What Does It Mean to Be a Christian Citizen? A Conversation with David Koyzis

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined by Dr. David T. Koyzis. He is the author of Citizenship Without Illusions, A Christian Guide to Political Engagements, which we'll be talking about today. He's also the author of a couple of other books, one which is Political Visions and Illusions, which we'll also be talking about a little bit as we explore this topic today, and then We Answer to Another, Authority, Office, and the Image of God. David's affiliated with the Global Scholars of Canada, and he taught undergraduate political science for 30 years. And so this is going to be an interesting conversation about citizenship and Christians and politics and all those sort of ideas. So, David, welcome to the program. Thanks for being here. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Yeah. Hey, so maybe start me off just a little bit. In your book, in your latest book, Citizenship Without Illusions, you noted something about the way you used to start off your political studies classes, which is talking about biblical justice. And I thought that might be a really interesting way for us to just kick this off, is getting your take on biblical justice and why you started there with your classes. Yeah. Well, because I wanted them to be aware that justice and the doing of justice is not simply a peripheral concern to the obedient life in Christ. And, you know, while the Bible is not a political handbook, you know, we don't go to the Bible for specific guidance on politics. It nevertheless is very clear that we are expected to do justice. And this is something that is given to all of us. But it's also a responsibility that is given to our rulers as well. We find it in the Proverbs. We find it in the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah, the Pentateuch, if you will. It's certainly intoned, you know, repeatedly by the prophets as well. And so that's that's where I wanted to start the course by giving them a few passages from the Old Testament in particular, such as Psalms 72 and 82, which address rulers in a very explicit way. Yeah. How do you see the, you know, so obviously in your previous book, Political Visions and Illusions, you talk about this notion of ideologies and really idolatries that begin to arise as different systems begin to, I think one of the, you know, piece of the language you use in Citizens Without Illusions is a totalizing vision. You know, they sort of close off these other opportunities and ultimately will begin to define justice. Yes. Yeah, that's right. And this totalizing vision is something that is characteristic of idolatry in general. You know, so even before we get to ideology, talk about political ideologies. And if we take something out of God's creation and put it in the place of God, then we are going to look at the whole of reality through that one facet of God's creation. And we can do that, you know, I mean, it's legitimate in a certain sense, but if that's all we're seeing, if we are, if we have narrowed our vision to such a degree that that's all we can see. Marx, for example, views the world in a reductively economic way. You know, Sigmund Freud used the world through a reductive psychosexual way. You know, Darwin looks at everything through biological survival and so forth. And that colors the way that we see the world. And I think that's a typical characteristic of idolatry. You know, so living a life in Christ, living obediently before the face of God, that's something which is so important. And it is very easy for us to get sidetracked by going into one of these idolatrous directions. So when you think about that, because I think one of the questions you do address really well in the book is, if these things ultimately lead to idolatry, why should Christians pay any attention to them at all? Why, how is it that they could ever even participate in them? And I think one of the answers, if I, and maybe just tell me if I'm summarizing this right or correct it, expand on it, but, you know, you look at something like Marxism and you see it boiled down to an economic sort of lens. And that becomes the only lens through which you can see human relationships. It's really the only that is the biggest problem there. It's the idolatrous element, in other words. That's right. Whereas if we look at it and you say, well, the Bible teaches us an awful lot about how economics and finance can skew things. So Marx is probably on to something. He's just not on to the whole thing. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And, you know, if we look at Darwin or Freud or Marx or Hegel, you know, any of these thinkers throughout history, we can see that they're onto something. And they have focused on a particular facet, but then they run away with it. You know, they want to see that as being the whole of reality and everything can be ultimately boiled down to that one facet that they have chosen to look at. And of course, what you end up having is that you'll get arguments, debates between Marxists, Freudians, you know, Darwinians and so forth. And it's almost structurally, they have to debate because each of them has chosen a different idol. And idols are jealous gods. You know, you can't almost structurally, you're unable to see the other side. You're unable to get a fuller picture because you have so narrowed your focus to such a degree that that's all you will permit yourself to see. And it's interesting because I'm even as I think through some of something like, let's say, Augustine's notion of ordering loves, it's possible to hold multiple idols all at the same time. They just have to be sort of in some sort of an arrangement. And so as we look out and we're thinking about how God puts these different apparatus in place to help order a world that is disordered, to retain some level of order, it's not that we should dismiss all of those things. It's that we have to nest them within a love for God and a love for neighbor such that we keep them in their proper place. Is that a good way of defining it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think Augustine is really the key to all of this because, you know, he says that virtue is the right ordering of things loved. I think that's a more or less exact quote from the right ordering of things loved. You know, so, you know, I love my wife. I love my daughter. I love my family. I love the friends that I get together with on a periodic basis. You know, I love my work. I love my church community and so forth. And we keep all those in their proper place. And it's when we take one of those and start to build our lives completely around that one thing. You know, what is that? We talk about workaholics, you know, people who are so wedded to their work that their families suffer, that the fullness of life suffers as well. And that's how we know that we are in an idolatrous situation. And would you say the same thing? And I know you don't don't quite address this in your book, but it's just sort of random questions coming up in my mind as we're having this conversation. We have the privatization of faith, you know, where people are sort of taking faith and saying, well, it doesn't really relate to the public. It's really my faith. It's my opinion. And I'm going to personalize it and then keep it fairly separate from everything else. Am I am I wrong in assuming that, you know, when we read things in Scripture like, you know, you can't serve two masters. Right. You're either going to be serving God or you're going to be serving money. That even when we try to create a balance between our faith and our politics, that even putting those two in relation to each other as opposed to a hierarchy where our faith governs our politics, that we're really missing something and doing something that is idolatrous in and of itself. Yeah, and I think that's right. And, you know, you can't really balance off loyalty to God with loyalty to mammon, you know, but if God is our if our ultimate allegiance is to God and everything else balances. And that's really the key, you know, because if you're going to be a Marxist, if you're going to see everything through economic lenses, you will not have a balanced view of what life is about and you are likely to commit atrocities against the very people that you think you're going to help. You know, this is something that goes back to the French Revolution, to the Russian Revolution. I think one could argue the same of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and later, you know, the revolutions follow in a very single minded way. One particular principle, one particular idea, one.

