Faithful Politics Meets Political Science: Dr. Koyzis on Ideologies and Integrity

This episode of Faithful Politics features an insightful conversation with Dr. David Koyzis, a scholar affiliated with Global Scholars Canada and author of "Political Visions and Illusions" and "Citizenship Without Illusions." Koyzis discusses his background in political science, his journey from a politically conscious upbringing in the U.S. to a distinguished career in Canada, and the interplay between faith and politics. The episode explores significant themes such as the influence of life experiences on one's political ideology, the challenges of dual citizenship between one's earthly nation and the kingdom of God, and how believers can navigate political engagement without veering into idolatry. The discussion also covers Koyzis' take on proportional representation as a potential solution to issues within the American political system, and how faith can be a guide in political and personal life.

Guest Bio:
David T. Koyzis is affiliated with Global Scholars Canada and is engaged in an international academic ministry of writing, researching, lecturing, and conversing with readers of his books. He is the author of Political Visions and Illusions and We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God. He taught undergraduate political science for thirty years and lives with his family in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Buy his book: https://www.ivpress.com/david-t-koyzis

"The Faith Roundtable" is a captivating spinoff from the Faithful Politics podcast, dedicated to exploring the crucial issues facing the church in America today. Hosted by Josh Burtram, this podcast brings together faith leaders, theologians, and scholars for deep, respectful discussions on topics at the heart of American Christianity. From the intersection of faith and public life to urgent matters such as social justice and community engagement, each episode offers insightful conversations

Transcript

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Well, hey there, Faithful Politics listeners and viewers. If you're joining us on YouTube, thanks for being here and please like and subscribe. Hit the bell so you can get notified about our new episodes because we put them out twice a week. Faithful Politics and a third one on Thursdays. Normally Faith Roundtable. We're putting out all sorts of stuff for you guys, so make sure that you're jumping on and checking it out. But We have as a guest today, well actually first, I'm your faithful host, Josh Bertram, and we have Will, as always, your faithful political host. Hey Will, I was almost going to announce you as a guest. I feel like that sometimes and great job advertising, doing the normal YouTube, hey, subscribe stuff because, yeah, we just don't do that enough. Yeah, we don't. And if you're listening on our podcast feed, sign up for YouTube. Subscribe, please just do it. It's helpful for us. But today we have the distinct pleasure to have on the show David T. Koizis. And I should have asked you how to am I pronouncing that name correctly? Man, look at that. You know what? That was awesome. I'm going to pat myself on the back. David is affiliated with the Global Scholars Canada and is engaged in international academic ministry of writing, researching, lecturing, and conversing with readers of his books. He's the author of Political Visions and Illusions, and we answer to another, Authority, Office, and the Image of God. He taught undergraduate political science for 30 years and lives with his family in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and we are so excited to talk about his latest book, Citizenship. without illusions through InterVarsity Press. David, thank you so much for being on the program with us today. you're very welcome. I'm happy to be here. So 30 years of political science. How did you do it? How did you keep your sanity? What has happened? And I do have a question, even before we get into it, answer that. What's the politics like in Canada? Because I'm so interested in that. We always talk about America, but Canada seems like it's almost like our close cousin in politics, but just a little different. So yeah, go ahead. Yeah, it's true, in many respects we're... sort of halfway in between the United States and the United Kingdom with respect to our political system. have a parliamentary democracy with a, and we're a constitutional monarchy, so I almost said the Queen, but the King is our head of state, represented by a governor general here in Canada by ten lieutenant governors for the provinces. We have a prime minister, a cabinet. The House of Commons is the lower chamber of parliament. The Senate is the upper chamber representing the provinces and our system is a Westminster style parliamentary system so it's different from the United States in that respect. That's fascinating. So I got to ask what it was like teaching political science for 30 years. How did you get into it? Why did you stay in it? Talk to us a little bit about your journey. Yeah, well, I was actually born in the United States. I was born just outside of Chicago and grew up in a suburb of Chicago. My mother was born in Michigan. My father was born in the island of Cyprus. His mother tongue was Greek, but he also spoke Turkish, and English and French and a few other languages as well. They're both gone now. They've not been gone for all that long, for just a few years now. And I grew up in a quite politically minded family. About a few hours after I was born, a guerrilla war broke out in the island of Cyprus where my father was born. Now, he was living here, of course. He had just married my mother nine months and two weeks before I was born. But we had relatives over there who were caught up in that. We brought over my father's younger sister. who was very outspoken. was targeted by the terrorists who wanted to unite Cyprus with Greece. It was a British crown colony at the time, so my father was actually born a British subject in 1928. And I still have his old British passport issued by the colonial authorities in Cyprus in 1948. So I was born in the middle of the 1950s and I grew up during the 1960s, which was a rather