How Christian Social Thought Shapes Canadian Policy Debates

Andreae Sennyah: I’m Andreae Sennyah.

Ray Pennings: And I’m Ray Pennings.

Andreae Sennyah: And this is Proverbs & Policy. The wisdom of two thousand years of Christian social thought for public life today.

Ray Pennings: Hello, I’m Ray Pennings, and with me is my co-host Andreae Sennyah on this, the first episode of Proverbs & Policy. And we’re delighted today to have as our first guest Brian Dijkema, the Canadian president of Cardus, and I would say a veritable expert on Christian social thought. And the reason he’s here today is to help us understand why Christian social thought is relevant in the public debate today. Brian, welcome. Help us understand, what is the connection between Proverbs and policy?

Brian Dijkema: Well, thanks, Ray, and thanks, Andreae. I’m delighted to be on an official podcast with all of you so that people can hear our office banter.

Ray Pennings: And profit from it.

Brian Dijkema: At least I hope they profit from it. Thank you, Ray, for calling me an expert. That is something that I’m always very nervous about, so I’ll do my best to live into that moniker.

What is the link between Proverbs and policy? I think one of the things that Proverbs—people read, it’s a book of the Bible. And it’s also something that’s across cultures. And Proverbs is intended to help the reader become wise. If those who don’t know their history or haven’t read their Bible would understand that it’s often attributed to Solomon—and Solomon, when he was made king, so that’s a political office, there’s obviously policy immediately. God asked him what he wanted as he became king. And Solomon thought and prayed, and he asked for wisdom. And in the story that’s in the Bible, the Lord says to him, “I’m glad you asked for wisdom. It was the right thing to ask for. That’s what you’ll need as a leader. And because you asked for that, I’ll also give you the other things that kings often ask for,” which is gold and power and peace and all the rest of it. And so even in Proverbs, there’s a link to policy in the scriptural sense.

But in the sort of natural sense or the broader sense of the term, it has to do with wisdom. And when it comes to wisdom, you want to be able to understand what is needed at the appropriate time, which is particularly—it’s exactly what policy is. What is the thing? What is the rule? What is the law? What is the motion that is needed at that particular time to address the thing so that we can live better together in the common world? There’s a link with Christian social tradition there. There’s a link with the broader Western tradition. But there’s also a broader link with the broader public, the commons, as we speak, because wisdom is something that’s available to all. So that would be my quick response to that question.

Andreae Sennyah: So Brian, you’ve been at Cardus for over a decade and a half now—I want to say that’s accurate—and you’ve been working in this Canadian public policy context, trying to bring the principles of Christian social thought to bear on a whole range of issues. You started off at Cardus working on work and economics, our Work and Economics program. What do you see as the central principle that guides our work, and something that you think is maybe lacking in the Canadian public debate today?

Brian Dijkema: Yeah, great question. So I think one of the challenges that we face, and I think that the country faces as a whole, is the idea that Christian social thought is some esoteric private interest group. And I think that that’s a real challenge, right? They say, okay, there’s a group of Christians. Christians make up about—you know, practising ones, according to our research, make up about 20 percent of the population or something like that. And they’re an interest group that has to be sort of met with and tolerated and maybe even humoured a little bit. But that’s not really what we’re getting at. I think what we’re trying to say is that there are deeper things at play.

Whenever you’re talking about policy—and particularly public policy, we’re talking about state policy. Policy operates on different fronts. You know, I personally have a policy never to drink coffee after noon, for instance. It’s a good policy. It helps me sleep at night. But when we’re talking about public policy, we’re talking about pursuing public justice for the commons—in Canada, at least. We’re a North American think tank, but we do a lot of work in Canada. And on that front, you’re asking questions like, why should we organize society this way? Who are the people? What is the nature of the people or the groups of people that we are engaging with? How do we account for difference? And how do we rule around difference?

All of those questions—your answers to them are going to come out of some deeper assumptions. And this is something that I think is underappreciated. Everyone’s got those assumptions. Sometimes they’re articulate. Sometimes they’re, you know, well thought through and sort of articulated and laid out. Other times they’re naive—and I don’t mean in the sense of being stupid. I mean in the sense of being understood without reflection or articulation, and that could be fine too. But everyone’s got those assumptions.

And one of the core assumptions of Cardus is that every human being is made in the image of God and is therefore worthy of dignity and respect. And those are things I think that everyone is sort of like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” They nod about that. But we would say that also comes with certain substantive realities about how we should live together, what the role of the state is, what the state should do, what the state shouldn’t do, what individuals should do, shouldn’t do. And those tend to be the big things in Canadian public discourse: the state, the individual. You sometimes throw in the market, which is a sort of collection of individual actions, the way it’s often described. But Cardus is saying, no, human beings are made for a particular type of social life. There’s obviously a broad spectrum of that. There’s lots of room for judgment and wisdom, as we talked about earlier. But Christianity has something unique to offer, and it’s for the commons, and it’s shaped our society. And I think people don’t appreciate that much. And I think partially because we’ve been swimming in water that’s been shaped by Christianity for so long that we’ve just assumed it’s normal. But it actually comes out of a particular tradition with a particular view of the human person and what society should look like.

Andreae Sennyah: Yeah, before I throw it back to Ray, I think there are lots of threads there to develop. But I think your essential point is that everyone believes something, and we’re constantly operating out of those beliefs. And I think that’s the core purpose of what Proverbs & Policy is trying to hit on. We want to be clear—put the bottom line up front, as we often like to say—about our starting principles and how all of our thinking develops from there. So, Ray, I’ll turn back to you. I’m sure you have lots of questions.

Ray Pennings: Yeah, there’s one element of that I’d just like to tease out a little bit further, because I think often we think of policy in the context of politics and the sphere of government. And if I was listening correctly, you talked about markets, you talked about some of the other aspects. Talk to me a little bit about our understanding of the human person, not just as having dignity, but also being relational in nature, and how that does express itself in public life, and the extent to which that’s a differentiator between Christian social thought and some of the other competing frameworks that are out there today.

Brian Dijkema: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think this is where you’re going to hear me routinely say this is unique to Christianity, but then I will also follow it up with the annoyingly, potentially paradoxical: but it is also a broadly understood thing that most people can see, even if they’re not Christian.

