicated systems in which several institutions counterbalance each other, providing for multiple eyes vetting policy proposals for the sake of the public good.

Nevertheless, for some people this is not enough. They want to see as many offices as possible subject to election and a clear voice of the people unfiltered by mechanisms put in place to check it. Here is where democratism as an ideology enters the picture.

‘Letters from Moscow’: The Opening and Closing of Russia

On saturday, 10 June, I will be participating in an event taking place at Faith Baptist Church in Oakville, Ontario, Canada: ‘Letters from Moscow’: The Opening and Closing of Russia. It is sponsored by Global Scholars Canada, the organization with which I am affiliated. Here's the description:

Global Scholars Canada’s original scholars, Drs. Wendy and Adrian Helleman lead the Symposium with their now available ‘Letters from Moscow’ (Moscow Messages); an account of their time teaching at Moscow State University (pictured) in the mid-1990s. The letters are rich and inquisitive, poignant in their capture of a brief period where new freedoms and openness post-perestroika, seemed possible.

Israel's precarious democracy, 2: institutional factors

In part 1, we covered the historical and demographic elements forming the unique context of Israel's politics. Here I want to discuss some of the institutional factors that play a role in Israel today.

First, Israel has no constitution. Well, not exactly. Like every country, Israel has a constitution in the sense of an empirical arrangement of political institutions relating to each other in customary and predictable ways. In this respect its constitution is similar to those of the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and nine of Canada's provinces. But Israel has no written constitution, that is, a document that establishes in normative fashion the institutions and offices that govern Israel. There is no equivalent to the Constitution of the United States, which describes itself as "the supreme law of the land," taking priority over ordinary statutory laws. This has complicated Israel's domestic politics, including Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent efforts to rein in what he sees as an overreaching judiciary.

Israel's precarious democracy, 1: historical and demographic background

This year Israel celebrates 75 years as an independent state. It was born in the wake of the Holocaust, as large numbers of Jewish refugees from nazi-occupied Europe fled to what was then the British League of Nations Mandate of Palestine. Britain had acquired Palestine in December 1917, when Lieutenant General Sir Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks during the Great War. By then the nascent Zionist movement was already bringing Jewish immigrants from Europe into the territory. The previous month, the British government had issued the Balfour Declaration, named for Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, which stated:

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

During the three decades in which Great Britain controlled Palestine, the government in London discovered that the influx of Jewish settlers from Europe was not popular with its Arab inhabitants and attempted, rather too late, to curtail immigration. However, Jewish immigrants found ways to evade British efforts to stem the tide. After the end of the Second World War, survivors of the Holocaust streamed into Palestine, as Britain was preparing to vacate the territory.