turbulent time, if you know from your ancient history. books perhaps. Richard Nixon, was vice president at the time, spoke in my hometown and my parents took us to see him during the 1960 presidential election. They were supporters of Nixon. Kennedy, of course, ended up winning. the most traumatic early political memory of mine was, of course, the assassination of John Kennedy on the 22nd of November 1963. part of that generation, the baby boom generation, that knows exactly what we were doing when we heard the dreadful news on the television. I was eight years old at the time, very, just a horrific thing to see his children left as orphans, the president's children, John and Caroline. And of course, a few years later, there were race riots in the large cities, including the west side of Chicago, which went up in and spoke during the long hot summers in the mid-1960s. There was a Vietnam War taking place. In 1968 saw the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Again, I know exactly what I was doing when I heard that news. And then, course, Bobby Kennedy a few months later when he was running for the presidency. know, growing up at that time, you could not... possibly but have an interest in politics because it was all around us. And I had a lot of different interests when I was growing up, so there was no inevitability that I would follow politics as closely as I have done over the last, well, more than 50 years now. But I was interested in art. I developed the ability to draw and paint when I was quite small. I come from a very musical family. In fact, my final year in high school I had decided to major in music at the university that I was going to attend. And then that coincided, there were two events that coincided with the first year of my university experience. I studied at place that's now called Bethel University in St. Paul, It's a Christian university associated with a Scandinavian Baptist denomination. I sang with the college choir the first year. I took two and Semesters of Music Theory, but that year saw the explosion of the Watergate scandal into public awareness. And all throughout the autumn of 1973 and into the winter and spring of 1974, I followed Watergate quite closely, and I was quite incensed that a President of the United States would and try to subvert the Constitution in order to hold on to power. Yes, boy! But then that same summer, 1974, just between the two years that I was my first and second year at university, saw the more trouble break out in the island of Cyprus where all of my relatives were living at the time. As a result of the events of that year, Turkey landed a military flotilla on the north side of Cyprus. And in August, right around the time that Nixon resigned from the presidency, and while Americans were looking the other way, Turkey took the opportunity to expand its foothold in the island and to take over 37 % of the island. And my relatives were living in a neighborhood a neighborhood called Varosha in the city of Famagusta on the east coast of Cyprus. And they lost everything. They had to flee in front of the Turkish military, including my elderly grandparents who were born in the last two decades of the 19th century. And that was a personally traumatic experience for everybody in my family. I was working for my dad that summer. About two weeks passed when we did not hear from my relatives. We had no idea what had happened to them. Long before the internet, with social media now, we can follow everything very closely the minute that's happening. But two weeks past before we heard from my father's family, his elder brother, his eldest brother sent a message on my father's Telex machine. A Telex machine is kind of in between the telegram and invented by Robert and so forth, email. And it simply said, well. And that's how we knew that they had lost everything, they had to start over again, but we knew that they had survived, and a lot of people did not in the troubles of that time. The very next year I decided to switch my major from music to political science, and that's what I have followed ever since then. I love that. And I think your life experiences is really going to help you answer my next question. Because I think that all of our political ideologies, DNA of who we are, I would argue is probably the culmination of our life experiences, much like you your passion to pursue political science was kind of driven because of all the things that you just mentioned. And I'd be interested to hear like, you know, how or why, it's probably more how, like how does your political identity color your, you know, your spiritual identity if it does at all? And I think that kind of ties a little bit into some of your writings in your book that you just wrote recently. right right well i have I would be hard pressed to identify myself politically. I know that there are various ideological labels that people use to describe themselves. And I went through a short period when I was an undergraduate of calling myself a socialist because I thought that was the thing to be. And I saw that there seemed to be connections between the Bible's concern for the poor and the oppressed and what... socialists we're trying to bring about as well. As it turns out, think that identity lasted about six months. And of course at that age, when you're about 19, 20, 21, your identities can change rather quickly. And of course as you're learning, as you're reading more, as you're growing, we change. And of course I think that's the age probably at which we change the most quickly, and perhaps the most dramatically. I think I saw myself as changing quite radically when I was about maybe 20, 21 years old. But in many respects I think what I was experiencing was more of simply a personal maturation and seeing things that I did not see when I was a child or when I was in my teens. And so, I think I went through a period of vacillating between idealism and cynicism. And I described that in this new book of mine, Citizen. without illusions. I talk a little bit about my own pilgrimage in the early chapters, being cynical about what was happening in politics in the United States during the Watergate scandal, but then also having this really strong