So I’ll sort of start with the first one. Human beings are social creatures. None of us live alone. Those of us who try to live alone often end up dead or depressed or both. And I often—you know, I have kids. I enjoy pop culture. There’s a TV show called Alone. And basically the premise of it is they drop a bunch of people off in the bush with, you know, they’ve got bushcraft and this Canadian thing. I enjoy it. You know, my favourite book other than the Bible when I was a kid was the SAS Survival Handbook. I love that type of stuff. So I watch it. But what’s fascinating is—and the basic premise is stay there as long as you can, and the last person who is standing wins the prize, and it’s like half a million bucks or something. I’m not being paid by the show hosts to promote the show. But what I find fascinating about that show is almost everybody leaves, not because they’re hungry or because they’re cold or because they’re being attacked by bears or whatever, but because they miss their family, or they miss their friends, or they miss their loved ones. And that sort of shows there’s an innate need for us to be in society with one another, whether that’s a small society, like a marriage or relationship, whether it’s a larger one, like a family, or whether it’s a larger one, like a neighbourhood or community.

But we are social beings, and that society, that drive towards being social, manifests itself in what I would call a plurality or diversity of ways. The political community is one of them. It tends to be the biggest community that we’re part of. But there are a host of other communities that you’re part of. Think of your school. I send my kids to an independent school. We have a board that’s made up of parents and people of the community. But even if you go to a state school, there are often parent councils. That’s one way in which we gather together in society. Maybe you’re a birding enthusiast and you’re a member of the local birding club, or you’re a member of your local conservation authority, or you’re a trade union member, for instance. Trade unions reflect the way in which we’re social in the workplace.

And so there’s a myriad of ways in which human beings are social. And one of the things that Christianity, or the Christian social tradition—particularly the ones that drive Cardus’s thought—is to say that those need to be respected in the space in which they operate. The ends which they are trying to achieve need to be respected in their own right. And it places limits around other things, like the state or around markets. And they interact with each other in unique ways too. And so I think that’s a unique contribution to public social thought. I think it actually helps solve a lot of the problems that have come up, whether it’s poverty or whether it’s education or health care—it shows up in a variety of different ways. But that, I think, is a unique contribution, and one I think that is even more relevant today than it’s ever been.

Andreae Sennyah: Brian, you’re hitting on an essential point here. One of our beloved colleagues at Cardus often refers to us as civil society maximalists. He’s going to love that I gave him a shout-out on our first episode. But I think that often I find in the work we do, the importance of protecting or respecting the space of these various institutions is definitely present. But I also think that about half of our job is bringing an awareness to people about the existence of these different organizations and our participation in them, right? I think that’s oftentimes the reason why we find that we forget the relational dimension of the human person, because we’re not quite as aware of the fact that we’re constantly participating in various types of organizations or, you know, like you’re saying, social groups, associations—whether it’s an independent school, whether it’s the hockey team you play with on Sundays. So I think this is kind of a good framework for us as we begin this podcast, to remind ourselves and also to maybe give some tools to listeners: when we’re thinking about public policy, to always be attentive to these various civil society institutions that also have a role to play in resolving the social problems that we often look to governments to resolve on their own.

Brian Dijkema: So I’m going to use two metaphors, and stick with me, because they make sense. Let me just say this. I think that in our current debates, in our current society, there’s a certain reductionist approach to public life. And we’re reduced to being human beings which really participate on sort of three levels. On the individual level, it’s all about the individual and their choices. On the market: how they engage with choices that act in their best interest with others, so every relation is understood purely in market terms of maximizing utility. And then the state, the political community, gets the majority of our attention. And I think that, you know, reducing a sauce is good. Reducing a human person is really, really bad.

And the other metaphor that I often use, Andreae—and I think it’s an important one, particularly in the Canadian context, which has such a rich biodiversity—is that if you go to a forest—and I spend a lot of time up north because, as I said, I love being in the bush—but you go to the bush and you look. And in the trees, the canopies, the lakes, the swamps, you see all kinds of life. You see fungi, you see trees, you see mosses, you see grasses, you see lichen, you see too many bugs, you see all kinds of creatures, right? And that is a sort of indication of a rich biosphere. And the same thing is true—should be true—for human beings: that we should have a rich variety of relationships that manifest themselves institutionally—churches, mosques, synagogues, chess groups, all these other types of things. And they will often serve human needs better than the sort of denuded three levels of state, market, and individual. And I think we’re actually impoverished as human beings as we forget about that and as we try to put too much on them. And often they can’t bear the weight of that and therefore fail, and therefore lead many Canadians and Americans, I think, to feel frustrated and to have a lack of agency.

And that’s why Cardus is, like, civil society maximalist, because it’s like agency maximalization, and therefore it’s human maxing. And I think that’s what we’re pursuing—not in these sort of crazy, you know, take testosterone and all the rest of that stuff, but, like, no, real human maxing. So that’s what we’re after.

Andreae Sennyah: Yeah, that’s great. I think we have a tagline here, right? Reduce sauces, maximize humanness.

Brian Dijkema: Maximize humanness.

Ray Pennings: Let me be the fly in the ointment, though, for a moment and try to say, okay, let’s just say I’m not a Christian. This is fine for you to try to smuggle in your Christian stuff here on society. But I’m one of those individuals you describe who believes in autonomy and choice, believes in maximizing my market potential to buy the things that make me feel good and make me happy, and wants government to get out of the road and to support my choices. And he who has the most toys wins at the end of the game. And it’s kind of fun—as convincing and everything else. There’s certainly a good deal of society that looks at all of the issues that we talk about through very individualistic terms.

Now, you can romanticize the bush and all the rest. I don’t go up north—not just because I don’t have kids—because I hate the black flies, and I find it painful and sweaty and all the rest. I’d rather go to the five-star hotel and be treated and all the rest. What’s wrong with that? Why privilege your perspective over mine?

Brian Dijkema: Well, I mean, I would endorse the voyage into the urban jungle. But if you looked closely, Ray, you would see that it too is actually very diverse. Cities, urban environments, are incredibly diverse, and I think are actually a manifestation of what I’ve been talking about. What makes cities interesting is the diversity of experiences there.

