David Koyzis on Divided Loyalties | Faith & Politics #2

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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 2: I'm Dr.

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Speaker 3: James Spencer, and I'm joined again today by David Koizis. David's been on the show a couple of times in the past, talking not only about politics, which is the topic of conversation today, but he was also on talking about the Psalms. And so it's great to have David back. He is a member of Global Scholars Canada and an author of Citizenship Without Illusions and several other books, one of which we'll get into later today. But I'll have links to his stuff in the show notes. But I would encourage you, we've talked about Citizenship Without Illusions on the show before, but he's actually got a couple of other political books that I think would be really great for folks to look at.

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Speaker 1: So we'll link those in the show description as well. But without further ado, David, welcome back to the program.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, James. I very much enjoyed our previous conversation, so I really looked forward to it today as well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we're going to hop back into familiar territory. I'm in this territory that you deal with a lot more than I do, actually. And so, you know, as we're leading up into in America, we have the midterms coming up. And what we're trying to do on the show is really help give Christians a little bit of a different sense of how they might think about their political participation and what it really means to live out our faith publicly in that realm as a political sort of movement. So not exactly about voting and all that kind of fun stuff, but how do we think of ourselves as political within this movement?

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Speaker 1: Particular nation or any nation, really. And so maybe we can just start there.

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Speaker 3: Like, I know you deal with in the book, sort of this, you situate us between, you know, being residents of earth and citizens of heaven.

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Speaker 1: I don't think that's your language. That's mine. But help us understand sort of how we sit in relation to the governing authorities.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we can find analogies for other communities of which we are a part as well. You know, so, you know, we can say that we're citizens of Canada or the United States or Brazil or whatever, whatever other country, you know, but, but it's, it's the same way as saying that, you know, I'm a member of a particular birth family. I was born into that, that birth family. Uh, you know, I'm a member of, uh, of a, um, uh, maybe a particular church congregation as well. I'm a, I'm a member of this and that, and a variety of different kinds of communities. And, uh, the political community is no higher, um, than those other communities. We have divided responsibilities, divided loyalties, almost structurally, just by who we are as those created in God's image. And where we find ourselves in this particular stage of history, we find ourselves embedded in a variety of communities, to each of which we have responsibilities. And I think those responsibilities are, you know, they do not, define us. No one of them can define who we are as those created in God's image. So those people who would say, well, we are Americans first, or we are Canadians first. I hardly ever hear Canadians using that kind of language. I might hear Americans, perhaps, maybe in the 1930s, you would have heard Germans using that kind of language as well. But ultimately, we are members of the body of Christ. That's our first allegiance. And that body is an international body. And then within that, we are members of a variety of different kinds of communities, all of which help to define us as those who are created in God's image, but none of which exhaust who we are as the image of God.

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Speaker 3: I want to kind of think through a little bit this idea of first allegiance, because I think when I've had conversations with folks, it's been hard to get people out of what I'll call.

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Speaker 1: Sort of a prioritization mentality, right?

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Speaker 3: Like you have a pie graph, and as long as you're giving God 51% of that pie graph, you're in good shape or something like that. You know, like we have this sense of, well, I loved God this morning, and now I can go ahead and do everything else I need to do. And that's not really, I think, what we're talking about, right?

00:04:20
Speaker 1: No, that's right.

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Speaker 2: That's right. And, you know, I have a spiritual discipline, of morning and evening prayer, you know, the revolves around the Benedictine pattern. I've been doing that ever since I was about 23 years old, you know, so this is a, you know, the better part of half a century now, you know, and, and, and there, the, the danger in that is that you can think that, okay, I've gotten this out of the way now. Now it's time to get on with the rest of the day and with my, my work and whatever I'm, I'm doing, you know, and, and that's not the way to, that's not the way to think about it, you know? So, I mean, there's the, the, I mentioned the Benedictines. The Benedictines have this pattern of prayer. They didn't invent it. I think St. Benedict was simply codifying something that had been in practice for centuries, even among God's people of the Old Covenant, of prayers that took place several times a day. It may seem formulaic to us, but this is the way I'm reasonably confident that Jesus himself was embedded in that pattern as he was growing into adulthood. And, you know, there's something to be said for the entire day being bathed in the awareness of God's presence. And, you know, these prayer hours are approximately every three hours. There's something like that in the Lutheran tradition, which I know you were raised in as well. And I think it's a valuable tradition. But even that we can think of, well, we've gotten that out of the way. Now we can get on with our work. But our work is actually done before the face of God. And I think that's an awareness that we need to keep with us 24-7.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the way I've been trying to explain this to people is using the imagery of scuba diving, right? When you jump, when you're underneath the water and you're immersed in that water, you communicate differently, you move differently, you know, your senses are different. you know, your senses respond to the environment differently, all those kinds of things. And it's like, that's sort of the shift I think that needs to take place. When we think about being immersed in the love of God, it changes the way now that we end up interacting with these other loyalties that we have. When we engage in our family, we do so as, as people immersed within the love of God. And that changes then the way that we interact with our family. It changes the way we interact with our politics to change the way we interact with our.