sense of idealism as well. And it slowly dawned on me that neither idealism nor cynicism made for a very firm foundation for the exercise of faithful citizenship. And so I eventually grew beyond that, but it did have an impact on me as I was growing up. I went through a kind of young and angry phase. I think there were times when I had difficulty praying. But I never abandoned my faith. It was simply too strong in me. I've had a very strong sense since I was a small child of God's presence, and it's not something that I could easily shake. I've had some rather uncanny experiences over the decades that I didn't really see as being extraordinary until I was well into adulthood and I began putting two and two together and seeing how the Lord has led in my own life and the lives of the people around me. And I think that's had an impact on my attitude towards politics, but I think towards the whole of life. Yeah, I'm curious if any of your life experiences have tugged maybe on your faith and your spiritual journey. And I'm going to steal something from... I was listening. talking about aim and like where where we should aim and, you know, so specifically for anybody out there that, know, shoots guns or whatever. And I know that that might be a hard, a harder topic to talk about in Canada. But like here in the United States, like everybody has a gun, right? So so like if you're if you're aiming at a target, there's a lot of different things that are going to affect. the trajectory of that bullet. It could be the temperature, like the hot air could perhaps make the bullet rise a little bit higher. Maybe how you pull the trigger might actually affect the left or right motion of that bullet. The bullet's still going to travel down range. It may not hit the target, but at least it's traveling in that direction. And I oftentimes feel like people's faith within the United States is kind of like that bullet. that nobody's gonna do it perfectly. There's one person in the Bible that did it perfectly, you know, but, and there's gonna be all these different things that are gonna kind of pull on that bullet to make it not hit the target adequately. So like in your journey, like what were those things maybe kind of pulling, if there was anything pulling at all on your faith and the trajectory that you thought it was gonna go. Well, that's... that's... That's difficult to say. think maybe one experience that really had an impact on me was the birth of our daughter at 26 weeks gestational age, which is very, very early. She was due in February of 1999, but she was born just at the very beginning of November in 1998. And she was in hospital for 10 and a half weeks after that, first starting out at McMaster that we had in Canada. was in the middle of January. she was... She was being released. She was still very small at the time that she was released from hospital. And we were snowed in and we realized we had to be there. I ended up calling a student of mine on campus and I said, Michael, do think you could come and help us? He came over, he brought a couple of friends and they had us out of there in no time. Michael is still a great friend of mine. I just visited him a couple of weeks ago. I just love the man. And I think that's one of the things that happened. In terms of political events, there was, of course, the 9-11 attacks. It's hard to believe that we're coming up on a quarter of a century since those occurred. There have been personal events that have happened as well. have tendency to struggle with depression throughout most of my life. you And I went through a particularly bad spout of depression in 2006, just 18 years ago. And I can tell you a story about that because I was feeling really quite poorly sitting at the table. Our daughter was still pretty young at the time. She was about seven years old. And I was sitting with her at the table. After supper we would read her a story or something like that. And then she looked at me and just out of the blue she said, Daddy, God will give you healing in the name of Jesus Christ." And I thought, what? And she was flustered and she didn't want to repeat it. said, Teresa, what did you just say? Repeat what you just said to me. She says, Daddy, God will give you healing in name of Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, I'm going to get a little bit choked up here. And if somebody else had told me that, I would have said, thank you. I said, thank you, as an expression of support. But coming from the mouth of my seven-year-old daughter... And I don't think she quite realized the gravity of what I was going through at the time. I thought, God could not have chosen a better way to address me in what I was going through at that time. And I've had several... things happened to me like that, some uncanny experiences, beginning when I was about five years old, you know, and those sort of things have really had a profound impact on me over the decades. And as I said, it wasn't until I was well into adulthood that I could look back and trace a pattern with all of these things that have happened to me over the last nearly seven decades. So I know that God is with me and people who are agnostic or atheists, that's a bigger stretch for me. You know, there are some people who struggle to believe. For me, it's the opposite. know, somebody were to tell me, my maternal grandfather was an agnostic and I could never quite understand him. I could never understand him, you know, because it's just so far from my experience. It's not something that I could resonate with. Yeah, I totally understand that. And I've had similar experiences with my children that have set things out of the blue that have just like completely blown my mind. I really resonate with that. know, thinking about your book and the idea of citizenship without illusion, which is a really interesting title to me, I would love for you to... to explain the thesis of this book and what is it that you're really trying to get at? What's the main thrust of the book and why is it important for us to wrestle with this topic? Yeah. Well first let me explain the title because I wrote a book, this was at the It was published in 2003, the first edition. It's called Political