And I want to be clear—I think this is one of the things that often gets raised—livelihood is made maximal in having a variety of institutional commitments and social relations. It doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we’re against autonomy or against choice. No. Like, I’m very much in favour of free markets. I like that I can buy—although our suits are quite similar, Ray—but I like that I can buy my suit and you can buy yours. And, you know, I have no problem with the five-star hotel. I can’t afford it, so that’s why I go camping. But if you—you do you, in that sense.

I think what we’re trying to say, though, is that—and I think this is where, I think you said I’m smuggling in Christian social theory. I’m not, actually. I’m the worst smuggler possible because I’m advertising it. So there’s that thing, number one. But number two is, like, as I said earlier, there are plenty of studies—empirical studies done by non-Christians—that show that the vision that we’re putting forward actually makes people happier, wealthier, all the rest of that stuff. If you want a good market, you want to be in a place where contracts are honoured. This is important as we’re talking about trade disputes right now. But why would somebody honour a contract if they can get ahead in certain ways? Because there’s things like honesty, not telling lies, not bearing false testimony, not stealing. These are actually universal things that make themselves manifest in our public life.

And so it is a false dichotomy to say that the Christian social vision that talks about plurality or diversity of social relations needs to be at odds with autonomy. There is a sense in which those things are not there. What we’re talking about, though, is what does it mean to live a rich life that is robust and resilient in a modern age that—whether it’s technological or whether it’s political—seeks to reduce human beings to sort of legible boxes that can be controlled. And I’m saying, let’s not be that. Let’s be the sort of real organic people that we are. And that may mean going out for a nice brunch on a Saturday morning where you can have your mimosa. I’m not against it. I like living in a late 20—like, or I guess it’s 21st century now—place where I don’t have to worry about dying of diphtheria and where I have a bank account that I can trust is going to—the money’s going to be there. So that’s good. I’m more pro-market. But I’m not smuggling it in. I’m a bad smuggler.

Ray Pennings: One follow-up. And I asked the question, obviously, to be provocative and a bit of the devil’s advocate, but I don’t think it’s a binary out there in terms of just sort of the common good perspective and the total individual autonomy on the other. There’s a range there. Can you map at all where this Christian social thought lands in contemporary North American society? What are its main competitors out there? And as you deal in day-to-day think tank stuff, which doesn’t talk about the stuff in a theoretical, but in very tangible stuff—whether that’s dealing with euthanasia or gambling or market—community benefit agreements, or all the different stuff that you deal with day-to-day—give us a little bit of a landscape in terms of where Christian social thought lands in that broader landscape. It’s not just the forest and the city. There’s a few other pieces of landscape in between.

Brian Dijkema: Sure. Well, I’ll start by saying that actually the landscape is profoundly, if insensibly, shaped by Christianity already. And so, you know, it’s not like this is a weird thing coming in. I do think that Tom Holland, who is one half of the most excellent podcast The Rest Is History—I think his book Dominion is right when he says that even the main competitors to Christian social thinking right now—which I would say there’s really one, maybe two: liberalism and a sort of, I would say, a sort of darker Nietzschean individualism. But the reality is we’re living in a world that has been shaped by Christian social teaching. And he would say things like: the fact that we even care for the poor, and that caring for the poor or making the case for the poor gives you moral standing in a public debate, is actually the product of a Christian worldview. The fact that we think about science as being something—that the world is intelligible and can be understood through measurement—is itself a product of Christianity. The fact that we care about individual autonomy at all, and about the will of the individual, is itself a product of Christianity. Things like marriage—the fact that you see in the marriage vows in early Christian tradition the question of “Do you will this?”—is itself a precursor to some of the competitors.

I think what we’re seeing today, in our sort of late, late modern or late postmodern or whatever you want to call it, is a sort of—I think, again—a reduction of that world into the will of the individual. And it sort of manifests itself in two ways. One is in what I would call the sort of—my friend and colleague David Koyzis would call it sort of the choice enhancement state, so that you have a group of individuals, and the purpose of society is to maximize the individual’s ability to exercise their will, and the state, therefore, is the one that needs to do that. And we see that in all kinds of ways, including in the Carter decision on euthanasia. I think it’s a mistake. I think it’s a bad decision legally and on other grounds.

But then you have, I think, a darker—Ray, and I think this is what we’re seeing a little bit right now—one of the competitors is just a basic Nietzschean will to power. And you see this in all kinds of things socially, you know, through different accounts of people who are like, “No, actually, what matters is power.” And I think you yourself wrote about that in Insights this week, on sort of the return of pure raw power politics. Christians have no problem with power. We realize that in a political environment, the state should bear the sword—but use it. But the reality of—there’s this question of justice, and that’s where we’re talking about. When we’re talking about these social relations, we’re saying, no, these actually can be adjudicated on the basis of justice, and those are going to be adjudicated on the basis of what’s best for human beings and the way we are empirically. So, long-winded, but I hope it gives a good response.

Andreae Sennyah: Ray, I think the nerdiest of our listeners will critique us for not treating the Christian social tradition systematically in our first podcast. However, what I think Brian has done for us here is give us a northern Ontario forest landscape vision of human flourishing: that there are so many dimensions for us to explore—the depth of this tradition, its applicability to the changing contexts that we are in and the policy problems that we face. And also this sense of the both/and, right? That there is room for both the market and the state. There is room for individual expression and agency while also acknowledging the fact that we are relational and dependent. And so, as you often like to say, Brian: more, more, more. I think that’s what the Christian tradition really does offer. And it’s the reason why I find, at least in our work, that it is not a constraint as much as perhaps it may seem to be—rather, an affirmation of the possibilities and the potential of the kinds of creative solutions that we can come up with for the various policy challenges that we are facing all across the country, and, you know, notwithstanding all the international challenges that are probably on our minds as we record the podcast today.

I’m curious if you could maybe delve a little bit more into the relationship between Christian social thought and political philosophy. So Cardus is a non-partisan think tank, and I think that often confounds people. How is that possible, that you want to make a policy change without engaging in partisanship? Perhaps you can tease out for us a little bit our understanding of the difference between maybe partisanship and the political, and how we engage with political philosophies in the work we do.

