Robert Joustra

Robert Joustra is Professor of Politics & International Studies at Redeemer University, where he is also founding-Director of the Centre for Christian Scholarship. He is an editorial fellow with The Review of Faith and International Affairs and a Fellow with the Center for Public Justice, in Washington D.C. His writing and commentary appear in The Globe and Mail, The Washington Post, The National Post, and elsewhere.

Joustra received his B.A. (honours) in politics and history from Redeemer University in 2005, after which he taught in Asia, before returning to McMaster to complete an M.A. in Globalization Studies in 2008. He worked as a researcher and editor for Cardus from 2008 to 2013, on issues ranging from urban planning to education, to labor to freedom of religion or belief. In 2013 he defended his doctoral dissertation – The Religious Problem with Religious Freedom: Why International Theory Needs Political Theology – at the University of Bath (U.K.), under Scott Thomas, and began his full time appointment as a professor at Redeemer University that same July.

He is the author, editor, co-author or co-editor, of eight books and a wide range of articles, chapters, and papers. His work focuses broadly on comparative politics and religion, with an emphasis on understanding trends and ideas at home by placing them in historical and geopolitical context. His books include, God and Global Order: The Power of Religion in American Foreign Policy (Baylor University Press, 2010), How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, Faith and Politics at the End of the World (Eerdmans, 2015), The Church and Religious Persecution (Calvin Press, 2015), The Church’s Social Responsibility: Evangelicalism and Social Justice (Christian Library Press, 2016), The Religious Problem with Religious Freedom: Why Foreign Policy Needs Political Theology (Routledge, 2017), Modern Papal Diplomacy and Social Teaching in World Affairs (Routledge, 2019), Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures (forthcoming: Intervarsity Academic, 2021), and Christian Realism for Terrifying Times: A Reader (forthcoming: Wipf & Stock, 2022).

Robert is married to his better educated, and better liked, wife Jessica, and they live atop the escarpment in Hamilton, together with their son Jacob.