And they end up, ordinary flesh and blood human beings end up suffering as a result of that, because those human beings are seen to be mere fodder for the vision that you have. But if we see God, if we look at God, if we, if we worship God and love him above everything he has made, everything else balances out. You see that, you know, you talk about these various revolutions. It's something I've thought about a good bit, you know, with the application of, let's say, the Exodus narrative to many of the revolutions that we might see. But only really the application of a small portion of that Exodus narrative. You know, there's a tendency to skip over the part where God then tells Israel how they're going to live now that they've been delivered from Egypt, right? We want the, we want the liberation aspects. We don't really want the legislative aspect. And so as we look at these revolutions, there's a tendency to justify then the loss of life or the oppression of other people for the sake of some sort of broader purpose or, or, or goal that we're shooting for. Yeah, just talk a little bit more about that. I'm interested in how this plays itself out in terms of where your book really goes, which is how do we exercise our citizenship as Christians? It seems to me that that provides the fodder for sort of a, a core story that a citizen would be asked to buy into and embody in some ways. Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, I know that in the 1970s and 1980s, liberation theology was a big, was a big thing. I think it's passed its peak by now, but but very often the liberation theologians would go back to the Exodus and use that as the central paradigm for what they were trying to do. You know, my, my daughter really loved the film Prince of Egypt when she was growing up. It's an animated feature. And I actually discovered some a few years ago that one of my, I think a second or third cousin was involved in putting together, you know, so it's, but she loved that, you know, the music and everything like that. And there's a, a plate at the very end of it where, is it Miriam who says to Moses, you're Moses, your people are free. And, and I've watched them and I thought, yeah, but they're all going to die in the desert. You know, they're all going to be terribly disobedient, you know, in, in, in ways that, you know, you get the kind of sentiment that attaches to the story of liberating the people from, from Egypt. There's a lot more coming. And of course, you know, if, if God chooses a particular people, that's a heavy responsibility to bear. And that doesn't really come out. And I think that that tells us that even, even our, our love of freedom is detached from this notion of responsibility that, that we have towards each other and towards God. And I think that's something that the various ideologies, well, they can't, they can't deal with it. It doesn't fit into their paradigm. And furthermore, they, they, they would not want it to fit into their paradigm because it would spoil the whole thing as far as their, as far as their visions go. Well, and as I said, you know, in our pre-interview, you mentioned you'd written another book, We Answer to Another Authority, Office and the Image of God. And so I'm wondering if you ran across this, as I looked at certain uses of image of God language in political speeches more recently, what, what I often find is that they use the image of God to gesture toward human dignity, which the image of God certainly does suggest the human dignity. But it also suggests an obligation. It gives a trajectory and a purpose. And there's a way for us to ignore that obligation and deform or distort the image of God in and of ourselves. In other words, to do damage to our own dignity. So, yeah. Do you address any of that in your, in your book? Yes, I do. And I, and, and some of this comes under the rubric of of expressive individualism. This is a term that's been used by Charles Taylor. I'm trying to think. There was a book by Carl Truman who teaches at Grove City College. I was just down there a couple of months ago and was able to talk with him. You know, just a brilliant book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. In, in, in political Visions and Illusions, which came out in a first edition 21 years ago, I used the expression, the choice enhancement state. You know, the idea that somehow, you know, as human beings, we are choosing beings full stop. It doesn't matter what we choose, just our capacity to choose is what, what makes us human. And, and the content of our choices apparently doesn't matter, at least under this expressive individualism. You know, that we, we want to express ourselves as individuals. We, we want to, you know, to, to lay bare our, our, our inner life and our proclivities and our desires. And, you know, everybody is expected simply to accept my proclivities and desires for the sake of being, I guess, endlessly inclusive, if you will. But there's no real focus on responsibility. And that is, is what is missing from this account. And do you find that, you know, as you explored some of the political ideologies and, and these ideologies just, and maybe I'll let you comment on this, but I, I'd love to, for you to comment on the, the, the span of those ideologies. These are not just, you know, the, the bad ones that we're talking about, like Marxism or socialism or anything like that. They extend to the ones that we have in our respective nations as well, correct? Right, right, right. And so you're talking democracy as a sort of an ideology or particular aberrance of it. Is that, am I explaining that correctly? Yeah, yeah. And, and the term that I came up with, I, I didn't use this in the first edition of Political Visions and Illusions, but the second I used the term democratism, democratism, you know, which is a, it's a neologism to be sure. I, I don't think I'm the one who made it up, although your spell check probably won't recognize it. But it is, yeah, it's the idea that somehow the people can do no wrong. You know, it's fueled, I think, in both Canada and the United States. I was born in the United States. I have lived in Canada now for almost 40 years. So, you know, most of my life I've, I've lived in this country. There has been an effort to try to democratize our political institutions to as great an extent as possible. But in so doing, we've thrown them off balance. So, back in the old days, if I can use that expression, you know, this is, I'm in my late 60s, right? I can use this term if I want to. Back in the old, old days. It used to be that a party leader here in Canada was elected and removed by his or her parliamentary caucus. But then this was supposed to be handed to the people. So now we have these conventions where, where ordinary members of the party are supposed to have a role in choosing the party leader. But of course, ordinary members of the party do not have a political, let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. 