Brian Dijkema: Sure. I mean, I think the one thing you’re sort of right about is that it’s not a hindrance. It’s actually a help. And I think you see that in the way that Cardus’s work has been picked up by both—like, parties across the political spectrum in Canada. I mean, for instance, right now, on the question of the extension of euthanasia to those whose sole condition is a mental illness, we see the health minister from Manitoba, who’s an NDP minister, saying, “This is not a good thing. We’re not ready for this. What is happening is we’re actually replacing investment in care with killing.” And that’s somebody on the left in Canada—and some might argue even the far left, depending on how you yourself are situated. And I’m very happy to stand with that minister and to say, “You’re right. We actually should be investing more, publicly even, using state tax dollars, to help people with palliative care.”

So that’s one example, but there’s a whole host of them, Andreae. Gambling policy, again, is another one that we’ve seen, both left and right. Payday loan policy that Cardus has done—left and right. And yes, there are some parties that will latch on to it more than others. But at the end of the day, even partisans—and I—here is my, like, sort of call: I like democracy, and I like political parties. I used to do work for human rights, and one of the biggest places where we’d often see human rights violations is where there’s only one political party. So I actually like a bunch of them, even if I disagree with all of them in some particular case. Cardus is willing to work with anybody of good faith on issues that are aligned with us. And we want to make the case for that. That’s one of the things that I think is rare. We like democracy. We like making arguments. We think they’re good. And we think evidence matters. And I think that’s a helpful thing in this day and age, where we think, “Oh, no, it’s just got to be power.” That’s one thing.

But I think on the question, then, of, like, partisanship and politics, often what you’ll find is, on a given issue, there are actually a host of institutions that are doing work that are aligned or adjacent with politics. And so let’s stick with the euthanasia one. Recently, 90 organizations representing groups with disabilities came out and signed a letter saying, “We need to stop the expansion of MAID to those whose sole condition is a mental illness.” What you’re seeing there, Andreae, is this sort of organic world that I’m talking about. And I just, again, want to make clear: I think this is even more important for our urban modern world. I’m not some pastoralist who wants to go—you know, I love coming home to my bed and taking a hot shower. That’s done with modern infrastructure. So I want to be clear about that. And I like my gas stove or electric kettle.

But what’s fascinating is those 90 groups are 90 groups who are on the ground dealing with people with mental illness, dealing with those who are most affected by these euthanasia policies: the disabled. And we’re actually working with them to help them winnow, refine their politics—policy, and this gets to policy—into the political arena. And we’re willing to work with anybody, regardless of party. And I think, again, on the euthanasia one, I think you’re seeing Liberals, NDP, and others—Conservatives, the Bloc, or at least in Quebec—they’ve said that this can’t be already. So that’s how we work. We have, I think, good ideas rooted in Christian social teaching, which look to maximize human potential and human well-being, but we want to do that with groups that are close to the ground. This is a nerd term coming, but that is what we would call subsidiarity: the process of working with those who are closest to those who are affected, and making the case to those who are making public laws about that.

Ray Pennings: There are some issues in which the translation of Christian social thought principles to a current issue is very obvious, and most would agree—although on almost every issue, there’s even division within the Christian community. There are many others in which it’s much more difficult. And there is legitimate disagreement—sometimes legitimate disagreement, and sometimes, let’s be honest, careless proof-texting, in which people sort of baptize their pre-existing political preference with a few texts to make it sound Christian along the way. Can you just talk about the particular dangers and challenges, and how we think about protecting ourselves against falling into that trap?

Brian Dijkema: Yeah, it’s a really good point. And I think one of the things—and this annoys people, and even annoys me a little bit, this is why I work here—but you’ll often hear the sort of big guns of Christian political thought saying, “Look, we’re setting out principles.” And that is actually, to some extent, what we’re doing. We’re saying, here are the principles on which we’re working. And within those principles, you can actually have a wide array of positions on a given issue.

You know, let’s take an example: payday lending, which we’ve done. We said, look, payday lending is a way in which those who have the least ability to access credit pay way, way more as a percentage of their income for getting a thousand-dollar loan than, say, you know, white-collar, middle-class people like us would. So we can all get mortgages, and banks love to throw money at us. And we’re saying that’s not fair. And we’re saying that, you know, people in the lower income who are working should have greater access to credit. Now, when you say, okay, what does that look like—when you ask the next question—well, it can look like a variety of different things. You can have government policy changing usury limits, and in fact, the government did that. You could have governments backing, for instance, credit unions who want to try new ways of lending. You could say, actually, what we need is a regulatory overhaul of the Canadian Banking Act that, you know, provides a little bit more freedom for the Big Five to try things. There’s a whole host. And you can have disagreements on that.

And that’s where, you know, empirical research comes in. There is some ground. Empirical research isn’t going to solve every question. Questions are not just technical. They are actually philosophical. And you need to make judgments—going back to the wisdom thing. You actually need the proverbial wisdom to make the right call in those situations. But empirical work can help us in that. And that’s what Cardus tries to do. That’s why we have, like, a very high threshold for the quality of our work. And we would want the same for other people making the case. But there is a range. And that’s, again, the beauty of democracy: that we can argue about these things, debate them, and in fact, try them. You know, there is a sense in which there’s a little bit of experimentation going on. And part of that is, like, we’re trying to find the best way to do this. And over time, as conditions change, things may change. So what might be right in one time might be wrong in another. And I think, you know, the health care situation is an example of that. It might have worked really well when Tommy Douglas and others were setting it up. But we’re in a different age, with different needs, with different capacities. And maybe our health care system needs to change while we’re still achieving justice, but in a different way.

Ray Pennings: We’ve sort of come near the end of our time. Let me just come full circle. We started with Solomon and his request for wisdom. What’s interesting, actually, in 1 Kings 3, in terms of that account of Solomon asking for wisdom, the word “wisdom” doesn’t actually appear. There are three things that he asked for there. And, you know, justice, the ability to discern between right and wrong—one might summarize what he asked for, really, was prudence and the ability to lead prudently. And we also know that while Solomon stands as an exemplar on the one hand, having written thousands of proverbs and songs, on the other hand, his story is not one of straightforward success. There were some very wise things he did, but there were some less than noble and faithful things that he did as well. Maybe just as we wrap this up, do you want to circle back around to the importance of prudence and humility as we approach the task of applying Proverbs to policy?

