Welcome to the Academics Corner! CPJ’s ongoing series sharing the good work that Christian academics are doing to promote public justice from their research to the lecture hall.
EC: What prompted you to write a book on citizenship?
DK: There were a couple of things that happened a few years ago. I was talking to my good friend, Bruce Ashford, who at the time was the Provost at Southeastern Baptist Seminary, and having read and liked my first book Political Visions and Illusions he urged me to write another book about citizenship. It was in 2022 that I first made a proposal to InterVarsity Press, which was the publisher of my first book and they wanted more information from me. So I actually wrote a couple of chapters of the book and I submitted it to them. Then I heard back in January that they were going to publish it, so I signed a contract and started working on the book. It took me just a few months to write because it really is a summation of my 30 years of teaching political science at the undergraduate level. So there’s a lot of myself and my own experience in this book.
The second thing that prompted me to write it was the fact that Political Visions and Illusions had sold pretty well, especially after Tim Keller endorsed it. The people who read the book also responded favorably. People acknowledged the weight of the material. It prompted questions like how do we live as citizens of our respective political communities and the Kingdom of God? And how do we do that in such a way that takes into account the things that were mentioned in the first book?
EC: What illusions about citizenship do you think that Americans are particularly prone to? Are there particular illusions for young adults?
DK: The illusions in this title Citizenship Without Illusions is an allusion to the title of my first book, Political Visions and Illusions. In that first book, my thesis is that each of the ideologies is religious in nature. It’s based on taking something in God’s world and elevating it to the position of a surrogate god. And in the second edition of that book, I unpacked it a bit more and talked about the salvation stories that are included in each of the ideologies. And so those are the illusions that I’m talking about in the first book.
But then in the second book I carry through with that, because the question is, then, given that the major political parties are in the throes of some kind of political ideology, how do we live out our lives before the face of God politically as citizens recognizing that these idolatrous worldviews are all about us? I think in the reformed tradition of Christianity in particular, there’s an emphasis on avoiding idolatry. To give our whole lives over to God and to live out our lives in gratitude for our salvation in Jesus Christ. And that includes politics, although obviously it’s not restricted to politics. Everything we do from our family life to our life in our neighborhoods, our lives in our workplaces, and our leisure activities, all of these have an important role to play in our life. And we are expected to live out our lives in each of these areas in a way that is glorifying to God. And so that’s what this next book is for. To try to help people to unpack this. To work through this in their own lives and in the lives of their communities.
EC: How do you think your identity as an American and, if you consider yourself a Canadian now, has shaped your perspective on the concept of citizenship? Are there significant differences between the ways that Americans and Canadians see their citizenship?
DK: I was born in the United States and I’m still a U.S. citizen but I became a Canadian citizen around 30 years ago. So, I devote one of the sections in this next book to dual citizenship and consider whether that’s a legitimate concept because it raises questions about whether one can be loyal to two political communities simultaneously. I think you can, but it is also true that as we live a normal life we are caught between several loyalties. I’m expected to be faithful to my wife, a good father to our adult daughter, a good brother to my siblings, and a good member of my church. We are embedded in a variety of communities and within each of those communities we bear an authoritative office, but none of those exhausts who we are as human beings created in God’s image.
To be created in God’s image means that we have multiple tasks and responsibilities for the communities we are a part of, and not all of those communities are the ones that we choose. I did not choose my parents. They did not choose me either. I did choose my wife, but I’m only two generations removed from arranged marriages, like my grandparents’ in Cyprus. But we still have an obligation to communities that we have not chosen, and we do so out of gratitude. Likewise, citizenship is something that for the most part we do not choose. We are born into citizenship, and it is not something we should take for granted. We should be grateful for it, and that means that we should willingly fulfill our responsibilities towards these communities that have nurtured us.
EC: So in the introduction to your book, you write, “A strong sense of loyalty to a political community is needed if citizens are to fulfill willingly the responsibilities that accompany citizenship. Citizenship is not only about rights and the protection of those rights. Any membership comes with a set of responsibilities for the community of which you are a part.”
Many people view the extent of their citizenship as exercising their right to vote and in your book you push back on this notion and offer a broader vision of citizenship. What are those responsibilities, namely?
DK: Well, there are all sorts of responsibilities, and not all of them are necessarily overtly political. In the book, I mention three Romanian Christians, and one of them was put in prison. He had only a Bible with him and a notebook, and he used that opportunity to put all 150 of the Psalms into verse. A friend of his who was a musician, was able to put those songs to music so that they could be sung. This collection was not published until the turn of the millennium almost half a century later. You wouldn’t necessarily think that setting the Psalms to verse was a political act, but in the context of Romania that was becoming Communist I think that that was something that planted seeds for a future generation that would come along half a century later and be able to sing the Psalms. Singing the Psalms arguably would be a way of changing the political culture for many Romanians who would be attached to the church in some way.
But also cleaning up your neighborhood, trying to get rid of litter, or doing something to help the homeless population. There are many people I have taught over the last 30 years, who have been involved in trying to better their communities, sometimes even at the national level. I have some former students who were working for members of Parliament in Ottawa, in think tanks, and with the Christian Labour Association of Canada as labor representatives. All of these are examples of citizens getting involved in improving their communities and improving the lives of the people they come into contact with.
EC: Why is it important for people, and especially Christians, to understand the responsibilities that come with citizenship?
DK: Well, I could give you an easy answer — because God expects us to. We have instructions in the Bible about the spiritual core of how to live our lives in the Ten Commandments. These represent the outer fences beyond which you should not go if you want to live a good life. Inside those fences, there is a whole array of activities and all sorts of things that you can be engaging in. God has given us work to do in His creation, and that’s something that we should do with gratitude, recognizing that in so doing we are living out our multiple callings as those created in God’s image, and saved through the blood of Jesus Christ.
EC: In chapter 4, one of the questions you pose is, “What are the implications of the Kingdom of God for political life in a religiously diverse state?” For those who will read this interview and have not yet read your book, can you give us a preview as to how you answer that question?
DK: There have been many Christians who have believed that somehow we are supposed to usher in the Kingdom of God or build the Kingdom of God on earth. There was a movement at the beginning of the last century, called the Social Gospel. It was predicated on the assumption that somehow we were responsible for building God’s kingdom on earth. And there was a great deal of optimism that came along with it and it tended to be associated with socialist policies as well. That all basically came crashing down as a consequence of the Great War with scores of millions of people who died for apparently no good reason as European countries were engaging in this massive bloodletting from 1914 to 1918.
But I don’t think we are responsible for building the Kingdom of God. I think we are responsible for being agents of God’s kingdom — that’s a higher loyalty. Our primary loyalty is to God and to his kingdom. Throughout the Gospels we have Jesus proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand. We are agents of the Kingdom of God, and as such, God may use us to advance His kingdom. But it’s not really within our control because God will bring his kingdom to fruition in his good time in his own way and use the various movements of people throughout history to bring that about.
EC: Four years ago, and even eight years ago after the last presidential elections, I remember hearing people exclaim something to the effect of “this is not my President” upon hearing the election results. With the polarization we see in the U.S., why is a sense of belonging so important to an understanding of citizenship and how might that change the way we view voting and politics more broadly?
DK: The electoral system that is in place in most English-speaking democracies including Canada and the United States, is called a “Single Member Plurality” or “First Past the Post.” Given that electoral system, it is often the case that when it comes to voting, you are choosing the candidate or the party that you think will do the least harm.
So I probably represent very many North Americans who have never really cast a vote with enthusiasm. It’s usually more about deciding between two equally unappealing choices. If this were a country like Germany or the Netherlands or Belgium, where there’s proportional representation, it would be far more likely that a party you supported would get some representation in a parliamentary body. Then you would probably say, “Okay, these are the people that I want to contribute to public policy,” recognizing that they are probably not going to form a majority government and that they at most will be contributing to the policy process along with other political parties.
That’s not the way things work in either Canada or the United States though. So generally, we try to pick the bad candidate who we think will be marginally better than his or her opponent. I’m not going to say that this is the way to cement your feeling of solidarity with your fellow citizens, but it’s at least one element of exercising citizenship responsibly in a democratic polity. But it’s not the only one, and it may not even be the most important one.
EC: So after the election, it might be easy to think that our citizenship and responsibilities are over for the next two years. How might you encourage your fellow Christians to rethink their responsibilities beyond just voting?
DK: I would encourage them to read my book, to begin with, but apart from that, I would say that they need to start locally. That’s one of the things I discovered as I was writing this book. I found as I was writing that rather than focusing on, say, the national level or the global level, I found myself focusing much more heavily on the local level. If we start at the local level, we will be able to see the results of our contributions more easily. Whereas if we were to focus on the national level, we’re just one of roughly 40 million in Canada or in the United States one of roughly 330 million people. So I’m very much convinced that the local level is the place to start. You don’t end there, but it’s the place to start.
EC: In your book, you discuss some of the competing responsibilities of citizens, and in particular responsibilities to God that may sometimes conflict with our responsibilities as citizens. What do we do when that happens and how do we discern when it’s appropriate for civil disobedience?
DK: We in the West are used to living in fairly comfortable circumstances. We can go to church on Sunday and we don’t need to think about that in terms that would elicit fears of a conflict of loyalty as it were. But most Christians live outside of this Western world and outside of constitutional democracies. China right now has more Christians than there are people living in Canada. It’s also true that Iranians are coming to Christ in large numbers. The most recent indication is that fewer than 50 percent of the population of Iran consider themselves to be Muslim and there are huge numbers of Christians now. And of course, Iran is a country where it’s difficult to be a Christian.
When there is an outright conflict, sometimes Christians have been willing to go to jail. The Reverend Wang Yi of the Early Rain Church in Chengdu, China, became a Christian as recently as just under 20 years ago and he has led this massive church in Chengdu. It’s an unregistered church meaning that the doors are open to everybody, but they will not become part of the Three-Self Church which has the official government sanction in China. He has paid now with his freedom because he is in jail and many of the church members have been scattered. But the gospel is still spreading in a country like China. In fact, China is now slated to become the largest Christian country in the world by mid-century.
So there are Christians who perceive and experience real conflict, but they are willing to stand up for the cross of Christ in very inhospitable situations, and in doing so they are living out their citizenship. Just before Sir Thomas More went to his death under King Henry VIII he was reputed to have said, “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” I think that’s something that we need to take to heart as well.
EC: What is something that you hope readers of your book will take away with them after they read it?
DK: I hope they take away from my book a deep personal conviction that politics is not a spectator sport. It’s not something that we simply watch on television night after night or find on social media. Rather, citizenship is something to which each of us is called irrespective of where we are living our lives. It means that Americans should have a deep commitment to their country, but also to their local communities where they are living at the moment. To recognize that our loyalties are layered loyalties — there are multiple loyalties. We have to balance them in a way that’s honorable to God and does justice to our families, neighbors, coworkers, fellow church members, and so forth, and that has a political side to it.
EC: Is there any question that you wish I had asked you today, or that I should have asked about your book?
DK: It would be good to say something about prayer since that’s something that I deal with in the last chapter. When we think about activism, sometimes we think it’s all up to us. This was the error that the social gospelers at the beginning of the last century fell into. Now it seems as though those who describe themselves as Christians are a minority. Those who say that they have no affiliation whatsoever, seem to be an expanding minority within the United States and certainly in Canada. And I wonder if all of that activism at the beginning of the last century, far from ushering in the Kingdom of God, led people to think that we have to save ourselves — that it’s all up to us.
Of course, that is probably the worst thing that a Christian could possibly conclude. When someone believes that, they often stop praying or else the prayers don’t really come from the heart. In my book, I quote some liturgical material from the Book of Common Prayer because Thomas Cranmer, in the sixteenth century, very carefully took the liturgical materials that had existed in Latin and didn’t just translate them into English but also altered them in such a way as to acknowledge that salvation is by grace through faith and there’s nothing we can do to earn our salvation. So there’s one prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, a prayer for the Ruler that I expand to include prayers for all our fellow citizens insofar as we exercise this significant authoritative office of citizens of our respective political communities.
David Koyzis a Global Scholar with Global Scholars Canada and has a PhD in government and international studies from the University of Notre Dame.