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You know, the the House of Representatives was supposed to be the democratic body, but now the Senate has been democratized. The presidency, to a large degree, has been democratized, but it has led to Napoleonic politics. It's led to a leader who is insufficiently accountable to ordinary political officials that have attained their offices either through appointment or election. And that leader has become insufficiently accountable because the system is now dangerously off balance. And would you say, at least in the United States, that dangerously off balance, what you're really saying is that that executive branch holds far more power today than it did previously. That's really what we're talking about.

Yeah, it really did, yeah. I mean, in the late 19th century after the American Civil War up until about maybe about 1898 with the Spanish-American War, presidents were fairly insignificant figures. The bulk of the business took place in Congress. The Speaker of the House was a kind of de facto Prime Minister. And as a matter of fact, Woodrow Wilson, who would become president in 1913, in 1885, he wrote a book called Congressional Government in which he believed, and he seemed to favor this, that the United States was moving more towards the British Westminster model in which the Speaker of the House would be a de facto Prime Minister and the president would be something like the Queen or the Governor-General here in Canada. Yeah. Did it happen? Of course, by the turn of the century and by the time he came to the White House, things were quite different. But that's what he thought was happening in his youth. Well, I mean, I think, and this is a little bit for our field, but I do think it gets into some of your points around where I'd like to go is wasted votes and your notion of wasted votes that you present in the book. But I think that one of the more recent decisions that's come down that has really reemphasized the states part of the United States has been Dobbs versus Jackson. That decision in the abortion case to rid Roe v. Wade on the federal level and push these decisions back down to the states was a decision that was really gesturing toward a, I don't know whether I'd say it's a weakening of the federal government, but certainly an empowering of each individual state to make those decisions. I thought it was sort of a fascinating decision, actually, in the context that we're actually in. Because I would agree with you. I think the president has sort of inflated power at this point and Congress seems to not be able to get their act together. Speaker of the House seems like it's sort of a puppet position almost, just not a puppet position. That's unfair, but a far less prominent position than it previously was when somebody like even as late as Newt Gingrich may have held it. Yeah. No, I think that's quite true. And I think, yeah, and at the beginning of the 20th century, there were a series of very strong speakers of the House, you know, they were fairly public figures, you know, and I think right now it is true that in the United States Congress is so divided, it's become severely dysfunctional. I honestly think that Americans could take advice from the Germans. When the German federal republic was put in place in 1949, this was in the wake of the Nazi debacle and, of course, the tremendously unstable Weimar Republic. You know, in the German basic law, it specifies that one cannot defeat a government unless you have another one to put in place. And I think it would be a good idea for the Americans to adopt something that would say something similar, you know, you cannot remove a speaker of the House unless you have somebody to put in his or her place. Otherwise, it's just solely negative. Otherwise, you're just tearing down. You're not building up. So the Germans, they call this the constructive vote of no confidence. And I kind of like that, you know. Yeah, yeah, you can keep government accountable, but if you're going to remove them, then you, in a constructive way, you have to have a group of people to take their place. Just don't leave it in chaos and a vacuum of power. Like there still has to be some authority exercised and those functions still need to go on. And so that's a fascinating doctrine. Yeah, I love it. Well, talk to me a little bit about one of the areas that I think people would be really enriched in reading your book on citizenship is in this area of voting. Voting has become, in the way I think of it, it's sort of a, and I think you gesture toward this in your book, like voting isn't the sine qua non of what we do as Christians in a democracy. And so maybe let's start there. Let's frame voting out a little bit and why it's important, what it is and what it isn't. That sort of idea. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Of course, voting is essential to a democratic form of government. There's no doubt about that, you know. And in my classes, I used to trace the history of the franchise, you know, the franchise being the right to vote. You know, because back in, well, I'm doing it again, back in the old days, not very many people had the right to vote. It was, you know, male, heads of household, property owners, and so forth, you know. And prior to 1832 in England, you know, a very small percentage of the English population actually had the right to vote. You know, when Edmund Burke, he was, he wrote reflections on the revolution in France in the very early days of the French Revolution, 1789, 1790. When he was standing for election, he could meet with all of the electors in his constituency because there were so very few of them. And then 1832 saw the Great Reform Act, which expanded the franchise very slightly. You know, a few more people had the right to vote. But then over the course of the next century, then you have the expansion of the right to vote until finally 1928, women had the right to vote on the same, you know, along the same lines, with the same qualifications as men did. And then by about 50 some years ago, then 18-year-olds had the right to vote in actions that were taken both, well, in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom at the same time. You know, so in various countries, we've had the expansion of the right to vote. It's important, but it's not all important. Yeah. So I try to make the case in this next book that there are other things that we do and can do that are far more important than this. And this is where I surprised myself when I started writing the book. You know, you may have heard of books, fiction books, written by writers, and they come up with a character. And then the character takes on almost a life of its own and begins writing a book. You know, so it's almost as though the character determines the plot of the book. You know, so when I started writing this book, I surprised myself because I found myself, more than I intended, focusing on local action as opposed to national or global action. And I think there was a reason for that because I was coming to recognize that, you know, there is so little we can do as individuals to influence the countries of which we are citizens. But on the neighborhood level, there is an awful lot that we can do to have a positive impact on the local communities of which we are a part. And, of course, the rewards for so doing will be much greater because you will have the gratitude of the people to whom you are closest for what you're doing. Whereas voting, you know, once every four years or however often one is called upon to vote, you do it, it's over, you've done your duty, and then what? Do you withdraw to private life? Then you, you know, seeking your own welfare or the welfare of your family? Well, I hope that we're a little bit more conscientious than that because working on the local level to try to improve one's neighborhood, to try to improve one's city. You know, my wife is heavily involved through her church with the homelessness issue here in Hamilton. At the weekend, I'm going to be manning a table for a group called Fair Vote Canada that is pushing for electoral reform. So I'm going to be doing that. You know, so there are ways that we can get involved in our local communities that we will be able to actually to see the results of our actions in a way that we will not be able to do to the same degree on the state, provincial, or the national or the global levels. Yeah, I found that to be a really interesting and I would say important point. So part of what I've thought through is, so I live in Illinois in the United States. It's been democratic for as long as I can remember. And, you know, so it's almost like if you're a Democrat, they don't need you. And if they're a Republican, it won't matter. You know, that's how it feels when you vote. And so there, if you just focused on voting and you're living in Illinois and let's see whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, there's a sense in which you can get the sense that you're really, your opinion is unnecessary. Either it's superfluous on the one side or drastically outnumbered on the other, right? But then you look around and you say, well, but that's not the only politics in which we can engage. Certainly not as Christians. It's not the only politics with which we can engage. And so what does it look like for me to get involved in ways that actually have some level of influence on the political realm that are more than aligned with my Christian beliefs and, you know, that would be an expression of love for God and love for neighboring.

And I just think it's a really important point because I think the obsession with voting in America has raised sort of a fever pitch. You know, there was something that Patrick Deneen, who teaches at my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, he wrote a book called Why Liberalism Failed, I think in 2017, 2018. It's a brilliant book, you know, but he makes one point that presidential politics is almost like a distraction. You know, it takes away from our civic mindedness, which is more properly focused on the local level, you know. So presidential politics is more like a spectator sport. We watch the presidential debates, you know, we watch the news and, you know, what's the latest gaffe that such and such a presidential candidate has made on the campaign trail, you know, and everybody's going to get upset about that. Well, it takes us away from the communities, the flesh and blood communities that we are really a part of. And I think, I think also, social media do the same thing, you know, because I remember that when, well, shortly after I signed the contract for this new book, this was in January of last year, one of the people at IVP posted this on what at that point I think was still called Twitter, and then there were a number of people saying, oh wow, I can't wait for this book to come out. And the person who posted it said, well, I see your tribe has chimed in. And I thought, my tribe, isn't that interesting? And I've actually written on this. I wrote an online article about this and it's incorporated in this next book. I call it the virtual illusion. It's the illusion that somehow the online communities that we create around ourselves have more of a reality than the flesh and blood communities that have shaped us and to which we owe a debt of gratitude. And the other communities that we are involved in, workplace communities, church communities on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. And so I think there's a real, there's a kind of, it's an illusion, I call it the virtual illusion, because it's virtual reality, but virtual reality is not real reality. So we think that you get, like I go to my homepage on Facebook and then I could look under and see that I have, you know, just under 5,000 friends, you know, 5,000 being the, the, the ceiling that's imposed by Mark Zuckerberg and company, you know, and I can see that and I