Brian Dijkema: Yeah, sure. I’ll start by stating for the record that Cardus is opposed to Solomon’s marriage policy. And I just want to put that on the record—that our director for a family program would be against that policy. So I just want to make that clear for everybody.

Two things on the prudence and humility. Prudence: if you study the Christian social tradition—and here’s a shout-out to our Roman Catholic friends, though it’s shared by Protestants too—Thomas Aquinas would say that there are certain virtues that are necessary for the political life: to be a good political leader, to be a good king, in his case, because he’s writing in the medieval period, or a magistrate, or, in our case, to be somebody who’s involved in politics today. He actually places prudence as the highest political virtue. And what that means is prudence is right action at the right time according to the conditions. It is a recognition that you cannot make the same judgment all the time and have it be right—that the conditions change, and that you need the wisdom to discern what is the right call at that particular time, given those circumstances. And I think that that’s an extremely important thing to note.

And this is why, you know, the Christian social tradition is not an inherently conservative tradition—and by conservative, I mean trying to protect some ossified or, you know, concretized past that never changes. Actually, the Christian tradition understands that human life is actually a story of development. If you think about it in the story of Scripture, there’s the sort of move from the garden to the city. So, Ray, I think at the end of the day, the Bible supports your many-rooms approach to vacation.

And you can see this even within Catholic social teaching, right? So, Rerum Novarum, which means “on the new things.” And it was an attempt to apply Catholic social teaching to the new realities of the Industrial Revolution. And Cardus is in—I think we are in right now a context in which we are seeing a massive acceleration of some of those technological changes that are changing the very nature of society, as we saw in the Industrial Revolution. And there are now new things for this tradition to be applied to. And that’s why I really do think, like—and this is a shout-out to JC, Jean-Christophe Jasmin, our Quebec director—it’s like we’re actually Christian futurists. And I think that’s the note that people need to leave on. We are conserving what is inherently good about human beings. That’s what we’re trying to conserve. But we recognize that one of those goods is actually the development of human society, technology, and other things. And we want to maintain our humanity in the midst of that.

And that’s where I’ll move to humility, and I’ll sort of end with that. One of the magazines that Cardus produces is something called Comment magazine. And the sort of tagline is “public theology for the common good.” But we’re also very focused on Christian humanism. And there’s sort of two things. Humility—going back to my metaphor—the root of humility is actually humus. It actually means, like, if you’re humble, it means you’re actually close to the ground. And it emerges out of the same word for earth, which is human, right? Which also emerges out of the same word for earth, which is Adam, right? And so there’s a sense in which humility—to be humble, or at least to be close to the ground—is actually to be human.

And I think we need more of that in politics. We’ve seen stories—warnings, stories of political leaders throughout Scripture, but I think we see it again in human history—of people who are not humble, not close to the ground, and want to make a name for themselves. The Tower of Babel is a classic example of “Let’s go up to the heavens.” That is about as far away from the humus as you can imagine. You see Pharaoh, who purported to be a god. You see Nebuchadnezzar, who purported to be a god. You see Caesar, who literally said, “Caesar is Lord,” who purported to be a god. And what Christianity offers is actually a—we call out the emperor for having no God-like clothes. He’s not a god. We’re humans. We’re flesh. We’re flesh and blood. All of us are going to live for who knows how long—probably less than 150 years, even if the sort of, you know, transhumanists who want to not die these days. And then the question is, like, how do you live in the meantime? And that’s what prudence is helping us do. And that’s what I hope Cardus can help, you know, individual Christians, society writ large, the different institutions, and our political leaders do. And we hope to do that with humility, but also with a certain degree of confidence, I think, that comes from being tied to reality. I think that’s what matters most.

Ray Pennings: Brian Dijkema, we had lots of confidence in inviting you to be the first guest of Proverbs & Policy, and I think that confidence was well rewarded. Thank you so much for your time.

Brian Dijkema: Thank you, Ray. Great questions. Thanks, Andreae. It’s always a pleasure.

Ray Pennings: Each episode of Proverbs & Policy is going to have two primary parts. We’re going to begin with an interview of the sort we just had with Brian Dijkema, Canadian president of Cardus. And then we’re going to go to a conversation between Andreae Sennyah, my co-host, and myself, in which we reflect together a bit on what we’ve heard and see whether or not we can connect some of the dots between what our guests said and Christian social thought, and what this means for day-to-day policy work and public life in North America.

Now, Brian provided us a very helpful overview in terms of Christian social thought. But Andreae, I thought it might be helpful to also introduce yourself a little bit to the audience. So maybe take what Brian said in terms of Christian social thought and share it a bit in the context of your own background and familiarity with the term. I doubt that, you know, eight-year-old or ten-year-old Andreae was using the term “Christian social thought.” So when did you start becoming aware of that as a concept? You know, I know that you studied political science for your university education. You worked in government, both on the civil and the political side of it, as a staffer. And for the last five years, you’ve been a colleague at Cardus. So when’s the first time you would have encountered the term “Christian social thought”? And when you heard it, what did it mean to you?

Andreae Sennyah: Well, we’re starting off strong by pointing to the age difference between us here. But I think you’ll have to check with my mom to see if eight- or nine-year-old Andreae was reading, you know, thick social doctrine books. I suspect she wasn’t, but she did read a lot of dictionaries, I’ve heard. So that’s helpful. And I’m so glad that Brian was our first guest. He gave us lots to chew on, and we knew that we could rely on him for that. So I’m excited to delve more into the things he said.

Yeah, so I would agree. I think that my background put the practice before the principles, if I can say it in that sense. I studied political science at the University of Calgary. I worked at the Alberta legislature and some federal government departments throughout my university and then right after too. And so I remember thinking pretty distinctly, when I was a political staffer, that there had to be more that the tradition—my tradition, the Catholic tradition—had to say about the kind of social, political, and economic issues that we were facing. But I was ignorant of the sort of rich inheritance that was waiting for me to be uncovered. And my first introduction to Catholic social teaching was through the Cardus NextGen Fellowship program, where we, you and I, first met. That really introduced me to some of the principles that guide the work that we do at Cardus. And then I think it confirmed to me my suspicion that the tradition did have something to say about all of these issues. And so that was my first introduction.

