What has Christianity to do with democracy?
Making an affirmative Christian case for democracy
Last week, I wrote about American democracy, and the danger I see to it in this year’s election. The piece was my endorsement, of sorts, for this election: an endorsement of democracy, and consequently, against Donald Trump. But, one thing I did not do in that essay was engage Christianity in the discussion about democracy. In fact, I only mentioned Christianity once, in passing.
Since this is a newsletter about Christian theology first and foremost, we should think this week about this question: what has Christianity to do with democracy?
This is an especially relevant question for me because, in my theological and ideological journey over the last decade, I’ve been strongly influenced by the likes of Alasdair Macintyre and Stanley Hauerwas towards a skepticism of Christian political action, and democracy as a good. I’ve written extensively over the last few years about the dangers of confusing Christianity with American liberal democracy, about the heresy that is the conflation of the faith with any one political party or program, and about the need to keep Christian hope free from commitment to or dependence upon the success or failure of any outside political ideology or movement. I agree strongly with Stanley Hauerwas that, in general, most American Christians – left, right, and center – believe that “the American church’s primary social task is to underwrite American democracy.”1 I will always carry with me an aversion to patriotism and nationalism that is borne of my Christian faith, heavily influenced as it is by Anabaptist thought.
One piece of my own writing on this topic that sticks out in my memory is this piece from January 2017, just prior to Trumps inauguration as president, titled (rather provocatively) “Democracy is not always right.” By right, I meant that democracy in and of itself does not guarantee the good, the true and the beautiful. This was a reminder that I think I and other liberals and progressives needed at the end of the Obama era. Those eight years represented for us the idea that, underneath the partisan bickering and politicking, things would always turn out ok, if only we believed in democracy and politics hard enough. 2016 rightfully disabused us any such notion. The same democracy that gave us Barack Obama gave us Donald Trump. As someone coming of age after the George W. Bush administration, this was very easy to lose sight of. 2008 and 2012 went very well. Surely, they would keep going very well.
In that 2017 essay, I wrote these words:
“One of the ideas that so many people struggle with (and I admit I did for a long time) is that we expect democracy to produce the “right” answer. We expect, no matter our ideology or political party, that in the medium to long-term, regardless of the outcome of various immediate elections, that the democratic process will conform itself to Dr. King’s moral arc of justice. And sometimes it certainly feels that way; for me, 2008 was one of those times. It was hard for so many people to not perceive the election of Barack Obama as not just a good thing, but the morally inevitable thing that democracy promises us.
But this just simply isn’t the case. In and of itself, democracy is no more moral that any form we use to govern ourselves. Now, democracy comports itself better to the ideal of self-determination better than republicanism or oligarchy or even Plato’s rule of the elite does. But, in the end, democracy facilitates the ability of the mass of people to make a certain choice, regardless of the moral weight of that choice. Another way to say this is, we get what we vote for. And sometimes, that is a Barack Obama, or an Abraham Lincoln, or a Solon, or a Nelson Mandela. But, sometimes, it’s a Donald Trump. In democracy, the right choice isn’t always the moral choice. The right choice is just whatever we decide it is. Democracy is only as moral as we are as a people.”
Democracy is only as moral as we are as a people. I stand most by that assessment today, if not everything else in that essay. The failure to shape moral and virtuous democratic character is one of the most dangerous and glaring failings of liberalism. When we set up a democracy but fail to shape the people of a democracy in a virtuous way, well, we get something like Donald Trump, eventually. This should be rather obvious.
To bring this back to Christianity, this is all a long-winded way of saying that there is nothing inherently Christian about democracy. Democracy, in and of itself, is not something formed from the foundation of Scripture or the church. There is nothing holy or sacred or divinely inspired in its functioning. And, for some Christians, that in and of itself is good reason to reject democracy. But, the question to be asked is, if not democracy in America, then what?
This is a key to question to ponder, for anyone – especially Christians – who have a stake in the American project. One does not have to gleefully endorse American nationalism and patriotism to take this question – and its potential answers – seriously. Like it or not, we live here, and we do have a stake in what happens, especially if we take seriously the command of Jesus to love our neighbors and our enemies.
Before I try to answer the question myself, let me address one potential response, from the strictly Hauerwasian school of theology, which I have at times more or less taken as my own: that the fate of American democracy, and America as a whole, is of no concern to the church, nor our responsibility to ensure or save. As Hauerwas himself writes in After Christendom, “Christians would be ill advised to try to rescue the liberal project either in its epistemological or political form.” The purpose of the church, as Hauerwas likes to say, is to remind the world that it is the world, and the church is the church, and these two things are irrevocably different and separate. As I said, this is generally a view I am sympathetic to, and have subscribed to in various shades of intensity over the last decade. Hauerwas’ views arise from a powerful critique of the Constantinian turn in the church that I also share. Ultimately, I agree that the church is not under any obligation to save democracy or liberalism from itself. I’ll stand hand-in-hand with Hauerwasians in the critique of churches – left and right – who forget themselves and become tools of a particular political party or movement or ideology.