thought, Whoa, I'm really something, aren't I? You know? And, and we make too much of those, of those kinds of online communities. You know, they, they are important, but I think they have an increasing importance. I think my, my, my book was, first book was translated into Portuguese through contacts that I had made over social media with people in Brazil, you know, so, so it's useful, but it's not the be all and end all of everything. You know, it's not, it's not real community. Yeah. I think there's something, I mean, I, I sort of harken back. I've done a fair amount on social media and, and artificial intelligence and all that kind of fun stuff. And one of the things that I've sort of come to realize is if you've ever, if you're familiar with the work of Pierre Bourdieu, he was sort of a downstream Marxist, but he took the economic argument of Marx and he said, no, it's not just about economics. It's about any form of capital. And so within these different fields that we operate in, any form of capital can serve to drive our, our habits, right? And I'm using those terms loosely. So anybody who out there is really knows Pierre Bourdieu, which I'm sure there are like three, you know, like who reads this stuff? But, but the point is, I think, I think you're right. Your intuition is right on the social media side. All I would add is just to say the capital becomes a driving force. And so, you know, the likes, the, you know, the various other things, they become something that we chase after and then conform ourselves to, which is sort of a fascinating way to think about it. But I agree with you a hundred percent. I think it's a virtual illusion, a false reality that we're creating around ourselves. And we've completely missed why and how social media can be relevant, as in the case that you're talking about with Portuguese and making those contacts. And we've degraded it into something that's just sort of vanity on the highest volume possible. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And of course that, that presents a lot of temptations for Christians as well. Yes. You know, because, because pride is the number one sin. You know, I've, I've sometimes wondered, you know, what, which is the more central sin? Is it, is it pride or is it idolatry? And at some point I came to the conclusion, I'm not sure that they're all that much different. Right. You know, because, right. You know, once, once, you know, pride, we're making ourselves into gods, you know, as it were, you know, so, and, and that's idolatry right there. I think, you know, pride and idolatry amble hand in hand together through our hearts. And it's, it's very destructive to our, to our status as persons made in God's image. One, I will say, I think your overarching, and I think just having read your various books here and that emphasis on ideology and idolatry, I appreciated that emphasis in your latest book. I think it reads through it, especially in the last couple of chapters where you're talking about what it means to be a citizen and how the church should be the church, what that should look like within the context of even a democracy. I think that, you know, we've got to, you could have almost titled the book Citizenship Without Idolatry, you know. And so I think there's a real sense in which that carries through your work. And I think it's a really important point for people to grasp because there has to be a way for us to navigate a fallen world where there are going to be inevitable ideologies around us, many of which people are going to be worshiping as if they are God. We've still got to be able to navigate that and look at it and, and, and sort of say, but these things are instituted by God. So even though these people are viewing it in sort of a perverted way, what we have to do is reconceptualize that and say, yes, this is okay as long as we see it with God atop, understand that authority and interact with it in a manner that is commensurate with our Christian faith. But that is really difficult for people, I think, to grapple with. It's very difficult. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. And I think in some ways, you know, we need to keep our, we need to keep our eyes focused on Jesus Christ. Yeah. But we also need to, we also need to have modest expectations as to what our own efforts can accomplish. You know, a century ago there was a movement called the social gospel that, that whose adherents believe that, you know, by involving ourselves in political life, you know, social life and so forth, that we would bring in the kingdom of God, that we would usher in the kingdom of God in some way, you know, and I think that's wrong. You know, I would never want to see a century later, a new social gospel movement get off the ground because it's not, it's, that itself, I think, can be idolatrous. You know, God is working, is building his kingdom. He's advancing his kingdom. Maybe he can use us towards that end, but we may not be able to know exactly how, except maybe in retrospect, when we look back and say, I think this is how God used such and such or such and such an event, you know, to, to, to build his kingdom. And that's probably something that we won't be able to see until after the return of Christ. So, you know, what we, we, we are, you know, we're not building the kingdom. We're not ushering in the kingdom, but we are always agents of God's kingdom. We are citizens of God's kingdom and everything we do in his world, we do as citizens of God's kingdom. And, you know, we may be able to improve the world around us. We may be able to improve political life. I think that's certainly a possibility, but for the most part, we are going to try to find a space for us to, you know, so that we don't leave our faith behind us when we enter political life. We take it with us, you know, not to say we're going to impose this on everybody else, but simply to say, we need space to be able to live out our calling before God in a, in a fully integral way. That itself will be difficult enough, you know, in the real world that, you know, that, that will take up on our energies. Yeah. The way I've sort of framed this in my own thinking is, is to say Christians are not responsible to fix the broken world, but to be faithful in a broken world, in a world so broken only God can fix it.

