Beyond Lament: George Grant and Canada's distinctiveness

Christian Courier has just posted my monthly column, titled, Beyond Lament. An excerpt:

After John Diefenbaker’s Conservative government was defeated by Lester Pearson’s Liberals in 1963, [George Parkin] Grant was convinced that Canada’s days as a distinct nation were numbered. Diefenbaker’s reluctance to accept American nuclear weapons on Canadian soil had irked the “ruling class,” whose members determined that he had to go. But Grant believed that Diefenbaker’s only offence was his conviction that Canadian defence policies should be made in Ottawa and not Washington.

I couldn’t help recalling Grant’s Lament as we have been subjected to Donald Trump’s repeated trolling comments about Canada becoming the 51st state of the United States. Grant would express anger at this, of course, but it’s far from clear that he would have rallied the (literal and metaphorical) troops in opposition. His professed purpose in his book was not to make “practical proposals for our survival as a nation,” but simply to lament – to grieve the loss of those traditions that had once made Canada distinctive.

For more than two decades I had my students reading Grant's Lament and writing a paper on it. But at some point I put it aside because of the author's tendency to underestimate the importance of political factors in human motivations. I explain this more fully in something I wrote for Comment just over two decades ago: George Grant and the Primacy of Economics.

U.S. Catholic review

My new book has been briefly reviewed by Alexander Pyles in U.S. Catholic: What we’re reading this month: May 2025. An excerpt:

Citizenship is not at odds with being a Christian. For Koyzis, the reverse is the case: To be a good Christian, one must also be a good citizen. He references the parable of the Good Samaritan and other examples from scripture on taking care of your neighbor and, by extension, your community. This message is important and bears repeating in the months to come, so Koyzis’ encouragement is welcome.

While the book thoroughly covers the idea and issues of citizenship, it is not exhaustive. Koyzis stops short of going into the weeds of political culture and the nation-state superstructure. He focuses on defining conservative and progressive movements, not just in the United States but in Canadian politics as well.

U.S. Catholic is a publication of the Claretian Missionaries USA-Canada Province, "a global Roman Catholic congregation of priests and brothers who tend to the religious and pastoral needs of vulnerable communities."

The King's Throne Speech

In my personal library I have a copy of the June 1959 issue of The National Geographic Magazine which my parents received when I was a small child. In that issue is a colourful article, titled "Queen of Canada," written by journalist Phyllis Wilson with photographs by Kathleen Revis. It recounts the visit of her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to Ottawa in 1957. The final photograph in this article is of the Queen and her consort Prince Philip seated on their red thrones in the Senate chamber as she reads the Speech from the Throne. Seated to her right is Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who had only recently been elected as head of a minority Conservative government. The Queen would repeat this event in 1977 on the occasion of her silver jubilee.

This week her son King Charles III was in Ottawa to read the Throne Speech opening the 45th Parliament in the Senate's temporary facilities in the Senate of Canada Building at 2 Rideau Street. Suffice it to say that, although the monarch is entitled to read the Throne Speech and perform any number of monarchical duties relevant to Canada, most of these functions are handled by his Governor General, currently Her Excellency Mary Simon.

Recent activities for May 2025

I have now posted my Global Scholars Canada newsletter for May 2025. Included are two podcast interviews, a Canadian election postmortem, my initial thoughts on the new pope, and a board meeting in suburban Washington, DC. Thank you for your support for my work!

Canada votes 2025

Canadians went to the polls on monday, 28 April in the 45th federal election since Confederation in 1867. The final results were not unexpected, but they nevertheless represented a stunning turnaround from where we thought a few months ago we would be today. Under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party had become hugely unpopular, with pundits predicting an easy victory by Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives in the election expected sometime this year. Throughout most of the life of the 44th Parliament, the Liberals ruled as a minority government, a supply and confidence agreement with Jagmeet Singh's New Democrats keeping them in power.

Late last year, it became clear that the New Democrats had wearied of this arrangement and threatened to pull the plug on the government. For readers unfamiliar with Canadian politics, parties with only a plurality of the seats in the House of Commons rarely form coalition governments with other parties. The closest we have come to this at the federal level was the Union Government of Sir Robert Borden formed during the Great War between the ruling Conservatives and dissident Liberals outside Québec. It is exceedingly rare for a party to receive a majority of votes cast, and in recent years it has become difficult for a single party to obtain a majority of Commons seats as well. In many other democracies, a party lacking majority support would negotiate with other parties to form a multiparty coalition government. But not in Canada.