00:06:44
Speaker 1: Work, that kind of an idea.

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Speaker 3: And I've, I've found people to resonate with that.

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Speaker 1: I'd be interested to hear what you think about that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, I, I don't know that I would use such a metaphor because I've never scuba dived and I'm, I'm only a social, I'm only a social swimmer, you know, I'm completely self-taught. I can keep myself afloat, you know, but it's, but, but, but, but I mean, you're right. When you're in the water, you, you, um, Everything is different, you know, and I think for those of us who are aware of being in Christ and, you know, this is something my awareness of God's presence is something that I've had ever since I was a small child. And it's not something I could easily shake. And I know it's quite different. You know, I'm quite different from my maternal grandfather who was raised a Lutheran, but was an agnostic in his in his later life. You know, and for me, that's I can't even fathom that it's so far outside of my own experiences. But I think insofar as we are aware of being in Christ, it does affect the way that we live our lives. And it's not going to be necessarily obvious to everybody every minute of the day, but I think it'll come out in subtle ways in the way that we treat our loyalties, the way that we handle our diverse responsibilities towards family and towards friends and towards our church communities, towards our workplace. and so forth. And I think that's something that people may keep that in mind. I had the experience a few years ago of being in a local Tim Hortons. It's a donut shop that's ubiquitous in Canada. It's almost a national institution. And there's a place not far from here where I go to spend time with friends and so forth. I was meeting a former student of mine a few years ago. We were sitting there and somebody came up to us and he said, are you two Christians? And I said, well, yes. How did you know that? I don't remember the answer. Well, I think he actually asked whether we were ministers. And I don't know why he thought that, you know, but there was something in the way that we were talking with each other and, you know, comporting ourselves that he sensed that there was something going on. And, you know, and a few years later, I can't, I can't even remember, think of how he might've thought that, but it, It came out to him while he was there, and I've had that experience in that place with other people as well.

00:09:09
Speaker 1: Interesting.

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Speaker 2: It is, yeah.

00:09:13
Speaker 1: Because you grew up in the States, right? That's right. How long were you actually in the States?

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Speaker 3: 30 years.

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Speaker 2: 30 years, okay, and then you moved to Canada. Yeah, and then 40 years here in Canada, 41 years I suppose now. But yeah, I grew up in the Chicago area. That's where I think I've lost the accent. I go back and it sounds like everybody has an accent now, you know, but I've been away from there for so long. But yeah, that's where I grew up.

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Speaker 3: When you, I mean, when you're looking at the politics between the United States and Canada, and, you know, you're thinking about sort of Christian identity in both of those places, what are some of the key differences you would say that you see? I mean, I think particularly for Christian engagement in politics, I just don't know that much about Canadian systems of government and how strong that actually is within Canada. It's the little blips with certain prime ministers or what have you.

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Speaker 2: Before I talk about the political system, I mean, it is a different system. It's a Westminster system. So in some ways, it's closer to that of the United Kingdom. Australia and New Zealand, it's a little bit more inflexible here. It's a bit more rigid. In the United Kingdom, you hear about backbench revolts against a sitting prime minister within his own party. You never hear about that in Canada, unfortunately. I wish you did. So in some ways, we've inherited some of the most rigid features of the Westminster system. but we've also adopted some of the worst features of the American as well. You know, we're kind of in between, but, but we haven't gotten the best of both sides, I'm afraid. So, but, but, but I wanted to start by saying that I think there's a, there's a different attitude on the part of Christians in Canada towards the, the country of, of their birth, you know? So it's, it's, you know, in the United States, there's a much stronger sense of, of American identity and that this somehow has, um, You know, it goes to the heart in a deeper way than Canadian identity does. You know, so to be Canadian is not to be American in some sense. It's also to have people speaking two different languages. And now we would add the indigenous languages on top of that, you know, Inuit and O'Keefe and Ojibwe and all of these other languages. and so forth on top of that. So there's a much looser identity, a much looser identification with Canada. Yesterday was one of our national holidays. It's called Victoria Day, and it's named obviously for Queen Victoria, who was queen at the time the Canadian Confederation came about in 1867. And I was joking with my wife as we were people typically, we use it to attend to our gardens, to plant plants, you know, after the long Canadian winter. And I said, I said, I think I was telling my wife yesterday, I think I think Canadians have lost the true spirit of Victoria Day. You know, we've overly commercialized it, you know, which is an absolutely absurd statement to make. And I was being humorous about that. But, you know, but I think, you know, we identify with Canada, but but it's not. But there are a lot of other things we identify with as well. And we're comfortable with that. You would never have anybody saying, I'm a Canadian first above everything else. I think people would laugh if somebody actually said that. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And I mean, we have even beyond, you know, being Americans, a lot of states have this as well.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you grew up in Chicago. So, you know, there is a deeper Chicago loyalty, let's say, than being in Illinois.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: I mean, we were laughing before the show. It's like if you go south of Chicago too far, you're no longer in Illinois.