You know, and that faithfulness then can be fleshed out in terms of something like James 1:27, you know, religion that is pure and undefiled in the eyes of the father is visiting widows and orphans in their affliction. It isn't a separation from the world. It isn't an isolation away from the suffering that everyone else is going through or a giving over of the world to injustice. It's a continual movement toward that justice and a gesturing toward that justice without ever thinking that we're going to complete that task. And I really appreciated that part of your book as well, that this incomplete project of justice with which we are engaged, you know, really crucial for Christians to keep in mind. Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, one of the flaws of the old social gospel movement is that it tempted us to think that through our own activities, we can save ourselves. Yeah. But you can't. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and we can't. You know, only God can save us through Jesus Christ. You know, we can live out a life of gratitude, you know, a life of obedience in gratitude for our salvation, but we're not going to, we're not going to save ourselves, and we, you know, that's not something that's available to us, and it's not something that we should ever want either. I wanted to, I want to kind of pivot this conversation and ask you a question that arose for me when I was reading through, especially your chapter on voting, where you talk about voting against a candidate versus for a candidate, right? Holding our nose at the voting booth, I think is the way you phrase it. Exactly. And so one of the things I've been sort of thinking about and maybe struggling with, 1 Timothy 6.1, Titus 2.5. If you're not familiar with those, it's, in 1 Timothy 6.1, Paul is giving instructions to bond servants and telling them to, you know, live and honor their masters in all things so that the gospel will not be reviled. I'm paraphrasing that. Titus does something very similar in 2.5, and it's either the young women who are supposed to behave in a particular way so that the word of God and the teaching of the church will not be reviled, or it's a section of people that Paul has given instructions to, whether, you know, how that refers in the Greek is a little different. But in either case, what I've been sort of thinking about and wondering about is, do Christians need to attend to the idea that voting for someone that we are opposed to but would rather have than some other candidate? In this culture that we're in, with the exposure that everyone has to our data, you know, so that people can come out and say, oh, evangelicals are unanimously in support of X. Yes, yes. Are we in danger of causing the word of God to be reviled as we do this? Have you ever thought through that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do. I think, yeah, I mean, a lot of the political, the passages in the New Testament that have political relevance are indeed aimed, well, they're not aimed at governments, you know, it's not aimed at the emperor, but it's aimed at the people of God. Right. And generally the motive, you know, for saying, you know, obey, fear God and honor the emperor. We find Peter saying that we see Paul saying that, you know, the powers that be are ordained by God. You know, the motivation to do that is so that we can live a quiet and godly life. Yeah. You know, so it's not as though this is a, you know, well, this is political advice for our leaders, that's not why it was written. But I think it is, it is true that I think we are in danger, I think, of, you know, if we identify the message of the gospel with a particular political movement, such that we have difficulty seeing the differences between them, then we're dragging the gospel through the mud, if you will. Yeah. And that's the last thing we should ever want to do. Yeah. I've just been struggling with how that informs our political action today. And I think, you know, part of the solution is this local level suggestion that you've given in the book, that advocacy for, look, let's get involved in everyday activities where we have a little bit more, where people have a little bit more visibility of us. I think it would lend itself to more conversations, honestly. Right. Than like casting a vote for someone and then having a Pew survey come out that just, you know, racks and stacks us all into the white evangelical camp and says, look at how all these white evangelicals supported this or that person. The stats don't tell the whole story. And I think that's, you know, one of the challenges. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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And statistics don't necessarily, you know, statistics have limited applicability in this case, especially because, you know, you have to be able to operationalize the definition of an evangelical. You know, what is an evangelical? And usually I think it revolves around self-definition, you know, well, I'm an evangelical, but then you may, you know, probe a little bit further and find out they don't actually go to church very regularly. You know, it's more of a cultural indicator, as it were, you know, I mean, it's been like that with Roman Catholics for, you know, forever. You know, they're people who are like, yeah, well, I'm a Catholic. Then you find, well, when was the last time you went to confession or when did you go to mass? You know, and then, oh, I don't know. Let's see, 1995 or something like that. You know, and they'll give you something like that. So I think, you know, we need to be aware of putting too much emphasis on statistics. You know, they have validity. We have to use them to be sure, but it doesn't it doesn't really tell us very much about the communities, you know, the three-dimensional communities that we are part of. It's almost a shorthand is the way I think of it. You know, a brief summary. I will say I like your, you reference something that I've been thinking about and I really appreciate it. So I want to draw it out in the interview. But when you were talking about the nuns and you referenced that we're probably on the cusp of seeing a decline in religious freedom, not necessarily due to adverse political action or legal precedent, but almost due to apathy. If I'm not, I don't think I'm putting words in your mouth, but if I am, correct me, please. Yeah, sure. No, I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's right. Because, you know, I think since the beginning of the century, the number of people in the United States, you know, I'd venture to say that that is even higher here in Canada. The numbers of people who click, you know, no affiliation box, you know, the nun box in terms of religious adherence has expanded as a proportion of the population as a whole. And when you get people like that, you know, they may, they may not understand why religious freedom might be important. You know, for them, it might look like a luxury good. You know, they're going to be more concerned about something called human rights. Human rights is fine, but human rights can also be interpreted in such a way that it could do quite a lot of damage. You know, to institutions that have different standards that go beyond, that are narrower than just the broad societal notion of human rights. Right. It can easily be antithetical to Christianity. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I think that this is why, you know, even, even the idea of this very expansive notion of freedom, you know, simply fulfilling our desires. And that's something that goes way back to Thomas Hobbes, you know, in the, in the, in the 17th century. That can be destructive of the multiplicity, the pluriformity is the term that I use, of institutions and communities that have different standards for membership. You know, the, the emphasis on inclusion works to against such communities as well, you know, because there's no such thing as an all inclusive community. You know, a community by its very nature has outer limits, you know, and, and each community sets its own standards.