Pope Leo XIV

Now that our daughter is married as of last saturday, I will be gradually getting through a backlog of items that have accumulated during the period of preparation for this event. These include the recent Canadian election, on which I will shortly publish my thoughts; the political chaos south of the border; and the new pope. In many ways, the third item is more readily addressed than the first two, so I begin with that.

I have now lived through eight papacies. Given that successive conclaves of cardinals generally choose older men to fill the office, the length of a particular papacy is typically fairly short. Pope John XXIII reigned for only five years, yet his legacy has endured in the form of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The recently departed Pope Francis was on the papal throne for a dozen years. John Paul II reigned for an unusually long 27 years, during which he managed to contribute to the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and its bloc of client states, including his native Poland. In the 19th century, Pius IX broke the record for length of tenure, reigning for 31 years, during which he convened the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), setting the agenda for the Roman Catholic Church into the mid 20th century.

God's Story Podcast interview 2

Earlier this year I was privileged to talk for a second time with Brent Siddall on his God's Story Podcast. Here is the new interview, which is now posted: David Koyzis — Political Visions and Illusions. I would love one day to travel to Brent's native New Zealand (Aotearoa) and spend some time taking in the spectacular scenery of this stunning if remote Commonwealth realm.

Carmen LaBerge interview: church splits

My recent conversation with Carmen LaBerge aired today, on Maundy Thursday. The subject is my recent Cateclesia essay, By Schisms Rent Asunder: The Four Seasons of Church Splits. My previous interview with her can be found here. The programme is called The Reconnect on Faith Radio. I've set the video to begin at approximately ten minutes into the broadcast when our conversation begins.

Recent activities for April 2025

My Global Scholars newsletter for April is now posted. Included are a guitar performance of a beloved Holy Week hymn, another review of my Citizenship Without Illusions, speaking at a local church function, and posts on the Bible and eschatology.

Holy Week: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

'Bob on Books' review: Citizenship Without Illusions

Bob Trube reviews my new book on his Bob on Books blog: Review: Citizenship Without Illusions. An excerpt:

For years I’ve found myself in this place. I recognize that we need good governance from the officials we elect. But I cannot fully endorse what either of our parties propound nor give unquestioning allegiance to person or party. What is difficult is that I have friends on both sides of the partisan divide who seem to give unflinching allegiance to their party and the people they have elected or want to elect. Often, I find conversations with such individuals futile. There is no questioning allowed and only one side is right on everything. It is particularly disconcerting when my friends resort to lies and character assassination to buttress their political allegiance. I grope for a different kind of political engagement or want to just withdraw.

Citizenship Without Illusions is written for people like me.

Why I'm Not a Postmillennial

Although I'm tempted to make a punny reference to the generation born in the 1980s and 90s, my recent Christian Courier column actually has to do with the finer points of Christian eschatology: Why I'm Not Postmillennial. An excerpt:

Only in recent years have I made the acquaintance of postmillennialists, who expect a gradual advance of the kingdom of God in the present age to be followed by a long period of widespread obedience to his will before Christ returns. As attractive as this prospect appears, I do not find the position persuasive.

Find out why.

Incidentally, I have also written on the topic here—more than can be fitted easily into a 500-word column: Revelation 20 and the thousand years. As for one of the best books on biblical eschatology, you would do very well indeed to read James Skillen, God's Sabbath with Creation, which I reviewed here.

Bible versions

My latest column has been posted at Christian Courier: Bible versions. Here is an excerpt:

Having grown up with the King James Bible, I was briefly enamoured of the paraphrases of the Bible, including J. B. Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English, from which my mother read to us. Ken Taylor’s complete Living Bible was published when I was 15. (My parents knew him slightly, as we lived in the same town.) I received a copy for Christmas. Over the next months I eagerly devoured it from cover to cover. As easy as it was to read, I was put off to read that “your words are a flashlight to light the path ahead of me” (Psalm 119:105) and repeated references to Asia Minor as “Turkey.” Such obvious anachronisms ruined the paraphrases for me. 

Read the entire article here.

Recent activities for March 2025

My Global Scholars Canada newsletter for March 2025 is now posted. Included is a 30th anniversary celebration of the organization I serve, podcast and radio interviews, and an essay to mark the 1,700 anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea.

The Idolatry of Politics

Last summer Peter Bell interviewed me on the subject of my two best-known books, Political Visions and Illusions and Citizenship Without Illusions. In this conversation I discuss two events in my youth that pushed me to the study of politics and, much later, how I came to write my books. The length is just under 50 minutes.