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Speaker 2: I know. It's downstate. Everything out there in Chicago is downstate.

00:13:08
Speaker 1: It's downstate, right.

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Speaker 3: And so, you know, Texas is obviously, you know, we have the don't mess with Texas. You know, there's certain states that develop their own sort of, oh, no, I'm from whatever.

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Speaker 1: That's right.

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Speaker 3: And those become much more stronger identity statements even sometimes than the national.

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Speaker 1: And so, yeah.

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Speaker 3: There's just some sort of weird tendency that we have in America that we seem to do this and like find this sort of real cohesion around our nation or our state or I suppose even our local community, depending on where you're from. You know, Los Angelinos or, you know, New York, New York, kind of Chicago, that kind of those kind of places tend to create their own gravity.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's right. And that's inevitable in countries the size of Canada and the United States. And in a country, the United States is about 10 times the size of Canada, maybe nine times the size of Canada now. We've had quite a bit of growth in recent years. And to try to identify with a community that's that large, it's not something that comes from us naturally. You know, it doesn't arise from us naturally. You can be loyal to your local community. You can be loyal to your family and so forth, a church community and so forth. But to identify with a country with a third of a billion people, that kind of stretches our loyalties to a great deal. And I think that's why probably Americans, there has been much more of a sense of, I don't want to say nationalism quite yet, but there's more of an effort to try to inculcate in Americans this sense of being American. And in my latest book, Citizenship Without Illusions, I talk about that at the very beginning, because I'm talking about my own experience of growing up as a citizen. In my grade school, my elementary school classes, we would sing, we would face the flag. I can even picture it in my grade one classroom back in 1961, 62. You know, it's just to my left, you know, the flag is hanging to my left. We'd put our hands over our heart and we'd recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing, my country, to you. You know, and that's a way of trying to inculcate this sense of being American in students who, and it might go against our natural affinities in some fashion. You know, there's no pledge to the Canadian flag. You know, our flag was designed only in 1964, 1965. You know, so it's a much newer flag. flag. Prior to that, we didn't even have a national flag. We had the Union Jack and we had the red N sign, which had the Union Jack in the corner and the Canadian coat of arms and so forth. You know, our national symbols do not quite speak to us in the same way that American national symbols speak to Americans.

00:16:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I've done a fair amount of research at this point on American civil religion. And one of the quotes that I found really helpful, but also deeply troubling was from Robert Bella's early work on.

00:16:20
Speaker 1: American civil religion.

00:16:21
Speaker 3: And he talks about it in terms of American civil religion, not being anti-clerical or militantly secular. I think it's the way he describes it, but adopting the terminology and some of the rituals out of religion, And I would say in America, particularly Christianity, in such a subtle way that, and this is his phrasing, that most everyday people would never even notice. And then he talks about this being done. He doesn't give it this sort of mustache-twisting conspiratorial tone. But the goal was really to allow people to develop a sense of national pride. so that the nation could move things forward more easily and without the friction that might come with divided loyalties between church and state. And so it's a fascinating line in his work because I think he would view that as a positive of American civil religion.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

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Speaker 3: Whereas when I read it, I was like, wow, this is really problematic. It's deeply problematic for Christians.