Visions and Illusions. so the illusions in the title of this next book, Citizenship Without Illusions, is an allusion to the title of the first book. the Political Visions and Illusions went into a second edition five years ago. So it has sold quite well since then. It was endorsed by the Reverend Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. That's awesome. City and it sold quite well after that point. He's one of the people that in the acknowledgments in this next book I recognize that his... his role in helping to disseminate the message of my first book, which I'm very, grateful for. So a few years ago I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in North Carolina and he used to teach at a seminary in North Carolina and I came down a few times and guest lectured for him. And then I was talking to him on the phone at one point and he said, said, David, I think you ought to consider writing a book about citizenship. And I thought, that's interesting. thought about that before but I thought, okay, well let's see what I can do. then in the meantime, then the pandemic took place and then all of these Zoom-like platforms like we're using right now, know, this isn't Zoom, but it's, you know, all of these, you know, helped to aid in my work because all of a sudden I was speaking to people around the world, especially in Brazil. So my first book was translated into Portuguese, it was also translated into Spanish as well. so I started working on taking notes towards this book around, I guess it was about two or three years ago. And then in September of 2022, our whole family got COVID, And I was also suffering from frozen shoulder, quite intense pain. stuffing from... you don't want to know. Believe me, you don't want to know. it's just extremely painful. Yeah, it's just extremely painful. was very difficult for me to move. And so while I was doing that, I was typing away on my computer and coming up with a proposal to send to IVP. And so I did that in late 2022, January of 2023. They accepted the proposal, I signed the contract and then I started writing it. And my first two books took seven years apiece to write. This one took only a few months because it really is in many respects the combination of my teaching experience. 30 years of teaching. So it's based on conversations that I had with students, people who, and other people around the world. So people who read my first book about political ideologies and about the connection between political ideologies and idolatry, and they would look at that, read the book and they say, wow, people told me they were blown away by the book. And they said, well, what do do with all of this? How do I vote? How do I get involved in the political process? How do I discharge my responsibilities as a citizen and a follower of Jesus Christ? So that's what this new book is all about. I don't want to say that I have all the answers because I don't. None of us has all the answers. But I do try to stimulate people to talk about and to consider some of the elements of what it means to be a good citizen of our respective political communities. Yeah, so how would you respond to a believer who is politically engaged and wants to utilize the Bible as kind of the authority to kind of help them reconcile with a particular issue when they may have a political opponent or someone that's from a different political party think something completely the opposite, and they justify it by their interpretation of the Bible. Because I feel like that's, I mean, if you can answer that question, you'll solve faith and politics issues all across the world. dear, I think you're talking to the wrong person. Well, I think we have to be careful how we use the Bible in the first place. I would not want to call myself a political theologian. I know that there are people who have given me that title. political theologian, because I think I'm a political scientist, that's what my degrees are in. have undergraduate and graduate degrees, PhD in government and international studies from the University of Notre Dame. The Bible is not a handbook for political practice. I think that's the first thing that I would want to emphasize. So if you are going into practical politics, you're not going to read the Bible as a kind of guidebook for political practice. Now, I think the Bible does have relevance. I wouldn't want to say that it's completely irrelevant because it's not. It's extremely relevant. But I think the key to understanding that is found in Psalm 119 verse 105. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Repeat that again, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. That's one of the Bible verses I had to memorize as a small child, of course in the King James version. But I think it tells us that we are walking a path, we are walking a path of obedience, and the way is not always clear before us. And so the Scriptures... are the light that we shine before the path in order to illumine the path that we are walking. Otherwise we're going to trip, otherwise we're not going to be able to see adequately. It's like stumbling around in the dark. The Scriptures brighten the path before us. They do not give us the data of political science or political practice any more than the Scriptures will give us the data of biology or physics or sociology or... psychology or anything or those lines. We still have to do the hard work of developing the special sciences, the special disciplines, as it were, and the various areas of life that we find ourselves. But we do so in an obedient way, always under the watchful light, the watchful eyes of God and shining the light of His Word before us on the path ahead of us. And I think that's what we need to do. We don't sit down and say, How am going to live my life? Let's open the Bible and find out. We're already walking. Ever since we began to walk as small children, we are walking the path. And as we grow up, we begin to recognize our own sins. We begin to recognize that we are walking the path imperfectly. That's why we need to immerse ourselves in the Word of God. Yeah. So I'm in the middle of working with a pastor, excuse me, about the idea of the citizenship in heaven, kingdom of God. We