Democracy is in Danger: Should Christians Care?

Liberal democracy is under military threat abroad, and intellectual threat in America. And many of ...

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Liberal democracy is under military threat abroad, and intellectual threat in America. And many of these domestic attacks are coming from within Christianity. So should Christians care about defending democracy? What are the connections between our Christian faith and America’s form of self-government? This week David and Curtis dive headlong into this deep and fascinating issue, including some history, some theology, and some critical guidance for why we Christians must indeed care about the state of our democracy and its institutions.

Show Notes:

–French Press: “A Christian Defense of American Classical Liberalism”

–Sarah Repucci & Amy Slipowitz (Freedom House): “Democracy Under Siege”

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  1. Pohl

    I think Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes is a good companion piece to this podcast and sets forth a solid foundation for your proposed post-partisan efforts. There one sees how the temporal ends of society are especially served by true Christian witness. Because we each have but one conscience, we can’t divorce our secular and religious lives but are called to holiness in all of our earthly endeavors, bringing especially a reverence for the dignity of the human person:
    https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html

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    Ben Connelly

    I totally meant to comment this earlier but it slipped my mind. Curtis and David, are you familiar with the arguments George Will makes in his book The Conservative Sensibility that the Founders were, by and large, deists and not really Bible-believing Christians as we understand that term today? I think Will makes a compelling case that not just Jefferson, but Washington, Madison, Adams, and others believed in God but may not have been Christians as CS Lewis would have used the term Christian.

    I think it’s worth grappling with Will’s argument if you’re going to make the case you’re making. Ultimately, I’m on your side and I think it doesn’t particularly matter that the Founders were deists and not Evangelicals - that doesn’t change anything about the Declaration or Constitution or natural rights. But it does complicate the “this nation was founded by Christians” argument.

    I could point to a few things to counteract Will’s argument, but he willingly admits these men mostly went to church.

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    Charles

    Tocqueville’s America—with its scrappy, can-do approach to association—sounds wonderful. It’s one more reason to deescalate national politics and embrace federalism. When problems are national, we feel powerless to do something about it.

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  4. DocHeartless

    I love you guys, and I am so grateful for this podcast and the insights it gives me to American Christians. And I absolutely applaud the efforts to get Christians on board any project that endeavors to protect liberal values. But Christianity is the parent of democracy? Um, I don't see it.

    As you said, the bible is largely agnostic on political theory, but just a cursory view of its experience in history should push us away from the view that it had much to do at all with the development of liberal forms of government. Created in a Roman imperial world, once it gained dominance on the cultural stage of Europe it existed alongside a largely feudal system for a millennium. I wouldn't say that it "led" to feudalism any more than I wouldn't say it "led" to the downfall of the Roman Empire (sorry Gibbon). Similarly, I wouldn't say that it "led" to the Enlightenment, nor the mindsets of the framers of the US constitution.

    Although, in that last case, I think you could make a better argument for a causal relationship, though it would likely be a negative one. Because of the horrors of the 16th and 17th centuries (religious wars, Protestant witch trials, conversion and destruction of natives, etc...), intellectuals in the 18th century decided they needed new bases for political foundations. I'd argue that the framers thought in terms of "god-given inalienable rights" less because of any literary source in biblical tradition but, rather, because they were enunciating radical ideas within a culture and a vocabulary heavily influenced by biblical tradition. That's just a fundamentally different causal relationship.

    I'd further argue that Christianity, like many religions, tends toward a natural opposition to plural democracy. Any epistemological framework deriving from a single source, in this case the mind of god, is going to be oppositional to alternative opinions. If god says that charging interest on a loan is sinful, how can you allow that in a just society? There's little natural room for the compromise that is foundational to any successful liberal democracy. As far as a logical progression goes, I'd say that Christianity most directly "leads" to theocracy, which you can definitely see in the way monarchal power was defended and cultivated in the feudal period. Democracy springs up later, largely in opposition to that formulation.