Christians are Christians first, foremost, and primarily. Let us not forget that. But that identity does not erase every other identity. And it does not permit us to withdraw into a sectarian blindness that lets us forget the fate of those around us and who also are subject to American democracy by dint of our location here and now. We may be able to make the case that we don’t bear responsibility for the fate of democracy, but we do have responsibility for one another, and so the prospect of the destruction of American democracy, and its potential replacement with authoritarianism of some sort, should concern Christians, and compel us to take part in the political process in some form.
This brings us back to that question: if not democracy in America, then what? Such a question elides debates about the good of pluralistic liberalism. We can have abstract debates all day about whether classical liberalism is a good or not (far be it from me to pass up the chance at such a meaty debate), but none of those debates has an immediate bearing on the fact that we do, in fact, live in a pluralistic democracy shaped by the liberal Enlightenment, and history teaches us that a peaceful, just and benevolent theocracy is just not in the cards. America is what it is, and we must work with the world we inhabit. Certainly, this does not preclude a Hauerwasian colony mindset for Christians, which is how I think Christians should be thinking about our place in the world. But, as a colony of aliens in a foreign land, we cannot forget that we are in fact in that foreign land, not outside of it. And so, we should remember the words of the prophet Jeremiah to the captives in Babylon: “Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.” Our future depends on this city’s welfare. We cannot leave it to rot, or to fall to something more terrible. The question of what comes after democracy is one Christians in America today must be contemplating.
As I started to make the case for in last week’s essay, I believe strongly that what comes next, if Donald Trump and his enablers get their way, is something terrible. I think what follows on from the failure of our democratic project is some form of oligarchic authoritarianism, albeit one that tries to paint itself in the benevolent light of consumer capitalism and liberal hyper-individualism. Most crucially for the church, the crumbling of American constitutional democracy means inevitably the destruction of the Bill of Rights, and subsequently, freedom of religious expression as one of those rights. Now, this may not come right away, especially for churches that appear to be on the side of Trump. But authoritarianism comes for everyone and for every truth, eventually. Your initial safety and success is no guarantor of future well-being, in a system with no rules and no guardrails for those who wield power. Place not your trust in Donald Trump’s promises of cultural dominance. Such things are fleeting victories.
So, can a Christian case be made for democracy in America, that isn’t just a fearful warning of what comes after democracy? I think it certainly can, and I want to make some stabs towards doing so here, via a brief look at some of the forms American democracy strives to take. This is certainly not a comprehensive nor wholly original case; entire books can (and have) been written on this topic. But, in light of my own case for democracy last week, I think it is important to lay down some markers about what this tradition we call Christianity can tell us about a concept like democracy, both in support and in critique.
The thing that defines democracy most significantly from other forms of government – and that which I think we here in America most take for granted at times – is the concept of self-determination. I also think this is the most straightforwardly easy aspect of democracy to make a Christian argument for, which is good considering its centrality to democracy. Self determination is the outworking of personal liberty; we are free to make for ourselves lives as our conscience leads, and in a democracy, this means we are free to bring our voices, our ideas, and our metaphysical commitments to bear on the public conversation around how we will govern our polis. The collective outworking of individual acts of self determination is the work of democracy: the self-determination of a political body to choose its own leaders and policies. Nothing is more central to democracy.
Such self-determination is not a given. The vast majority of history is the story of people with no ability or freedom to make choices about their own life circumstances, much less the government they are subject to. It’s easy, in 2024 America, to take for granted the vast number of choices we get to make every day about our lives, and about our ability to vote. But we are the extreme outliers of history. We should not forget that fact. We should also not lose sight of just how fragile it is. I think it is easy to lose sight of just how easy it would be for this to all go away, even before we really notice it. The appearance of democratic processes and structures can very quickly be made to cover up their neutering. In fact, the ever-increasing power of money in our political processes already shows how easy that is. Its hard to see how much our democratic right as Americans has been eroded by the ability of undemocratic billionaires and corporations around the globe to flood our political processes with untold amounts of cash in their unholy attempt to wrest democratic power away from the people and thus ensure their mostly ill-gotten gains will never be subject to democratic accountability. Democratic freedom of choice is crucial to our ability to make good lives for ourselves, and that includes the ability to pursue economic independence free from poverty and deprivation.
Despite its capture by the political right in America, freedom is not a concept anyone should dismiss. Individual freedom is not just an American or Western concept; it is a key concept in Scripture, and especially in the letters of Paul that so shaped Christianity early on. Paul writes eloquently of freedom, especially in Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery…Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Here, in this one passage from Paul, we get both a defense of freedom as key to the Christian story, and a vision of what freedom in action looks like. Freedom is at the center of the saving work for Jesus, of the kind of life God envisions for us: made free from sin and death, we are then free to live into our calling to love, and to serve. Freedom is not merely about shaking off the shackles of whatever tyranny you imagine to be holding your back; its about coming into your full potential as a human being to be the hands and feet of Christ for one another.