Faith Today review of CWI

Another review of my Citizenship Without Illusions has been published in the March/April 2025 issue of the Canadian periodical Faith Today. The author is David Daniels, a retired Baptist minister. An excerpt:

Balancing political engagement with ultimate allegiance to God’s Kingdom has always challenged Christians. Tackling that challenge, Koyzis draws from the experiences of people and movements ranging from biblical antiquity to the present. He addresses the legitimacy (or not) of civil disobedience, providing guiding principles for those who choose to resist governments. He warns readers of the ever-present danger of falling prey to political illusions imbedded in an over reliance on ideologies such as liberalism, socialism, conservatism and nationalism, to name a few. He reminds Christians that allegiance to the Christian gospel “may come to be regarded as an affront to the jealous gods of expressive individualism” so evident in western democracies today.

The full review can be found here.

Assessing 'Hopeful Realism'

One of the benefits of being an author with InterVarsity Press is that the publisher occasionally sends me other books it has published in my field. One of these is Hopeful Realism: Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics, written by my esteemed colleagues Jesse Covington, Bryan T. McGraw, and Micah Watson, whom I regularly see at the biennial Henry Institute Symposia at Calvin University. The co-authors here undertake to address the relative paucity of evangelical political reflection and the tendency of flesh-and-blood evangelicals to embrace dubious political positions without engaging in the due reflection necessary for wise political judgement and action. Thirty years ago historian Mark Noll wrote that the "scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." As we approach the quarter-century mark, our co-authors express a similar lament:

Kesler on national conservatism

I have written before in this space and elsewhere on the American-Israeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony and his distinctive approach to nationalism and conservatism. A principal difficulty with Hazony's approach is that his defence of his purported national conservatism, as he calls it, is basically historicist, assuming that norms for political action are reducible to traditions specific to given national communities. This leaves him fundamentally unable to challenge injustices occurring elsewhere in the world and leaves him without any norms to judge these traditions.

First Things articles archived and reposted

The journal First Things recently revamped its website and in the process deleted virtually everything I wrote for them as an occasional blogger between 2009 and 2023. Although many of these posts were already crosslisted with this blog, others were not. I have thus created a page with links to nearly 40 of the more significant of these: First Things posts. An archived list of links to the original posts can also be found here. (Oddly enough, even the temporally-specific pop-ups have been archived too!)

I assume that items written by other past bloggers have been deleted as well and that my 21 January post, FT's evolution: 'populism' overtakes 'highbrow', didn't play a role. But who knows?

How To Wisely Engage Politically

Here is the conversation that I had with the incomparable Jason Scott Montoya two days ago. Although our discussion was about my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions, it ended up being more wide-ranging, covering several related topics, particularly the new administration in the United States.

How Modern Ideologies Replaced Divine Authority

Here is another snippet of a past conversation with Jason Scott Montoya. Jason interviewed me again yesterday about my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions. I will link to that interview once he has posted it.

Word 101.5 FM interview

On monday of this week, I was interviewed by John Hall and Kathy Emmons over Word 101.5 FM, a Pittsburgh radio station. They are the hosts of The Ride Home with John and Kathy. I believe this is the second or third time they have interviewed me. Click here to listen to the programme: The Ride Home - Monday, February 17, 2025. Our conversation begins approximately 30 minutes in. 

Incidentally, near the end, they mentioned that I would be speaking at the annual Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh, sponsored by the Coalition for Christian Outreach. Unfortunately, I suffered an attack of "benign" vertigo this week and was unable to go after all. Perhaps next year.

God's Story Podcast interview

Last November, shortly after my book, Citizenship Without Illusions, was published, Brent Siddall interviewed me for the God's Story Podcast, located in New Zealand. The interview has now been posted and can be heard here: David Koyzis — Citizenship Without Illusions. Siddall interviewed me again on my first book, Political Visions and Illusions, a few weeks ago. I will post the link to that interview when it comes out.

Global Scholars Canada 30th anniversary celebration

On thursday, 6 February 2025, Global Scholars Canada celebrated its 30th anniversary with a book launch for four affiliated scholars who have published recently, including Andrew Barron's Human Difference and Disability, Peter Schuurman and Angela Bick's Blessed Are the Undone, Michael Wagenman's The Power of the Church, and my own Citizenship Without Illusions. The event took place at Faith Baptist Church in nearby Oakville, one of the larger suburbs located between Hamilton and Toronto. There was a modest turnout for the event, and I was pleased to see some people I've known for nearly 50 years show up.