And over time, I’ve had, yeah, just a lot of opportunity to now read and reflect, both with colleagues here at Cardus but also many other people that I know in sort of the professional sphere, about what these principles really are. And my trusty source that I use often is the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church—a nice thick book, hundreds of pages, but it has been, like, the best introduction to me about the core and permanent principles in Catholic social teaching. And I try always to be attentive to those principles and to draw on them in my work.

But Ray, perhaps I’ll round out for the listener—part of our aim with this segment is to engage both of our different traditions, you know, within the kind of umbrella of Christian social thought. Christians have no doubt been thinking about social issues for hundreds of years, so lucky for us, we don’t have to come up with new stuff. But yeah, I wonder—maybe throwing it back to you. You’re the co-founder of this institution, which recently celebrated 25 years. Where did you first encounter the principles that you draw on from your own tradition?

Ray Pennings: Yeah, it’s interesting. I grew up in an immigrant tradition in Canada that had a strong sense of political obligation, but not a great history of political involvement. In many ways—you know, my parents came to this country as teenagers. My youth was very much about survival. And while there was an obligation of involving in every area of life that was inherited from sort of the Reformed tradition, that applied itself much more to education and to day-to-day life than it did to the public square, which was probably seen as a luxury item that we actively didn’t have the time to get too involved in. So we voted, didn’t do much else.

I was one of these geeky nerds as a high school student. I got involved in politics and youth politics, started attending conventions, actually managed my first campaign at age 18. So I would say that, not unlike you, I was very much involved in the practice of politics before I systematically thought through the Christian social thought tradition. I would have always understood my faith to be relevant. And that probably would have been, first of all, in terms of how I conduct myself. I need to conduct myself as a Christian. I should stand out by virtue of the honesty, integrity, the way I treat other people, including political opponents, with respect. So there’s a posture that was just inherent and implicit in the expectation. I grew up in the ’70s. Abortion was a major issue. Then marriage became an issue. So life issues, marriage issues—some of those hot-button issues were there. There was a clear religious connection.

I would say it was really in my 20s and my university education in which I began reading much more and became familiar. I actually did a master’s degree in my 40s, and I joke that my master’s degree was 25 years of political practice looking for a theory. So in terms of systematically reading my way through, that would have been in my adult life, while I was actually doing it.

I’d be interested—and I’m happy to share my own light bulbs along the way. There were really four things that at various times became sort of key items in my thinking that I just found tremendously relevant for the full range of issues—not just the obvious moral ones, but everything from environmental policy to economic policy and that.

The first one is creation order: the fact that God created the world. In the Catholic tradition, it’s much more natural law, and there are some differences between how we deal with creation order and Catholics deal with natural law. But in day-to-day life, it comes down to some of the same things: that there is a created order in the world. Just like the law of gravity—whether you understand it or not, it behaves. And in the same way, in public life, there is a creation order, not just in terms of the laws of nature, but also how relationships are structured. God put a particular order into the world. I think that light bulb came off fairly early for me. And understanding—I think one of the differences it makes is it starts with the goodness of God in creation. It doesn’t start with political problems. When you don’t have that light bulb, everything starts with a problem. Here it starts with a purpose. God made the world with a purpose. So that was the first sort of big light bulb that went off.

Then there was a second: sort of common grace, or common good—that this isn’t just something that applies to believers or Christians. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s real. And, you know, the biblical text: God causes it to rain on the just as well as the unjust. Christians don’t have a monopoly on Christian social thought. As a matter of fact, you know, since I’m the Protestant here, I guess I better—as you mentioned the Catholic doctrine—I better put a plug in for a Protestant reference. Calvin’s Institutes, in Book One, talks about the fact that it’s a sin to ignore the wisdom of the Greeks—that God gives us the wisdom, not just through Christians, but through everyone, for us to build on and to use along the way.

So: creation order; common grace, the common good; antithesis—the fact that sin involves the curse. When Adam and Eve sinned, the ground was cursed; thorns and thistles came, pain in childbirth, all of the divisions and challenges that are there. And that affects every aspect of human life. And then, ultimately, sphere sovereignty, if you will: that life has diversity to it. There are different rules that apply to family, then to government, then to a business, then to a state. And understanding what the Bible has to say about all of them is very helpful for organizing public life.

So those are sort of, if I think back, at various times, light bulbs that went off, if you will, in my head in terms of, oh, this is the key to understanding things, and make me look at things very differently than I did before. What are some of the light bulbs that went off in your head as you began to delve into your—

Andreae Sennyah: Yeah, that’s a great question. And these principles as you’ve articulated them, and the ones that I will share too, are hopefully ones that we’ll be able to engage with in depth as we go through, you know, future guests of this podcast. I can’t take credit for the light bulbs going off. I think the light bulbs went off for people much smarter and much holier than me over the past two thousand years. But I will reference the ones that show up most frequently in the kinds of work that we do, which are the four permanent principles of the Church’s social doctrine.

And these are the principles of human dignity—the belief that people are made in the image and likeness of God, unique and unrepeatable, each individual. The second is the common good, which is a much more robust definition than kind of greatest good for the greatest number. It has way more to do with this idea that social conditions allow each person, and the institutions that we’re in, to attain our full potential more easily. And then the two complementary principles—all four are complementary, really—of solidarity and subsidiarity. So solidarity meaning the interdependence between human persons. You know, if I’m going to make a public policy that affects you, Ray, even though you and I are completely different people, I should be considering, as another self, how this is going to impact you. And then, of course, the principle of subsidiarity, which I think is maybe more commonly known to people, which is the idea of sort of higher-order institutions and the relationship that they play with the institutions in between—so civil society—and how to rightly order the relationship between these institutions. When is it appropriate for a higher institution to intervene? But also, and more often, when is it appropriate for a higher institution to leave the intermediary institutions alone to do what only they can creatively do?

And so I find that these four principles cannot be considered in isolation—that they have to be considered together, and that they’re very complementary. And something that is both a challenge but also, like, a huge gift of these four principles is that they resist a kind of technocratic application, right? I can’t just, you know, consider a policy problem, run it through a series of questions and criteria, and then spit out the perfectly balanced answer to how we solve our contemporary issues. I think that these principles require a certain level of internalization, so that you kind of embody them in your thinking, and then you begin to kind of default to considering these different levels or these different ways of understanding. I think those principles have been most helpful.