00:17:30
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's true. And I think that's something that I, I, became aware of in the, when I was a young man in the, in the mid to late 1970s, you know, and, and at, at, at one point I, I, I adopted a, um, you know, outright hostility towards that to such a degree that I, I had difficulty singing the national anthem at all, you know, and I, and, you know, I've, I've, that's, I wouldn't want to go that far now, you know, I'm, I'm obviously, I'm an old man. I, I can, uh, you know, I, I, and I see that there, there's something positive for having, um, you know, national anthems, national hymns, if you will, that will extol pride or try to build up pride in one's country. But of course, pride, you know, there's a legitimate pride, but there's also a very bad pride as well, you know. And of course, pride is one of these seven deadly sins, you know, probably the chief of the sins in that respect. You know, there's a sense that, you know, we only have the one word in English for that. I think some languages distinguish between legitimate pride in one's children's accomplishments, for example, or an unhealthy pride which is a kind of macrocosmic egoism, if you will, which we want to try to avoid at all costs. I think there's something to be said in favor of national pride, but we also have to be aware that it can be taken in horribly distorted directions as well, which we saw in the 1930s in Europe. Certainly that's the sort of thing that we need to try to avoid. And I don't think we should lose an awareness of how things can go badly, even as we cultivate a legitimate pride in our communities, in our national communities or state communities or local communities or any kind of community of which we might be a part.

00:19:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's really interesting because when we think about that pride that develops, what I often see sort of coming out of that pride is also a hope. And so we just had our jobs report come out in April. We're recording this in May. And so our jobs report came out in April and it was better than everybody expected. But then there are also these reports that are talking about people still feeling sort of still despairing in where we are, despite the more positive numbers. And it's like, well, part of that is, you know, we've just been sort of.

00:20:06
Speaker 1: Underneath it a little bit. And I don't think it's anything like a lot of Americans aren't as bad off as many other people. But the idea is that we have been feeling more and more pressure in America economically than we have in the past. And so that's starting to wear on people.

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Speaker 3: And I don't think any sort of statistical report is really going to fix that. But I'd like to think the other side is people are just starting to recognize that this is probably never going to be the, the satisfying moment, the peace that surpasses all understanding, um, that we'd love for it to be. And, and that, you know, when pride starts to cultivate that hope, I think it can become really problematic.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. That, that's interesting because I think, um, you know, we, there, there is hope, but there's also such a thing as, as, as false hopes as well, you know, and, and we tend to, um, you know, we, we, We want to keep hope, but we want to rightly direct our hope, which is not always easy to do. Hope is not the same as optimism. We may look at the world around us and we say we have very little grounds for optimism, but our hope transcends the sorts of pessimistic outlooks that we may find ourselves mired in. at the present time. And if we place our hopes in a president, for example, and Americans, every four years, they go through the ritual of thinking, who is going to save us? And that's the wrong way to think about a political office. In the late 19th century, presidents were fairly weak. There was no central bank. In the late 19th century, J.P. Morgan was uh, had the power to sink the whole American economy. You know, there's one, one man and he wasn't responsible to anybody other than his, I don't know, shareholders or the board or whatever to, to his boards, to his companies. Uh, you know, the, the presidents were fairly weak. Uh, the, the, um, uh, uh, most of the business was being done in Congress. The speaker of the house was a very powerful figure at the, in the last, um, part of the 19th century, you know, and, and the, the, uh, you know, the, But beginning, I think, in the 20th century, I think with people like maybe Woodrow Wilson, certainly with Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, I think, you know, the Great Society under Lyndon Johnson, the New Deal under Roosevelt, people put exaggerated hopes in a president to be able to make things right. And that goes beyond what any political officeholder can do and should be expected to do. But in many respects, democracy... exacerbates our tendencies because officeholders get elected by making promises that they have to know on some level that they are incapable of fulfilling to the extent that people would like them to. Yeah. Yeah.

00:23:13
Speaker 3: And it's really interesting because I think most of the time, we know they can't do what they're promising to do. Like anybody who's had even, and maybe this is sort of waning, but any sort of rudimentary understanding of civics and how our government works, you know there's usually not one guy who can do whatever he feels like doing without any other checks and balances.

00:23:38
Speaker 1: And so there has to be this sort of, that's why it's there. It's slower.

00:23:43
Speaker 3: You know, it doesn't lend itself to quick knee jerk decisions, but that's by design. And so these things have to be worked through and negotiated and sort of nudged in a direction as opposed to shoved in a direction. And so, you know, yeah, when you listen to some of the promises that are being made, it's like, well, you can promise to work toward that.

00:24:03
Speaker 1: You can promise to push toward that. You probably can't promise to actually do that because it's dependent on all these other systems and people to actually get that done.