were doing a series on the kingdom of God and thinking about that idea that Paul says we have citizenship in heaven. Right. And specifically talking to this colony, Roman colony in Philippi, people that took pride in their Roman citizenship, that they were able to obtain one of the cities that Rome favored in the ancient world. And he's directly hitting the issue of citizenship, which Paul was a Roman citizen, which of course came with all sorts of benefits at some level. And But I always kind of thought, you know, obviously it's not the same history. Roma citizenship isn't the same as American citizenship, but it's analogous in some way that as an American citizen or maybe a citizen of Canada or the West, there's a sense of superiority, honestly, in some way. And yet our citizenship as Christians or people of faith our citizenship in the kingdom of God operates under different rules, so to speak, different priorities, maybe is a better way to put it, and virtues. How do we navigate the tension of being citizens of this kingdom of America? Or, I mean, literally you have a king, I guess, in Canada, which is like, what? You Yeah, the king writes, how do we navigate this citizenship, which essentially is supposed to be dual citizenship between the kingdom of God and our nation of origin, country of origin. And yet that dual citizenship isn't supposed to be equal. It's supposed to be one takes priority over the other. How do we navigate that? Well, with considerable fear and trembling. I'll tell you that. I do address that in this next book, so there's a chapter devoted to when kingdoms collide. What happens when the Kingdom of God, our loyalty, our overarching allegiance to the Kingdom of God collides with the expectations of our earthly political rulers? In the West, we have not had to deal with that, at least for very long time, although that may come. If we are living in China, for example, which maybe by 2030, China may be the largest Christian country in the world, having more Christians. At the present time, there are more Christians in China than there are human beings in Canada. So, you know, about 40 million Canadians, people living in Canada, and there are many more Christians living in China than there are human beings living in Canada. Apparently, in Iran, fewer than 50 % of Iranians consider themselves to be Muslim anymore. And the Gospel is spreading. Iran, there may be over a million Iranian Christians now, and many of them are claiming to have seen visions of Jesus Christ, things that we can't even possibly fathom. And in those countries, to live an obedient life before the face of God and to recognize our citizens' citizenship in an earthly kingdom. There are Christians all over the world who have had to negotiate that in some way. The Reverend Wang Yi features in my book as well, the pastor of the Early Rain Church in Chengdu, China. A huge city which many Westerners don't even know exists. And he's in jail right now. He converted to Christianity about 20 years ago. And he's become a hero of the faith, a giant amongst Christians who has willingly gone to prison in China than to forsake the Gospel. And there are many people who have had to do that. Other people live in countries where there's chronic corruption. Brazil is such a country. I've made quite a lot of connections in Brazil over the last... not quite 15 years. And I love the Brazilian people and there are very many Christians in Brazil. The gospel again is spreading. The church is growing in Brazil, unlike in North America where it seems to be contracting. But in Brazil and in most countries in the world, the gospel is spreading quite rapidly. And Brazilians want to be able to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship as Christians as well. But what happens if If you have two candidates or two parties, both of whom are corrupt in some way or both of whom are fatally flawed in some way, how do we go about voting? I just wrote something several weeks ago on my blog about how do we vote when my vote is sure to make things worse, no matter what I do. That's the million dollar question right there, David. It is. It is as... yeah, absolutely. That's right. Yeah. How is politics connected to religion in Canada, if at all? And if you could, how does that compare to sort of the intermixing that seems to be ubiquitous here in America? In Canada, it's very much low-key. We don't have the same kind of public piety in Canada that Americans do. But even in the United States, I don't think the Piety was quite as explicit until about 1976 when Jimmy Carter, when he was running for the presidency, claimed to be a born-again Christian. I don't think any president had ever, even Woodrow Wilson, who was a devout Presbyterian, a devout reformed Christian who thought he was going to establish this League of Nations that would bring peace to the world, even Jimmy Carter claimed to be a born-again Christian. And I think it was after that point that you start to see this mixing of political rhetoric with religious rhetoric in the United States. Canada, virtually unknown. Wow. You know, so when I'm thinking about the political ideologies, you know, I'm sure that you have followed the politics of America and what's happening in the Republican Party in America. We have been pretty outspoken on this podcast. I voted for Donald Trump in 2016. I didn't in 2020. I don't intend to in 2024. And I'm thankful for that vote. I don't judge people that do vote for Donald Trump. I don't judge people that vote for Kamala Harris. Or Kamala Harris, right? Am I saying it wrong? If I say Kamala, am I a racist? Well, he's like my racist-o-meter. don't think you pronouncing her name will determine whether or not you're a racist. That's already been determined in other ways. But I don't have any judgment for people like this is America. I want people to be able to vote their conscience, vote how they want. And yet it seems like these trends of Christian nationalism that have always kind of been there at some level. And I hear what you're saying about it became very what public and known under Jimmy Carter, which is a really interesting idea to me. But what they can be very, very seductive. Right. These ideologies can be very seductive. They can they can command our ultimate allegiance. We mix them together with, hey, we need political power. The church needs political power. This certain religion needs political power. Why? So we can bring about whatever it is that this God wants, right? And they become seductive to us. And how can we discern when we have an ideology, we have something that we, you know, a way that we vote, a way of seeing the world? How do we know when that's crossed into idolatry as believers? and that's something that every single one of us has to weigh in our hearts. So my first book, Political Visions and Illusions, I make a connection between the various ideologies, whether they're considered left or right or centrist or what have you, and idolatry. So liberalism, for example, is synonymous with individualism. Individual freedom is a very good thing, but think liberalism errs in making too much of it. That everything revolves around the individual at the expense of the communities of which we are a part. think socialism wants to have communal ownership of property. That's a very good thing, again, but we already have communal ownership of property. We have multiple communities that own property. Socialism wants to try to amalgamate all that into a single community. And of course, it usually ends up being the state or party dominates. if we think of the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. Each of the ideologies fastens onto something that's right, but they make too much of that. And of course, that's the classic definition of ideology. That we esteem too highly the gifts that God has given us, and we try to replace the giver with the gift. And so, you know, if you read my first book, Political Visions and Illusions, it's not the kind of book that will lend itself well to kind of culture warrior type of strategy. Because what I'm telling us, I'm telling the readers is that we need to look at our own hearts. Don't just look at somebody else and say, you know, they're devilish, they're demonic. And of course there are some Christian leaders that will point to a politician and say, they're demonic. I don't think we can do that. And I think we need to look into our own hearts first and to see where have we gone astray. And we need to listen to each other and to communicate with each other and to try to correct each other. And I think we need to do that politically, but I think we need to do that in every area of life. I hope that as parents we get together with other parents and... how should we say, compare notes as to how we're raising our children? Because it may be that we have much to learn from other parents in terms of marriage. Are there ways that we can improve our marriage? We need to compare notes with other people, our Christian brothers and sisters, to see if we can improve our marriages in some way. So if we have to do it with politics, I think we have to do it with the rest of life as well. I have a burning question that I've been meaning to ask somebody exactly like you. As a person that has studied political science for as long as you have, also being a believer, someone that understands, knows the Bible. One of my biggest, I don't know if I'd say biggest pet peeves, but it's one of those things, I'll see a meme on social media where they're like, Jesus was a socialist, you know, or, and then you'll have a bunch of people saying that he wasn't, and then he was, and I'm not a theologian at all, so I mean, that's an area that I'm not very comfortable swimming in, nor is like the... the formation of these systems of government. So I want to ask you, based on your understanding, and maybe we'll just stick to the New Testament for now, is there a government philosophy that closely aligns with the kingdom that Jesus wants us to have? I think yes, but I think it's to talk about a form of government as being the one that God favors I think would be a mistake. know, the United States lives in a federal republic. Canada is a federal constitutional monarchy. in many respects. Is one better than the other? No. There are simply different ways of organizing a constitution, a political system. But is each framed in such a way that it will do public justice to the full diversity of our societies? And I think that's the question that needs to be asked. a particular constitutional system that disperses power amongst different people. I think that is something that has ample biblical foundation. Thomas Aquinas talked about a kind of mixed constitution that would combine the best of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and that would have lower magistrates that would be authorized to check the power of the supreme magistrate. John Calvin said something very similar. Johannes Althusius, was a Reformed Christian political philosopher in the early 17th century, said something very similar to that. Abraham Kuyper in the Netherlands, who's been a big influence on me and my writing. The idea that it's best to have power dispersed amongst different office holders who will be able to check each other. That's something that the American founders understood. something that Canada's fathers of confederation understood almost a century later. In many respects, think that both of our countries, our constitutions have become dangerously unbalanced for reasons that I don't need to get into here, but I have an article that I've submitted that goes into that in a bit more detail. Well, I mean, you can always get into that here if you want, because we love talking about that stuff. Yeah, go ahead. respects, one of the ideologies that I deal with in my first book is democratism. Now your spell checks won't recognize the word. They'll underline it in blue or red or whatever your particular software does. But it's a neologism. I don't think I invented it. But it's the idea of making too much out of democracy. So in many respects in the United States, since the beginning of the 20th century, there has been an effort to democratize as much of the system as we possibly can. And Canada is not that far behind because we've tried to do exactly the same thing. So the United States Senate would be popularly elected as of the 17th Amendment in 1913. The