I recall from our conversation with Brian that we were also talking about political philosophies and the interaction between those. I wonder, since, you know, we recorded a few days ago, do you have more thoughts on that—like, the principles or the political philosophies that Brian had introduced? And what did that spark for you?

Ray Pennings: I think there’s a perfect segue between what Brian was talking about—the fact that we are all believers, that to some extent, whether or not you’re able to articulate your Christian social philosophy or some other social philosophy, we all operate out of a particular philosophy. And I just found it interesting, listening to your own account, where you said, you know, this isn’t a technocratic checklist of things. It sort of becomes part of your being. And certainly, you know, as I shared myself, I find the very same thing. In many ways, it’s a posture. There’s an element of prudence involved. And we certainly covered some of that with Brian.

I thought, Brian—it was very interesting—Brian, sort of borrowing Tom Holland, talked about the two main competitors to Christian social thought in our day being sort of liberalism and sort of this extreme Nietzschean individualism. I suppose, you know, for Andreae, Brian, and Ray to talk about thick books that have academic terms is probably the norm. We probably need to get into explaining a little bit, because nobody yesterday over coffee talked to me about how did I find the expression of Nietzschean individualism, you know, rampant in public life today.

I think, you know, woke is not a simple equation of that, but there is a sense in which Nietzsche—to some extent, there is a sense of, you can be whoever you want to be. You get to create your own world. And, you know, it sort of gets beyond this objective created reality that I talked about as part of Christian social thought. And it instead puts autonomy and your capacity to use language to create things—you know, language for some is seen as oppressive. I’m going to insist on calling myself middle-aged for the purposes of this podcast.

Andreae Sennyah: You can insist on whatever you want, right?

Ray Pennings: Well, hey, this would be very Nietzschean of me, right? I get to determine who I am along the way.

Andreae Sennyah: There’s lots of room in the middle.

Ray Pennings: There’s lots of room in the middle. So I’m going to describe myself as middle-aged. You are an aspiring middle-ager along the way, but we do come from slightly different generations.

Help me tease out a little bit, because I think there is something among the younger generation today that has a value of authenticity, that has a value of being who you are. And I think some of this Nietzschean—I get to define who I am, I get to express myself as an individual. This isn’t going to satisfy the philosophers; there’s a lot more nuance to this. But for our purposes here, I think that covers it. Talk to me a little bit about its appeal to the younger generation, and its lack of appeal in part. How is that expressing itself among your peer group, if you will?

Andreae Sennyah: Yeah, perhaps, Ray, you’ll permit me, before I answer your question—I recall when you had framed the question to Brian two days ago about whether these political ideologies or philosophies were competitors to Christian social thought. I will gently take issue with the framing of the question, because I don’t actually think that it’s helpful to frame the Christian social thought tradition as something that’s on par with these ideologies. I think we both agree that the Christian social thought tradition is something prior, something more fundamental, that says something about how societies are structured and our relationships before it engages these political philosophies. And while the political philosophies—along with all these other fields that we engage with in our work, whether it’s social scientific research, medical research—all these things are necessary to kind of put the flesh on the bones of the principles, I think it would be helpful for us to position Christian social thought as something prior to all of these philosophies.

Ray Pennings: I appreciate you raising that. And I think it’s a very valid correction that you make, because, you know, if we sort of default to, you’re choosing between one of the three—let me try a younger, trendy metaphor, and you can tell me how off I am. I think of the Christian social tradition much more like a computer operating system. It’s basic. It’s in the background, whereas some of these political philosophies are much more like apps that you apply to the system. But the operating system is underneath it and frames what the apps can and cannot do. It’s more foundational.

Andreae Sennyah: Is it a little more like Apple versus Android here? Is that what we’re talking about?

Ray Pennings: Yeah, so maybe I’ll just leave the metaphor and let it stand on its own.

Andreae Sennyah: But I think you’re right. I do think that it’s much more, shall we say, like the soil, or the kind of—you know, that we want to be planting in. And it doesn’t diminish the importance of those philosophies or theories, but it should be considered something prior to that.

So on your question about young people and the value of authenticity: I think that the Christian tradition actually deeply affirms that, both in its belief about the agency of each person, but also insofar as each of us is unique and unrepeatable, right? I think that the priorities of my generation, and this emphasis placed on individuality, authenticity, is coming from a good place and a natural and intended place. I think it is good for us to consider what is our unique, like, creative spark that is imbued in each of us. So I don’t want to diminish the validity of that starting point.

I do think—you know, I am a Luddite, and so not the best or most helpful person to give you insight into, let’s say, social media—you know, this sense of self-creation that I think is made worse on social media, or maybe made more important, because you kind of have a brand element. But I do think these two paradigms—of freedom, and, like, being free to self-create, and then also the dimension of power, which I think are these two things that Brian was trying to compare with the Nietzschean and then the liberal—and the nerdiest of our listeners are going to be upset about the fact that we’re not defining all these terms in their full political history, so, you know, stay tuned for another episode, I suppose. But I do think that those dynamics are at play. Do I completely self-create? Am I a totally atomized individual? I get to decide who I want to be. And there’s this dimension of power: like, who is in charge, the haves and have-nots, victim–oppressor mentality.

But I do think it would be helpful to emphasize the fact that there is an element of truth in each of these things. Like you said about Calvin and the Greeks—I often like to say, I don’t mind agreeing with John Calvin when he’s right. And so—Ray nods knowingly—but I think that there is something to that, right? There is power in human relationships, and there is also a sense of our unique and unrepeatable creative genius. And so I think that the younger generation is hitting on something that’s true about themselves. And we can dispute whether the expression of those things in public life is, you know, maybe in line with what is good and true and beautiful. But anyway, I’ll stop myself there.

Ray Pennings: So let me just pull this down sort of from the 30,000 to—you know, let’s get down to the 5,000-foot level. You’re a policy director for a think tank these days. You’re working on euthanasia files, on gambling files—you know, sex work is a paper that we just came out with—the full range of current issues that are there. If somebody says, “This was fun for a podcast, but how in the world does this make a difference in my life? How does this make a difference in Andreae’s life?”