00:24:13
Speaker 2: That's right. I think it was Harry Truman, before he yielded office to President Eisenhower in 1953, said something like, poor Ike, he's going to find out that the government doesn't work like the military. In the military, you can issue commands to people. That doesn't work that way in government. Eisenhower was a wise enough man that I think he he probably understood that on some level, you know, but I, but I wouldn't doubt that, that there were, there were some moments when he, when he realized, oh boy, I wish, I wish things were a little bit different. So.

00:24:53
Speaker 3: Well, let me, let me flip back to a different conversation. You'd mentioned, you know, at one point in your life being, having tension, even singing the national anthem.

00:25:01
Speaker 1: I would admit to that myself.

00:25:03
Speaker 3: Like I think, I've had those moments where I'm like, man, should we be participating in some of these that are really reinforcing an American civil religion that seems to be diluting our Christian convictions.

00:25:14
Speaker 1: On some level? I definitely don't take that line now.

00:25:19
Speaker 3: I've sort of come out of that and said there has to be a better way for us to bridge that. political engagement and Christian faith, not isolation, but not all in all buy-in, you know, like this is the only thing I'm doing. How do you think about that sort of, I don't know, middle space, right. Between, you know, becoming a monk and living in the desert and, and jumping into politics full force.

00:25:44
Speaker 2: Well, very carefully fear and trembling, you know, I don't, I don't think there are any easy answers to that. You know, it's, you know, I mean, in terms of like the American, American national anthem, you know, the official anthem, I think, is a really ugly tune, you know, it's not, it's not a very, but we grew up, if we were singing anything, it would be My Country Tis of Thee, or it would be America the Beautiful, you know, which, and I, North the Beautiful, I quite, I quite resonate with, and in many respects, that's probably the, the best, the, the, the, the most, the best counterpart to to Oh Canada, our home and native land, you know, Oh Canada, our home and native, you know, and it extols the beauty of the land and the communities and so forth. And I think that that's, that's much, that's much better, you know, and it's, and it, and it has America, the beautiful has a much narrower vocal range than the star spangled banner, you know, it's much easier for children and to sing and for people in, you know, singing at sporting events and the like, you know, so it's, um, And that's, you know, personal aesthetic sensibilities on my part. But, you know, I think there's a place for that. I don't like to hear anthems sung in church. You know, even the Presbyterian Church, of which we remember is here, you know, around the Remembrance Day on the 11th of November, they would sing God Save the Queen in Old Canada, you know, but they would get it out of the way before the actual worship service started, you know, okay, that's, that's probably a good way to do it. If you have to do it at all, that's probably the best way to do it. But, but, you know, I, I'm not entirely comfortable having those sorts of things, having flags sitting in church sanctuaries and so forth, you know, maybe in the foyer outside, but even that it's, I'm, I'm uneasy with that.

00:27:35
Speaker 1: So, yeah, I grew up with that.

00:27:37
Speaker 3: Lutheran church usually has an American flag up on the dais. And, and, At least the ones I went to did. And, you know, so as a kid, you know, you just kind of walk in and you do your thing and you don't really notice much anyway. But as I've reflected back on it as an adult, I'm like, how strange. What an odd way to do that.

00:27:58
Speaker 1: That's right. It just seemed very odd to me.

00:28:03
Speaker 3: Now, I got to go to a Lutheran service in Germany.

00:28:08
Speaker 1: Um, and you, you definitely get a German flavor in.

00:28:12
Speaker 3: Those Lutheran services in Germany, aside from the language, like it is very different. And so I, I, it's not about local expression, but it seems to me that the flag being there could denote something of a, um, a split devotion, let's say.

00:28:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's no reason, I mean, if you're going to have that, why not have a state flag and why not have the, a city flag, you know, a family coat of arms, you know, if you will. I mean, all of these are, you know, symbolic of our diverse loyalties, you know, and privileging the American flag and the Canadian flag, if you will. I don't see that there's much to be said for that. Yeah.

00:29:01
Speaker 3: Well, let me, Let me ask this because I know you'd mentioned– I think I'm getting this right. Before, we were talking about your new book that you're working on, not Citizenship Without.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: Illusions, which is already out, but it's a new book on the catechism.

00:29:16
Speaker 3: And so maybe explain what that book is and then– If I'm recalling, you talked about gratitude and public life as being the last chapter.

00:29:25
Speaker 1: And I'd just be interested.

00:29:26
Speaker 3: I think that has some application to what we're talking about with politics.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: And so I'd just be interested to kind of talk through that with you.