In a democratic context, this should speak to our duty not merely to use the power of democracy to enrich and service our own desires, but to bend our collective will towards making life better for as many as possible. Certainly, in many cases this looks like clearing away the various structures and obstacles that hold people back from full flourishing. But, is also looks like the affirmative use of power to fight injustice and ensure human dignity, meaning the shaping of policy to fight poverty, hunger, discrimination, and violence when and where we reasonably can. This will never be perfect; we would do well to remember here my earlier warnings about the amoral nature of democracy: for us to shape it towards justice, we must be a just people first. But it is certainly the case that this is much more possible in a democracy than another form of government, including theocracy.
The self determination of individuals always feeds into another key aspect of good democracy: the diffusion of power. In our American constitutional democracy, this is made real by our federalized form of government, with power running down from the federal level to state and local bodies. One of the primary selling points of democracy over more autocratic forms of governance is the fact that it spreads power out broadly.
The rejection of authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government that is implied in the diffusion of power is another selling point for democracy from a Christian point of view, or at least it should be. The elevation of Donald Trump over the last few years by many conservative Christians, and their general shrug at his abuses of power and admiration for dictators shows that, for many, the anti-authoritarian nature of democracy is not a requirement, or even a good thing, especially those who want to use power to enforce their version of the good on others. Free exercise of religion as one sees fit requires a staying of the hand by any governing authority, and while the strongman you support today may be one that lets you worship as you see fit, this one that comes later almost certainly will not be. Practicing a faith that has such an anti-establishment message as Jesus’ does almost guarantees that the it will come into conflict with the powers and principalities, or at least an honest exercise of that faith would ensure so.
Finally, that anti-establishment message is also one that leans heavily upon a call for justice for the poor, the hurting, and the oppressed. Practices of economic democracy – things like labor unions and protection, policies that counteract concentrations of wealth and economic power, and broader ownership over and responsibility for resources and capital – are in line with a Christian faith that centers Jesus’ continuation of the prophetic call to remember the widow and the orphan and the stranger, and of his reminder that we are to see in the hungry and the poor Christ’s own image – if not our own.
All these things- self-determination, diffused power, the rejection of authoritarianism, and economic justice – are things Christians should desire for the city we live in, and take a stake in working towards. Again, democracy is not good in and of itself, and its practice guarantees none of these things. But, when placed in comparison with totalitarian, theocratic, oligarchic, or authoritarian alternatives, it becomes apparent that democracy is the best option we have towards achievement of these goals. Again, the question facing us is not, what is the perfect form of government which should guide our rejection of everything that cannot live up to such expectations; it is, if not democracy, then what? How do we govern this nation that we are aliens in?
In the Christian case for democracy, the preservation of these democratic ideals helps perpetuate our own best practices of faith. Self-determination ensures the free will required to become a disciple. Diffused power ensures that power-hungry individuals aren’t given power over our lives and our choice to practice our faith as guided by conscience and community. The rejection of authoritarian governments preserves the freedom of churches as broader communities to exercise their role in the lives of people as they see fit. And economic democracy lines up with the ethical imperatives native to the Christian message. Christians should be able to desire democracy and work for its preservation at the same time that we remember its shortcomings.
To quote theologian Luke Bretherton, himself a student of Stanley Hauerwas, “It is a statement of the obvious to say that Christianity is not necessary for democracy to exist. It is no less true, but perhaps less obvious, to say that democratic politics is intrinsic to the practice of Christianity, and democracy, broadly understood, is a way of enacting fundamental Christian commitments.”2
As I made the case for a week ago, our democracy is at stake this election cycle. Regardless of specific policies, we are facing down the choice between a candidate who is imperfect but is not seeking to upend our democratic norms, and one who very is, and who has already done so once before. As Christians, our hope lies elsewhere. Our fates do not rise and fall with that of the American democratic project. But, we should not desire chaos and totalitarianism and oppression for the world and for our neighbors. We are part of this world, and should want the best we can imagine for it. Democracy right now ensures that. More than any specific policy outcome – on abortion, on the death penalty, on the economy, on immigration, on LGBTQ+ rights – we should all want our constitutional democracy to continue forward, and to do so in a healthy and free way. Otherwise, all those debates about specific issues become irrelevant. We only get to have those debates because we live in a democracy, not in spite of it. No, democracy is not inherently Christian. No, it does not ensure the good just by its very existence. But this doesn’t mean it has no value. Let us, as Christians, do our part to preserve it a little longer.
You can find an audio version of this essay by clicking here, or searching for The Radical Ordinary on your favorite podcast player.
Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, Resident Aliens, page 33.
https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/Democracy#:~:text=It%20is%20a%20statement%20of,of%20enacting%20fundamental%20Christian%20commitments.
Good stuff, Justin. Agreed.