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.