00:29:34
Speaker 2: Sure. For a long time, I wanted to write a book that would express my faith. in God through Jesus Christ in an articulate way that would reach people, admittedly educated people. For the gospel, maybe there's an evangelistic purpose behind this in some fashion. But I wanted to do so in such a way that I would would show my connection with an ecclesial tradition, a church tradition in some fashion. So I decided to take the Heidelberg Catechism. This is a catechism that was published in 1563. It's the most ecumenical confessional document in the Reformed tradition. You know, Reformed Christians, unlike the Lutherans, the Lutherans have the the formula of Concord, the Augsburg Confession, and so forth. And they're applicable, they're binding on Lutherans around the world. The Reformed tradition has taken a different approach to that because different Reformed churches have had different confessions that express the substance of the faith, but in a way that speaks to a particular local situation. So Presbyterians have the Westminster Standards from the middle of the 17th century, The Dutch Reformed have the Belgic Confession. The Swiss and the Hungarian Reformed have the Second Helvetic Confession and so forth. But the Heidelberg Catechism is something that is accepted by virtually all Reformed Christians. So that's the one I decided to work through. And so I took the text of the Tricentenary edition of the Catechism from 1863. I updated it to the language to the 21st century. And then I've tried to explain the catechism in a way that will speak to public life. So it's drawing up, I suppose, the ethical implications of the catechism. And so I did that. I wrote most of this manuscript, the vast majority, about 10 years ago. And then I got to working on other projects. My First book, Political Visions and Illusions, went into a second edition in 2019. It was translated into Portuguese and Spanish in that order. My most recent book is Citizenship Without Illusions. That was published at the end of 2024. So this book, I don't know exactly when it's going to come out. I imagine it will be within the next year or so. It's called Belonging to God, A Catechism's Relevance for Private and Public Life. That's the working title. Maybe it'll have a slightly different title, but that's the working title at the present time. And so once that comes out, I will see this as being the first volume in a kind of tetralogy. So eventually when that comes out, if you want to probe my thoughts in depth, you would start with that book. because that's the faith basics for everything else. And then from there, you would read my second book, We Answer to Another, Authority, Office, and the Image of God, which expands on the philosophical implications of the faith for understanding the nature of authority, for understanding the image of God. Then move on to Political Visions and Illusions. Then finally, Citizenship Without Illusions in the World.

00:33:19
Speaker 1: Very cool.

00:33:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:33:20
Speaker 3: So circling around back to the foundation, really, because obviously you had the Heidelberg Catechism around, so you didn't need to write about it. But I think it's really great that you're doing it. I also find it interesting that it's about private and public faith. Now, if I probe that public faith, I mean, it'd be easy to assume, OK, that's politics. It's the realm of politics, probably, but it's not exhausted by politics.

00:33:46
Speaker 2: True. No, no, no. Public is, you know, sometimes we use public and political as synonymous. We'll talk about the public square, if you will. Sometimes we think of political life, but it's really much wider than that. You know, if you think about the cinema, if you think about art, if you think about charitable activity and so forth, you know, all of that could be seen as part of public life in the broader sense. If you think about protection of the physical environment, that could be seen as part of public life as well. And, of course, political life touches on all those in some fashion, but public life is not exhausted by the political. And I think that's something that we need to keep in mind. The final chapter in this new book will be called Towards a Politics of Gratitude. And I use politics there because I think it speaks to people, but I think gratitude is something that should characterize the whole of our life before the face of God. And I want to contrast that to an attitude of constant complaint, which I think we have cultivated in our lives, in our public life and in our private lives. We come to... life from a critical standpoint. I'm the first to admit that because I'm an academic. I'm paid to be endlessly critical of everything.

00:35:25
Speaker 1: That's right.

00:35:26
Speaker 3: My wife always says, all you academics are the same way. You're just inherently disagreeable.

00:35:31
Speaker 2: I know. I'm married to an academic. We encourage that in each other. If we're watching a period of film on television, you know, and immediately I think, that's anachronistic, you know, they didn't have those kind of things back in 79, you know, and, you know, why can't we just enjoy something for what it is, but, you know, I constantly have this critical, you know, my wife and I are both the same, we don't get invited to many parties, as you might imagine, so.

00:36:07
Speaker 2: So, you know, in writing this, I'm not just speaking to other people, I'm speaking to myself as well. You know, I'm probably the chief of sinners to quote the Apostle Paul in that respect.

00:36:20
Speaker 3: You know, when you're talking a little bit about that, it makes me think of Deuteronomy 8 and God's warning to the Israelites that, And it's not exactly gratitude, but he contrasts this, you know, you're to remember me when you go into the land and you're living in the midst of all this prosperity that I'm going to give you. And you're to do so by keeping my commandments and you're to avoid forgetting me. And part of that forgetting is they begin to say it is through my own power and my own strength that I have gotten this wealth. And God says, no, you need to remember that I'm the one who gives you the strength. You know, I'm the one who gives you this power and this strength so you can get this wealth.