Andreae Sennyah: Yeah, so my great disappointment when I got to the end of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church was that there wasn’t a glossary with all the policy issues that I deal with on a daily basis and the right answers to every question I was asking. But in all seriousness, I want to highlight a few things.

So I think it’s true that we are finite. And our finitude means that we rely on each other, and we rely on different branches of knowledge to make sense of the really complex problems that we’re facing and the competing views on those. And so it’s essential for me, as I encounter a policy problem, to understand the problem well, but then to also understand all the dimensions of who do I need to speak to to better understand what this means. So even on the euthanasia file, which is kind of an easier one to conceptualize, it’s important that we talk to doctors. It’s important that we talk to constitutional lawyers. It’s important that we talk to policy advisers to understand their constraints. And so engaging with all the different people who have knowledge on various aspects is core to how we approach the work that we do.

And then I would say the second is just constantly internalizing the principles, and then trying to use prudential judgment to determine what’s possible. What is a concrete solution? Because the principles of Catholic social teaching, for example, are—you know, they call themselves general and fundamental. So they’re general enough to apply to every case, fundamental enough to be a good starting point. But they’re certainly not an answer or a completed policy solution that gets generated out at the end. And so I wish I could tell you that, like, there was a systematic, you know, set of steps that we go through. In reality, it relies a lot on harnessing the best of the smartest people that we know, and then trying to recall the principles, engage with them, and then propose something that is actually practical. Like, can we actually concretely do something about this?

Ray Pennings: I really appreciate that multidimensional approach that is there. And I think it stands out and makes our approach somewhat distinct, because often one of the first things we do is—not only do we start with the problem as opposed to the purpose, which I highlighted earlier—we also categorize the problem. This is an economic problem; we need economists. This is a pure legal constitutional question, so it’s for lawyers and judges. What is often forgotten is that the solutions have ripple effects in every sphere of life. And whether it’s subsidiarity or sphere sovereignty—there’s probably 90 percent overlap in terms of much of what it means—but it actually has us looking at the sphere and the expertise, recognizing and respecting the expertise of the discipline, but also being very conscious of its ripple effects in other disciplines and taking them into account. We’re whole people. You know, just to use the euthanasia file: the individual may make the choice, but that individual is a spouse, a sibling, an employee, a neighbour. And, you know, we’re not hearing a lot, for instance, about what euthanasia does to the grieving process for those who are left behind. Turns out, pretty significant social issue that flows from it, and a whole bunch.

I see that time is going. One final piece, and then I’ll throw it to you for the last question. There is a sense in which I think of Christian social thought not as the glossary or the index, but much more as a toolbox. We’re going to jump around with lots of metaphors along the way, but it’s a toolbox in which we pull out the relevant tools for the task at hand, and that’s going to be a different tool every time. And if, you know—I think in Brian’s interview, we started with a reference to Solomon seeking wisdom. And there is a sense of prudence and humility in terms of knowing the tool, knowing its opportunities and what it’s for, but also knowing its limitations. And there’s a certain complexity. And I think that posture—a certain posture of, you know, you mentioned finiteness, humility—I think that is an underappreciated piece of Christian social thought that ought to be there. We come forward with a confidence, but also with a sense of: we are finite. We’re dealing with big questions. We don’t pretend to have all the answers. And in many ways, it’s struggling alongside the journey. And, you know, there’s a confidence that comes from Christian social thought, that we know how the story ends.

Andreae Sennyah: That’s a great setup, Ray. And perhaps we’ll introduce our listeners to the kind of closing component of the podcast, the one that we’re trying to point everyone’s direction toward, which is that at Cardus, we believe in a hopeful future. And so I’m going to end us off this episode asking you, Ray, what is giving you hope these days? And what can you share with our listeners as kind of a sign of hope before our next episode?

Ray Pennings: Let me answer that in the context—you know, the theme of this issue has been Christian social thought. It is interesting. We do a lot of polling with the Angus Reid Institute on the state of religion in Canada. And without getting caught in the details of the numbers—we’re not the only ones to have noticed the fact that young people, those under 34, are, you know, one and a half times more likely to be in a place of worship in the next seven days than baby boomers, on a per capita basis. There is something of a resurgence of religion. It’s complicated. The story isn’t nice and neat and fitting into boxes. But there is a sense in which, while there was a hostility for a period of time towards religion, we’re even seeing some of the new atheists of a decade ago who are now embracing faith. Brian mentioned Tom Holland in his interview. He’s one of many who have recognized the fact that faith in general, and Christianity in particular, have played a particular role, and there is a growing awareness of that.

And I’ll turn that from the broad data just down to the very granular particulars. You and I met five years ago now through the Cardus NextGen program. Every year, Cardus is blessed to have a cohort of 12 young people between 25 and 35—young professionals who are seeking to better understand how their faith applies to the public issues of the day. And not just in the political sphere. Some of them are doctors. Some of them are non-profit leaders, pastors—the full range of opportunities. But every time I meet with them, I am just encouraged anew: a generation that is seeking and struggling with these questions. And at the end of the day, to know that Christian social thought roots itself in the fact that we are Christian. We believe that God exists. We can plant. We can water. God provides the sunshine and the growth. And I see lots of planting and watering happening, and I’m very confident of the growth and the fruit that will yield.

Andreae Sennyah: Great. Okay, well, thank you so much, Ray, for leaving us off on a hopeful note. This being our first episode, I obviously want to say a special thank-you to you, my generous co-host. I also want to say thank you to our first guest, Brian Dijkema, for giving us so much to chew on in this episode. And then, of course, a special thank-you to all of our listeners. The most helpful thing that you can do for Ray and I in this podcast is to share this episode of Proverbs & Policy with a friend or a colleague who might find it interesting. Ray, I don’t know if you have parting thoughts for our listeners before we head off to the next episode.

Ray Pennings: Thank you very much, Andreae. It’s a delight translating some of our coffee-time banter into something that hopefully will be helpful to the audience. Thank you, audience, for being part of this inaugural episode of Proverbs & Policy. As Andreae said, you can help us by like and subscribe. That’s like and subscribe on whatever your favourite podcast app is, as well as spread the word, pass it along. We look forward to being back in your inbox with the drop of the next episode. And in the meantime, have a hopeful future.