Of membership, you know, who is a member of this community and who is not, and what are the criteria that we use to determine that. And one community will differ from the other in terms of setting those kinds of criteria. One, you could argue that inclusiveness lends itself to chaos when taken to the extreme. Now, you could argue the same for exclusiveness too, I suppose, but inclusiveness, you know, if we're just letting everyone in and allowing everyone to do what they desire to do, that's almost the definition of anarchy. And so intuitively, we all sort of know that it's like, no, what really is being argued about is how much inclusiveness can we handle? What should we be shooting for? You know, what is that goal for inclusiveness? But, yeah, definitely. I just think that that is a really interesting insight on the nuns, that as religion wavers, as people disaffiliate from it, we're going to be left with a much smaller core of people who really are exercised over religious freedom. Yes, I think that's true, and it's going to affect other institutions as well. Robert Putnam wrote this book called Bowling Alone. It's not just churches that people are no longer affiliating with, but it's bowling leagues, it's a whole variety of activities that people used to get involved with, you know, things that Alexis de Tocqueville tracked when he visited North America in the 1830s, and said that, you know, they're joiners, you know, they're always getting involved in various kinds of activities, more than was happening in France because everyone was expecting the restored monarchy to take the initiative for various things at that time, you know. And I think, you know, Americans, and I think to a large extent Canadians as well, but I think Americans have probably perfected this over the generations, you know, we're going to join self-help organizations, you know, we're going to join a local chamber of commerce or something and get things done. And fewer people are doing that. I think television, social media, the internet, you know, people are looking at their phones, they're glued to their phones, you know, I have an iPad with me right now, you know, I'm talking to you on my computer, you know, I'm not mixing with people in my neighborhood, you know. It's having an impact on all sorts of institutions in society. It's making us more isolated from each other. The pandemic and the lockdowns that took place only exacerbated that. I'm not saying that they weren't necessary. But, you know, people not going to church... And maybe they're not returning to church after the pandemic, which I think is a very bad thing. So, and what happens when people become radically isolated from each other is that authoritarian rulers can start to fill a gap. I mentioned Thomas Hobbes, you know, Thomas Hobbes believed that man was a creature of restless desires. His solution to the seeming chaos of individual self-seeking was a Leviathan, you know, a sovereign who would... all-powerful sovereign that would be able to put an end to this. And am I correct in remembering, it's been a while since I read Hobbes, but his almost his definition of the church was you didn't really have a church until the ruler of the government was sort of embedded within it or reigning over it. Am I remembering that correctly? That's, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that Leviathan was not just a really stern government. It was an all-encompassing beast that was over everything. Yeah, it had to control the church as well. Exactly, yeah. That's right, you know. Well, let me kind of pivot, because we're getting close to the end of time, and I want to make sure I get to this. You know, you talk a little bit about Christians toward the end of your book in the last couple chapters, and one of the things that you note there is that this conversation really does need to happen. So when somebody's casting a vote for one person or another, what I read was you advocating for a more nuanced understanding of why one would vote for this candidate over another and a shared understanding and appreciation for these divergent viewpoints within the church. Now, that is, on one level, I read that and I was like, yeah, this is definitely the way it should be. And on the other hand, I was like, but it seems highly utopian. It has not been my experience that, you know, these conversations just aren't happening in the church. How do you think we go about, I don't know, embodying that? Yeah, yeah, it's a tough call. There's no doubt that it's difficult to come up with a solution for that. But, you know, I don't know whether ministers should be trying to orchestrate this or not, but I think ordinary church members, you know, recognizing that there are going to be differences in the way that people are voting, I think they need to make an effort to try to reach out to their fellow Christians and say, you know, why are you voting the way that you are? You know, and why, you know, given this particular issue that I feel very strongly about, you know, and I'm voting this way, how could you possibly differ, you know? And those are the kinds of issues that arise, and I think we need to open up to each other, not simply close each other off and say, well, you know, you're beyond the pale. You know, I told you I was talking to people in Brazil last night, and in that country, there are ministers that will tell people, the parishioners, how they ought to vote. And I think that's way out of line. I don't think a minister has any business telling his parishioners how to vote. Right. Yeah, those lines have to be a little bit separate. And I think you get at that in your, again, that sort of final conversation of the relationship between Christianity and citizenship, which I found fascinating for some time. You know, one of the, they did a survey on Christian nationalist beliefs here in the States. It was done by, I believe, Neighborly Faith. And one of the things they found was that people who tended toward affirming Christian nationalism believed that Christianity made people better citizens. Never quite rang true to me. But I think the way you talk about it at the end of your book, I'm kind of like, yeah, I get it. I get where people would get that impression. It's just, it's got to be more nuanced than just a flat statement of if you're Christian, you'll be a better citizen. Can you just talk on that a little bit in your understanding of it? Well, I think we need to be careful how we use scripture, to begin with, you know, because once again, the scriptures are not, it's not a political handbook any more than it's a handbook for auto repair or, you know, fixing computers or whatever. Right. You know, because these things didn't exist. You know, the state as a political community, as we understand it now, is only about a little over 500 years old, you know, and it wouldn't have existed. Political rulers, yes, of course, you know, the Old and New Testaments alike, but I think we need to, we need to grapple with the realities that are around us all the while that we are shining the light of Scripture on those realities. So I think a real key verse is Psalm 119, verse 105. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. You know, when I was a child and used to sing a Sunday school song with that word to, you know, it's one that I think is really key to understanding the way that the Scriptures function for us. You know, that we're not some, you know, the Scriptures are not the path. The Scriptures are the light that we shine on the path, which means that, you know, we don't wait to act until we start reading the Scriptures. You know, we are already in motion and we're already walking the path as we read Scripture. Scripture is correcting the path that we are on. I think we need to take that to heart with respect to political activity as well. You know, we are trying to help our neighbors. We are trying to, in a political way, we're trying to live out the command to love God and to love our neighbor. You know, and I think that's something that we need to do in a very nuanced way, recognizing where our neighbors are at any particular moment in history, to try to minister to them given those realities. And that's going to look different for us now in the 21st century than it would, say, for my grandparents at the beginning of the 20th century or my great-grandparents in the 19th century. And I think to your point earlier that it's not going to be a completed task, that anything we choose, we're ultimately going to choose to focus on this or choose to vote for this or choose to participate in this. And ultimately, that choice means we're not doing something else and we're leaving other things undone. And so there's probably enough room as a body of Christ to sit back and say, look, these don't have to be contradictory. They can actually be complementary and we can recognize that as one person is trying to finish this task or feed into it, another person can be doing this other thing over here. They may appear to be different, but ultimately, there are multiple ways for us to love God and love neighbor in a broken world. You know, that's right, yeah. And I think that can even...