00:36:59
Speaker 1: It's this sort of step back.

00:37:01
Speaker 3: And it feels like to me that that always when I read that passage, I always think there's a certain degree of not only sourcing that we need to recognize, like all that we have comes from the Lord, but also a sense of gratitude and dependence that we need to have. And because God is the one who is giving us strength.

00:37:20
Speaker 1: What we need to survive on this world.

00:37:22
Speaker 3: And so I just, that sort of comes to mind as you're talking through that, that last chapter.

00:37:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that, that whole pattern is, it repeats itself throughout the whole of history. You know what I mean? And you, you see that in the Bible itself, you know, the, the, the Israelites would be at peace for a while and then they would start to worship idols and so forth. And then they would, they would, they would, their, their enemies would attack them again. And then they would cry to God for, for, um, um, um, for, for deliverance, he would send a delivery, you know, you see that in the book of judges, but you also see that in the, um, in the, throughout the, the, the Kings as well, you know, through the, through the, the divided monarchy period as well. And I think, I think we've seen that in our own history as well. You know, fewer people go to church now than they did maybe a hundred years ago or, or 150 years ago. And, but, but, you know, and, and, the sorts of things that we experience now, the fact that we are talking to each other across great distances, seeing each other, you know, I have this computer sitting in front of me and I'm, you know, all of the things that, you know, my work now with Global Scholars depends on the sort of communications that we're doing right now. You know, it'd be so easy to think, you know, we human beings are really amazing. You know, look what we're able to do. And then we start to rely on ourselves and we start to forget where everything came from, you know, in the, in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, there was a bit of a religious revival in the United States, you know, part, I think the Billy Graham crusades were part of it and so forth. You know, I think even, I think even the queen, you know, the late queen was influenced in some positively by, uh, by Billy Graham and other, other people at this point. And you could see that in her Christmas messages, you could see her faith coming out. Um, I don't think that her, her heirs and successors, uh, carry the same faith that she had, you know. But we live amidst this amazing stuff that our predecessors would have regarded as utterly miraculous. And we forget where it comes from because we think, boy, we are great. Look at what we are capable of doing. And then we start to lose our dependence on God until some catastrophe or something happens to pull us back to where we ought to be. I don't know what's going to happen. Something may happen in the future. Maybe the pandemic was part of that. Maybe the current conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and so forth will be part of that. But yeah, we very easily lose a sense of gratitude.

00:40:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really, again, as you're talking there, what came to mind was Albert Borgman wrote this book, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Culture, I think is the name of it, although I always get that title wrong. but one of the things he talks about in there is he says technology will rule by cultivating these inconspicuous patterns, these inconspicuous patterns in our lives that, that we then.

00:40:31
Speaker 1: Just take as givens is the implication.

00:40:35
Speaker 3: Like these are just things that we have in front of us and they become part of our warp and woof and we all, they almost disappear from view. And, and I think that's like, I think that's what happens in a lot of our lives, not just the technology.

00:40:48
Speaker 1: The technology is a part of it. But I think that we get used to things being a certain way.

00:40:53
Speaker 2: That's right.

00:40:54
Speaker 3: And we start to forget that, no, there's someone holding this together. There are other people who are holding these things together, right? There are anonymous folks who are doing various things to keep this video stream.

00:41:07
Speaker 1: Going, right?

00:41:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.

00:41:10
Speaker 3: But there's also a God that stands behind this who is sustaining us and providing us with everything that we need to do life in the way that we.

00:41:18
Speaker 1: Are right now.

00:41:19
Speaker 3: And that is that sort of– I can understand how it's easy for us to forget how to be grateful in the moment.

00:41:26
Speaker 1: It really is hard.

00:41:28
Speaker 2: It is, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think these teenagers who simply depend on these phones, which– we didn't have when I was growing up, you know, but then I think, I go back and further, I think about something like flush toilets, which we take for granted, you know, and in the absence of those, you know, you had waves and waves of cholera epidemic sweeping through major cities in the 19th century, you know, and before that, and we take for granted that we have plumbing systems and our waste is flushed out of our homes, you know, where we're living in healthy environments, you know, and it's, you know, I mean, I'm aware, my maternal grandparents both of them died when they were the age that I am now. I'm in much better shape than they were. They were born half a century before I was. I'm in much better shape now than they were at the same stage in life that I am now. It's not that I'm particularly virtuous in that respect, but they were growing up in times when they had outhouses of during the two world wars and so forth, the Great Depression and so forth. They had dentures by the time they were in their middle age and so forth, which I can't even imagine myself. And it's something that I think all of us have to learn to be grateful for what we have been given and for what even through history we have been given down to the present time. from our predecessors and ultimately from God himself.