You can see my comments introducing my new book below: 

By Schisms Rent Asunder: The Four Seasons of Church Splits

Cateclesia Forum has published my essay: By Schisms Rent Asunder: The Four Seasons of Church Splits, occasioned by this year's 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, styled the First Ecumenical Council. An excerpt:

Although some may think that controversies within the church are a recent phenomenon, a reading of both the New Testament and subsequent church history will quickly reveal that church splits have been with us since the beginning. The major themes of these controversies have come at approximately semi-millennial intervals, revolving first around Christology, then ecclesiology, then soteriology, and finally anthropology.

Read the entire piece here.

Recent activities for February 2025

I have now posted my Global Scholars Canada newsletter for February 2025. Included are four more reviews of my new book along with my response to one of them, three radio interviews, one podcast interview, and a trip to the Big Apple.

Jimmy Carter's exemplary life

My regular monthly column in Christian Courier is titled, Jimmy Carter's exemplary life. An excerpt:

As a young adult citizen of the United States, I cast my first presidential vote in 1976 for Jimmy Carter, who had risen quickly from relative obscurity to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the White House. A Washington outsider, he became the first in a series of presidents lacking previous experience at the federal level. As such, Carter’s presidency was less than successful, but in the long aftermath he would become the best ex-president Americans have ever had, with the possible exception of Herbert Hoover, another one-term president who devoted his life to humanitarian causes.

Read the entire article here.

Executive orders versus genuine leadership

Most presidents of the United States have used—and abused—their executive powers upon attaining office. In a balanced constitutional framework, the monarchical powers of the chief executive can be used legitimately to address issues that need immediate attention and cannot wait for the slow deliberative process characteristic of the legislative branch. During the 20th century the presidency grew in its power during the back-to-back emergencies of the Great War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the ensuing Cold War. Both political parties were complicit in this accumulation of power at the expense of Congress. Indeed, national crises prompt virtually all governments to assume emergency powers, as we saw during the global COVID pandemic. Whether these powers are used properly is up for debate and the subsequent decisions of the courts, which function, sometimes only in retrospect, as the guarantors of the rule of law.

Montoya interview snippet

In recent weeks, Jason Scott Montoya has been posting snippets of longer conversations we have had in the past. Jason has a gift for bringing out the best in the people he interviews and deserves to get more subscribers to his YouTube channel. Here is one such snippet below on the subject of sovereignty:

INCHE proceedings published

In November 2023 I delivered a remote address to the Eighth Latin American INCHE Consultation. INCHE stands for International Network for Christian Higher Education, which began in 1975 in South Africa and now stretches around the globe. My topic was "The Christian university and public policy in North America." The proceedings of this event have now been published in Spanish, and my address is included.

 

'Amplify' interview

On sunday, 9 February 2025, I was interviewed by Fr. Ron Lengwin for his "Amplify" programme over Pittsburgh radio station KDKA. The topic was, of course, my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions. This was almost certainly the longest interview I have given, lasting from 9 pm until 11 pm with three breaks at the hour and half hour marks. Fr. Ron has been on the air for 50 years, and "Amplify" has run for 52 years. You may be able to listen to the interview here if you live inside the United States, although I don't know whether this link will remain active indefinitely.

As a boy I was fascinated with radio broadcasting, especially after my father gave me a shortwave radio enabling me to tune in the world. Thus I found it a minor thrill to be on what may be the oldest commercial radio station in the US, whose call letters antedate the assignment of initial "W" call letters to stations east of the Mississippi. KDKA went on the air in November 1920, only two years after the end of the Great War and before radio began to make its way into the homes of North Americans

Ordering our loyalties

Christian Courier carries a review of my new book, Citizenship Without Illusions, written by Ian DeJong: Ordering our loyalties. An excerpt:

In this book I see three takeaways on what it means to set our loyalties in order as Christian citizens. First, ultimate loyalty to God and loyalty to governments often go hand-in-hand . . . . However, this is not to say that we should politicize the church, nor does it mean that obeying the government always aligns with obeying God . . . . Second, ultimate loyalty to God should make us both appreciative and suspicious of partisan politics. “If we find ourselves always parroting one party’s agenda and vilifying the other party’s,” Koyzis writes, “I suggest that something is amiss.” . . . Third, ultimate loyalty to God requires political humility.

 Read the entire review here.

Carmen LaBerge interview

On 23 January Carmen LaBerge interviewed me for The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge over Faith Radio. The interview can be heard here or immediately below: