David Koyzis on Divided Loyalties | Faith & Politics #2

David Koyzis returns to the show for the second episode in the faith and politics series. He's a member of Global Scholars Canada and the author of Political Visions and Illusions, We Answer to Another, and Citizenship Without Illusions — and he spent his first thirty years in the Chicago area before moving to Canada, which gives him an unusual vantage on American national feeling.

Koyzis starts with divided loyalties: we belong to families, congregations, workplaces, and nations, and none of those communities exhausts who we are. The political community isn't higher than the others. From there the conversation turns to what makes American identity different — the pledge, the anthem, the flag in the sanctuary — and why "Canadian first" is a phrase that would get you laughed at.

James raises Robert Bellah on American civil religion. Both men admit to a season of refusing to sing the national anthem, and neither holds that position now. They also discuss why hope is not optimism, why presidents get credited with powers they've never had, and gratitude as the alternative to a posture of constant complaint — the subject of Koyzis's forthcoming book on the Heidelberg Catechism.

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome back

01:55 Divided loyalties, and what none of them can define

03:48 "First allegiance" isn't a pie chart

06:01 Living the whole day before the face of God

09:40 What's different about American identity

14:20 The pledge, the anthem, and inculcating a nation

16:05 Bellah on American civil religion

19:31 Pride, and the hope it starts to cultivate

21:07 Hope is not optimism

21:38 Why we expect presidents to save us

24:53 Flags in the sanctuary

29:08 The Heidelberg Catechism project

33:48 Public life is wider than politics

34:57 Toward a politics of gratitude

36:20 Deuteronomy 8 and forgetting the source

40:03 Inconspicuous patterns, and what we take for granted

43:10 Formation first, politics second

46:10 Advice for an election season

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