presidency was supposed to be elected by an electoral college that were representatives of the states. It's become almost like it's popularly elected, but not exactly. In some ways, I think the presidential election has some of the the worst features of a popular election and lack some of the best features of it, unfortunately. But I think if we try to democratize a candidate selection process, we end up with candidates that can win a beauty contest, if you will, a popularity contest, but they haven't been sufficiently vetted by officials in their own parties. So prior to about 50 some years ago, the different political parties, they would have their political conventions. There were primary elections, but not very many of them. Primary elections were simply to test a candidate to see if he could win an election. But then the convention delegates would choose who would be the party's standard bearer going into the election. You would have local officials such as Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley deciding, going over candidates in these smoke-filled rooms, as it were, we need to bring back the smoke-filled rooms, deciding Is this person qualified to run the country? They would eliminate people who were unqualified. That vetting stage was eliminated for all practical purposes by 1972, and it has not done the American political system any favors. Excessive democracy facilitates Napoleonic politics, in which you'll have a leader who comes to power and saying, I can cut through all the crap here because I have the people behind me. Now there's one leader right now, one candidate who's really good at doing that, but there are others waiting in the wings. And there are others who could do that as well. So I mean, I want to dig into that a little bit if we can. like, it seems like that our political system in America is not really well suited to get the best candidate. Not anymore it isn't. No. But it was. So help me understand that again. So because when I think of smoke filled rooms, people smoking their cigars, deciding that that makes me think of elitism. That makes me think of, why can they do that? So make the case. Help me understand why that is an important thing for like our political system, even to, you know, can. to return to, to maybe even go back to something like that. because I, as an ordinary citizen, even one with a PhD in political science, am not qualified to judge specific candidates as to whether they're qualified or not. I don't think you would ever want to, if you were on trial, you would want to make sure that your lawyer had passed the bar. You would want to make sure that the person was qualified to represent you in a court of law. If you're going into hospital for surgery, you want to make pretty well sure that that doctor has a medical degree and is an experienced surgeon and knows what he or she is doing. vote? absolutely not. See, this is the moment of truth in various kinds of elitisms. And it's not just one single elite, but we have a number of people, lower magistrates, which John Calvin talked about, Thomas Aquinas talked about. Most of the Christian tradition, the Western tradition, right up until the modern age, would talk about lower magistrates who would be authorized to check the power of the supreme magistrate. So, in Canada we have something called responsible government. If the government of the day, led by the prime minister, loses the confidence of the House of Commons, then he has to tender his government's resignation to the king's representative, the governor-general. In the United States there's impeachment, but unfortunately it is very difficult to get members of Congress to agree on impeachable grounds for a president. I think that's one reform that badly needs to be made. The president would have to commit some act of treason, a heinous act of treason at that, in order to be removed, and even then partisanship might get in the way. I think there should be a realistic chance of Congress removing a president just to keep the president in line. Perhaps that needs to be codified in some fashion. But I think in that respect there needs to be, when the country is going into an election, needs to be, there need to be the smoke-filled rooms have to be there. Presumably the tobacco habit is not as ubiquitous as it once was. And I think, dear. have had that for a while. dear, you're about five or six years now, that's right. But yeah, people who are in the know, who know more than I do, even as a political scientist with a PhD in the subject, there need to be people who will vet a candidate and decide whether that person is qualified, whether they are persons of integrity, whether they are honest, and also whether they can win elections, but that's not the only consideration. I have a bit of a confession in that I love Canada and happy Thanksgiving, by the way, or late Thanksgiving. And I have a lot of Canadian friends and it's always fascinating to speak with them because I enjoy... reading about global politics. mean, American politics is interesting too, but it's like, I want to know what's happening in Sudan or Ukraine or just some of these other hotspots around the world. And I swear I have met more Canadians that could explain American politics to me than I have met Americans that can explain Canadian politics. yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That goes without saying. And I'm curious, like, is Canadian politics just boring or are American politics just, like, so bonkers that you're like, it's like watching reality TV? Canadian politics is boring and we glory in the boring character of our politics. You know, the Americans have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have, from our Constitution Act 1867, we have peace, order, and good government. So those are very modest goals that we aim at. I feel like we're just scratching the surface of your expertise, you know, and we're coming up, you know, it's been 54 minutes. And so we're going to have to like do another episode or something if you'll do it and just dig into some of these big questions, because I am just I am fascinated by the idea. Like I just have felt for so long. It's just so messed up. Our