Interview with Jonathan Chaplin

Could you start by telling us something about yourself, who you are, what you do?

I’m a Christian political theorist with an interest in environmental political theology. I’m a member of the Cambridge Divinity Faculty where I supervise UG and PG students and, this year, I’m a Research Associate of Theos for which I am writing a book on ‘Faith in Democracy’.

What does life after KLICE hold?

Lots more time for writing and research, as well as maintaining links with those and other institutions, such as Cardus in Canada.

What or who are you key influences?

Herman Dooyeweerd, James Skillen, Bob Goudzwaard. Catholic political thought.

Your magnum opus was the book on Dooyeweerd - how did you get ‘introduced’ to him?

In about 1976 I happened to pick up a book on common grace in a Christian bookshop while visiting Cardiff, in which there was a chapter on Kuyper. One thing led to another: Richard Russell and Alan Storkey, then ICS. There I took a formative seminar involving a very close reading of Dooyeweerd’s political thought, with Bernard Zylstra, a former PhD student of Dooyeweerd.

Why a book on Dooyeweerd? Is his work still relevant today?

Yes, profoundly relevant across many fronts. But he is notoriously difficult to read and understand, and his works are difficult to find and access. Hence the book, which attempts to make him intelligible for a English-speaking audience. Also, many of his seminal insights are undeveloped, or in need of critical revision. I do that in the book in relation to debates about state and civil society.

What have been the responses to the book so far?

The few academic reviews I’ve seen, and a series of individual messages, have been encouraging. The book won the 2016 ‘Dooyeweerd Prize’ offered by the Association for Reformational Philosophy in the Netherlands.

What do you think are the strength and weaknesses of Dooyeweerd’s approach?

Short answer: read the book! Slightly longer answer: He offers a unique, Protestant, philosophy of society and the state that is a  robust and comprehensive model of a just plural society, cutting through secular ideologies of liberalism conservatism, nationalism etc. His detailed, normative structural analysis of the state and other social institutions is very fertile ground, even though much of the detail has to be revised, extended or just dropped. His main weaknesses are the lack of extensive empirical descriptions of actual states, and the overly-rigid way he conceives of ‘structural principles’ of the state and other bodies. 

Why do you think his work is not so well known as it should be?

It’s very difficult to read. It often doesn’t start in the right place for good communication with others (just look at the first few pages of A New Critique). And it invites a very searching critical analysis of the assumptions of any reader.

What will the future hold for Dooyeweerd studies?

Let me confine myself exclusively to social, legal and political philosophy. One can identify a first generation of scholars (whose careers got going in the 1960s, the decade after the publication of A New Critique) who appreciated his work and put it to creative use in the Netherlands, North America, South Africa, Australia, etc. This might include Bob Goudzwaard, Bernard Zylstra, James Skillen, Danie Strauss, Sander Griffioen, Alan Storkey, etc. And one can identify a second generation who started work around the late 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Paul Marshall, Govert Buijs, Lambert Zuidervaart, David Caudill, Alan Cameron,  John Hiemstra, David Koyzis, myself) who have tried to do the same. There are many more I’m not mentioning. To describe them as a ‘generation’ means that they knew and engaged with each other and participated to some degree in shared conversations and  perhaps published together. It’s harder to identify a third ‘generation’  in this sense, although there are very good younger scholars who got started in the 1990s and 2000s (eg Michael De Moor, Romel Bagares, lots more I don’t know). This is partly because older networks are weakening or disappearing (a major exception is the Association for Reformational Philosophy which continues to thrive), and younger scholars have been less likely to engage with a philosophical approach mostly radically out of step with our postmodern times (except in those areas where it is very much in  step with them – see eg the work of Jamie Smith). I cannot currently think of a single institution globally where you might find the kind of course specifically on Dooyeweerd’s political thought from which I benefited in the early 1980s (though ICS continues to teach a course on Reformational philosophy). I’d be delighted to be proved wrong! But would-be ‘third generation’ scholars outside the Netherlands will need to forge new networks and build new resources.

You have recently been involved in a book on energy policy - how did that come about?

I was invited to represent ‘theology’ in an interdisciplinary project on the theme in Cambridge University, and since I had recently taken up an interest in environmental political theology I welcomed the chance. The book emerged out of the project.

One of your chapters in that book is on public theology - what do you mean by public theology? 

I define it there very generally as theological reflection directed to public issues, and to audiences beyond the church. Reformational thought doesn’t use the concept of ‘public theology’, but speaks instead of eg Christian political (economic, legal, etc) thought. But the term is widely used among theologians and beyond, so it’s a useful ‘hook’.

I understand you are working on another book on faith in democracy - could you explain what that is about? And when it will be available? 

In brief, this is an attempt to propose a version of what James Skillen calls ‘principled pluralism’ for a UK context – the idea that a democratic state should enable maximum freedom for diverse faiths to comes to expression in the political realm. There are plenty of such books in North America and the Netherland, but as far as I know not a single one here in the UK. It’ll probably be out late 2020 or early 2021, and with a secular publisher.

What books are you reading at the moment? 

Lots of stuff as background for that book. Some random examples:

Luke Bretherton, Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy

John Inazu, Confident Pluralism

Eric Gregory, Politics and the Order of Love

Adrian Pabst, The Demons of Liberal Democracy

Cécile Laborde, Liberalism’s Religion

Teresa Bejan, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration. 

Outside of politics:

Anna Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

Michael O’Siadhail, The Five Quintets – an extraordinary engagement with ‘modernity’ by a leading Irish (Christian) poet

About to start Justin Butcher’s Walking to Jerusalem after being blown away by the theatre version of it. The walk coincided with the 100^th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

What do you like to do for fun?

Walking, watching films, occasional visits to theatre - just saw Brian Friel’s amazing Translations. 

Watching football: I recently defected from Manchester United to Liverpool in protest at the appointment of JoséMourinho. But now they’ve appointed the lovely Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. On the other hand, Liverpool are doing quite well, and my mother was born in  Merseyside.... But professional football urgently needs radical reform. They should appoint Mark Roques as chaplain to the PFA. 

But mainly, playing keyboards in a blues/jazz band in the Cambridge area – pubs, private parties, fundraisers. We do covers of pieces like ‘Autumn Leaves’, ‘Summertime’, ‘Don’t Explain’, ‘Mack the Knife’, ‘Your Heart is as Black as Night’ – that kind of stuff.

Jonathan’s academic.edu site is available here: https://cambridge.academia.edu/JChaplin