00:43:10
Speaker 3: You know, when I think about the four-part work that you talked through, that tetrad that you've developed, and then just some of the things you said earlier on in this episode, it seems to me that part of what we need to do in order to really participate well in politics is focus on our own formation, discipleship, whatever it is that we would, you know, fill in the blank and that. But there's a sense in which everything we've talked about is going to lead us back to something that is deeply theologically formative in us, that we need this sort of theological disposition, an underlying theological sense of the way the world works. And that these are the things that we want to have this sort of pre-reflective, instinctual sort of move toward. Obviously, we cultivate disciplines for that too, but we really want to be living in the world in the presence of God, as you said earlier. And it just feels to me like that's the sort of trajectory that maybe we're missing. Like we're coming to this as political animals and trying to integrate our faith into it when really we need to be shaped and formed in the image of Christ to whatever degree we can do that, and then holding that shape as we participate in the political realm.

00:44:28
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah. And I think that's why the cultivation of spiritual disciplines, like reading through the scriptures on a regular basis, praying through the Psalms. I pray through the Psalms on a monthly basis, following the pattern that's in the Book of Common Prayer. And I think those are the kinds of disciplines that we need. in order to be in a posture of radical receptivity to God's Spirit and to what He has for us in life. I don't think there's any substitute for that. There's no substitute for that. And that also includes weekly church attendance as well. Yeah.

00:45:10
Speaker 3: Really getting into that Christian cadence, we might call it, of... You know, sort of how is it that we continually engage with God, with other Christians, so that we're shaped and formed in the right ways? And then maybe some of these political questions, I don't think they get any easier.

00:45:26
Speaker 2: No, no.

00:45:27
Speaker 3: But we may very well orient ourselves differently to them, which I think is actually pretty crucial.

00:45:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, if the faith basics are straightened out, and if we take the attitude that we cannot simply accept the faux redemptive narratives offered to us by the political ideologies, which is the subject of my first book, Political Visions and Illusions. If we recognize that we have to use spiritual discernment in coming to those particular ideologies, then that's going to change the posture that we have towards life in general, certainly political life. Yeah.

00:46:12
Speaker 1: Well, David, it's always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I'll just leave it with this.

00:46:18
Speaker 3: Any final thoughts, maybe even from your work on the catechism and stuff, but any final thoughts for folks who are entering a political season in the United States, Christians who are entering a political season in the United States, any final thoughts or encouragement to them?

00:46:34
Speaker 2: Well, I would encourage you to read Citizenship Without Illusions, which is my most recent book that came out about a year and a half ago. I could wish that Christian universities, and there are over 100 Christian universities in North America, that they would use this book or something similar to really educate their students, undergraduate students, about citizenship. I do think that that book could also be used for adult Sunday school classes, possibly an upper-level secondary school classes as well, to get people to thinking about the issues that I raised in that book. You know, the book probably, you know, I try to offer answers, but, you know, ultimately I've tried to give people things to chew on and things to talk about and to discuss is how are we going to go about when it comes time to vote? How do we vote in a way that's spiritually discerning? You know, I don't offer any hard and fast answers to that, but if people could even start to think about that and to discuss that with their fellow Christians, especially those who might think differently from themselves, then that would be a good place to start.

00:47:46
Speaker 3: Well, we'll have the book linked to, uh, in the show notes. Uh, I encourage people to read it as well. I really enjoyed it. Um, it was actually nice to revisit it before we got into this interview. Um, I know we didn't talk through it like the same way we did the first time, but, um, it was really good to revisit it, David. And I think you did a great job on it. Um, IVP gives us a 20% discount on those books. So if you click the link, buy it off the IVP site, there's actually a code in the show description you can use and get 20% off the book.

00:48:12
Speaker 1: So I'd encourage you to go check that out.

00:48:15
Speaker 3: And other than that, David, hopefully I'll have you back after your Catechism book is published and we can talk again.

00:48:21
Speaker 1: So always enjoy having you on the show.

00:48:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I enjoy talking with you, James. So yes. Okay. All right.

00:48:28
Speaker 1: Well, take care, everybody. And we'll see you on the next episode of Thinking Christian.