political system is so messed up. And I hear people say to me like this, there's this almost mythology about American constitutionalism. Now, I'm a fan of the Constitution, but there's this mythology about it that it's the perfect system, right? Or that it's like our American way, but you... the way you just explained it, it's like, yeah, it's a terrible idea to just say, hey, whoever can get the most votes and can do essentially creating a system that incentivizes doing everything you can to just get votes and not about having character, not about having competence, not about having some kind of real virtue. And it's like, Now we're in this place where we have this extremely powerful country that has this political system that it just feels like it's off the rails right now. How would you evaluate, I would love to get your honest evaluation of the American political system right now and how you think, and you can even connect it to your book as much as you So you can, but how can we move forward? What kind of changes need to happen? Are they even possible? Yeah, well from my book I make a case for something called proportional representation. and proportional representation is used in most of the world's democracies but not in the English speaking democracies except for New Zealand. They had a crisis in the 1990s that moved them in this direction but proportional representation means that if a particular political party gets say 45 % of the vote they get approximately 45 % of the seats in the legislature. If another party gets 15 % of the vote, they get 15 % of the seats in the legislature. So Germany has something like this. France has a little bit of a different system. Scotland now uses proportional representation for elections to the Scottish Parliament. Hungary, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, as I said, most of the countries of the world, Scandinavian countries and so forth. think it would allow the way that things are set up right now, the two major political parties are artificially propped up, the Democrats and the Republicans. I firmly believe that the Democratic and Republican parties are diseased parodies of their former selves. And I put that in my book. thought an editor was going to flag that, but they didn't. They allowed it to stand. But proportional representation would allow parties that have had their day to die and to be replaced by other parties. it would introduce a needed element of flexibility into the political process because right now the American system is the party system is so brittle it's in danger of breaking. Just letting that sink in, by the way. Seriously. I mean, I think we feel that. think Will and I, with the people that we've talked to, with the authors and thinkers and political scientists and researchers and journalists, there's this sense that, you know... what's going on right now. It just and it does what you just said about being like this really I mean I I'm going to butcher it but this basically brittle and almost like weak version of their former selves. I I feel that I feel that in the Republican Party. I don't feel like it's my party anymore. I think conservatism that's just like. That's just like a, you know, a catchword. It's just a buzzword. And it's like, I'm conservative and I'm, you know, and whatever I define that to mean and whatever crazy conspiracy theories I can throw out there, that's now what conservatism is. And it's mind boggling and it's maddening for me. And I know for some other people like me, what do you think? like moving forward, what gives you hope? Like obviously you wrote this book for a reason. You wanted people to catch the idea behind it, the main thrust of it for a reason. Why is it so important and what gives you hope for the future? I guess, you know, this is going to sound very hackneyed, you I'm a Christian, I believe that Jesus Christ is our ultimate hope. And I think if we can manage to keep our eyes on Him, even if we are tempted to follow one of these political ideologies, if we can recognize the good but also the bad in a political ideology and to keep our eyes on Jesus Christ, that's really the source of my hope. I'm hoping that books like mine will get into the right hands. People will read them and say, wow, we have to do something. This is really important, being a citizen and looking out for our neighbors, our compatriots, our fellow citizens. That's part of what we're supposed to do as those who have been saved through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yeah, I really love that. How can people get a hold of the book? How can they get it and how can they follow your work and whatever you have coming up? I'm part of an organization called Global Scholars Canada. You can find me fairly easily. There is no other David Koizes on earth. Very unlikely. It was a name that my father basically made up in 1943 and there's a story behind that. But there were no surnames on the island of Cyprus until about 1960s. But I have a blog that's called Notes from a Byzantine Rite Calvinist. And so if you look that, Google it or whatever, it in a search engine, you'll find it pretty easily. And I do, I post on that. I'm going to have a Global Scholars Monthly Newsletter coming out tomorrow for those who would like to be on the... on the list to receive it, or else you can simply find it and read it online, whatever you want. But that's where you can find information about my book, about where you can buy it, and my other books as well. Well, thank you so much for coming on the program with us today, David. It's been a pleasure. And to our audience, this has been Dr. David Koizis. We want to make sure you guys go check out the book, grab it, Citizenship Without Illusion through InterVarsity Press. we'll put there it is, Citizenship Without Illusions. And we'll put links to all of that in the show notes. and we're thankful for this opportunity. Again, make sure you like and subscribe. Please follow our work so we can keep getting this out there for other people to see and experience. And until we see you next time, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. God bless you guys. Take care. 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