work with partisanship as well. You know, when I was younger, there were a number of, you know, statesmen that I, to whom I really respected, you know, the Christian men, you know, and women. They're people like the late Senator Mark O. Hatfield, whom I was privileged to hear at a church in Minneapolis when I was about 20 years old. He was one of my genuine heroes. Senator Paul Simon from Illinois. You know, Stephen Monsma, head once taught at Calvin College in Grand Rapids and was representing, was in the Michigan State Legislature. They were in different parties, you know. Hatfield was a Republican. Simon and Monsma were in the Democratic Party, you know, but I think they would all have recognized that they had more in common with each other than they necessarily would have with members of their own party. But by being in those particular parties, they were being forces for healing in different political parties. And I think there's definitely a place for that. It may be hard to do now because I think in many respects, the two American parties have become severely dysfunctional, unfortunately. You know, so, but... Yeah, and I think going back to that question I asked about 1 Timothy 6.1 and Titus 2.5, I think it comes out of this idea that we are highly polarized at this point and that that appreciation for, I could be a Democrat and be working for justice in the same way you could be a Republican working for justice. That appreciation is, at the very least, further underground than it was maybe back in those days. Yeah, things have worsened since the turn of the millennium. Yeah. Well, let me, I have one more question and this is a question I ask all my guests. And we'll kind of close up the interview after this. But what topic do you think Christians should be thinking about today in order to help them be more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ? You know, and I think I've got to go back to basics. I think we need to immerse ourselves in the Scriptures. I think that we need to immerse ourselves in the Word of God. I think we have to be meeting regularly with our church communities, our gathered church communities. I think we need to engage in the practice of daily prayer. You know, when I was about in my early 20s, I discovered something called the daily office, which was in a volume that I picked up in a Lutheran seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. And you know, this goes, it's something that we associate with the Benedictines. But you know, daily prayer, the day was punctuated by hours of prayer about every three hours. And there are some oblique references to this right in the Scriptures themselves. We find that in Psalm 119. We find it in Daniel. We find it in the book of Acts as well. And they were followed by ordinary Christians, at least up until the end of the Roman Empire. And then it was taken over by the monasteries and we associate with monastic activity. But it's come in a, well, obviously in a quite different form within Islam where you have five prayer hours during the day. I remember being in Amman, Jordan back in 1995 and being woken up at five o'clock in the morning by the mu'adhin at the top of the mosque summoning people to prayer and so forth. You know, I would wish that Christians would do that, you know, would pray on a daily basis, you know, not just as individuals. I think that's important, but even as communities as well. And, you know, it's not going to solve any problems and it's not really meant to solve problems, but it's going to keep us in touch with God. And I think in a very real sense, it will keep us in touch with ourselves and what is most important in life. No, that's helpful. And I think it's wholly in line with the advice you give in the book anyway. Focus local, you know, it's a smaller unit that we can actually do and control without trying to necessarily even change anything. But to your point, posture ourselves within the world in a very particular way so that we're oriented in a right way toward God and others. That's right. Yeah, really great advice. Well, David, this has been awesome. I would really very much recommend folks to go out and get your book, Citizenship Without Illusion, a Christian guide to political engagement. I would also encourage them to take a look at political visions and illusions. We'll have all your books linked in the show notes, but I really enjoyed reading this book. I think it brought out different perspectives and it was so measured. I think sometimes in my own head, I tend to make stronger distinctions between some of these categories than you do in the book. And so I very much appreciated you sort of bringing some practical clarity to some of these matters and a really measured understanding of them. So I highly recommend your book and just thanks for being here. Thanks for taking the time. Really appreciate it talking with you. Oh, I enjoyed myself immensely. I hope we can do it again at some point. Absolutely, I'd love to. Well, hey, everybody, take care and we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. What if your next chapter is your best one yet? Hi, I'm Monica, host of Hope for the Journey, the podcast for women over 40 who are ready to rise, rebuild, and reclaim their story. Each week, you'll hear powerful comeback stories from women who've walked through the fire and come out stronger. If you're navigating change or dreaming about what's next, you're not alone. Follow Hope for the Journey on your favorite podcast app and find the hope that you've been looking for.