    All this isn't to knock Christianity. There're so many values within the Judeo Christian tradition that work well within a liberal democratic framework (intentionality of crimes as an important factor for just punishment, respect for your enemies/neighbors, avoiding prejudices, etc...). But there are values within Buddhism that work well in a liberal democratic framework, too - I wouldn't say that Buddhism is the parent of democracy, either.

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    bean

    I've been reading Scott Alexander for a long time, and can confirm that he's not a Christian, he's a ethnically-Jewish atheist. He's also still around, now at Astral Codex Ten, although he hasn't produced anything quite on the level of Against Murderism recently.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    Most Christians are decidedly NOT in favor of keeping democracy. They really prefer an authoritarian government that protects christianity. They also no longer believe in it. Mike Lee just recently said “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and [prosperity] are,” he wrote. “We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.”

    He tried to explain that he meant that in the terms of the founders, except he was wrong. The founders did not warn against representative democracy, just direct democracy. They did not argue that "tyranny of the majority" then justified minority rule. Which is what right wingers are now arguing. That curbing democracy in the ordinary sense of the word, the idea that majorities can enact popular policies...that is NOT what the founders meant when they argued against direct democracy.

    Lee and his ilk know what they are doing. They are undermining democracy itself, in an attempt to maintain control and give themselves and excuse to maintain power in any way possible. This is NO time to be undermining our constitutional, democratically elected, representative form of government.

    What he and other Republicans and Christians are doing is setting up the intellectual scaffolding to build this idea that will lead to constitutional disaster.

    This “republic, not a democracy” argument allows Republicans to make it seem that moves to make government more responsive or to enact legislation with popular support as "bad democracy", and any kind of moves to allow for minority rule or to expand minority rule even when majorities of voters reject them, as being features of "good republic".

    This is not what the founders argued for. They argued against direct democracy like there was in Athens. They wanted the people to rule, they just did not want direct rule, so as to stop mob rule and bad laws made in haste. So hence, representative democracy. Order given to chaos.

    What Americans should NEVER forget, lest they get confused, is the Constitution says the power in this country lies with the people...yes, thru our elected officials, but it is OUR power never the less. WE are the sovereign.

    Jefferson also said that WE have the power to "alter or abolish" this form of government. Some people want to do just that. Like Senator Lee and many on the right. They want an authoritarian form of government, they want to curb the power of the people and many of them have taken to promoting "common good conservatism", or other, rights and power reducing forms of government.

    Actual tyranny is being promoted by the right. All gussied up as being "protective of the minority".

    Don't fall for it. Stand up for American style democracy. It has served us very well lo these many years.

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      Kmregan7

      I regret that I have only one like to give this comment....

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  7. Bob Culwell

    I enjoyed this pod, just as I always enjoy starting my weekend with you all.

    This recent episode brought to mind my experiences the first time I was asked by my pastor to fill in for him teaching his adult Sunday School class when he was not going to be in town.

    The text I had to teach was 1 Corinthians 6:12. "I have the right to do anything,"--but not everything is beneficial. "I have the right to do anything,"--but I will not be mastered by anything.

    Too often, Americans and Christians both forget that appropriate limits on our freedoms are nothing to chafe under.

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  8. R Rayburn

    Found this quite provoking. One point still has me uneasy though. Curtis said that democracy is the form of government that best expresses The attribute of God (Love) the best (channeling his inner Churchill). He makes a compelling argument, never thought of it before. I do struggle, however, with the idea that God’s own descriptions of his “institution” are never akin to a democracy. It is always a kingdom with a covenant head. I am not setting aside historical arguments or arguing here for theonomy and I believe it should give us pause that we are subjects and citizens of a kingdom. Might it be possible for a kingdom to reflect Gods character as well as a democracy (shall I dare to ask “more so?”)? Again, not arguing here for the kingdom of America but it could be this belief in democracy arises from that part of us that seems to think that democracy is best for all peoples everywhere. Not sure it is.

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    Jean-Christophe Jouffrey

    Dear David French and Curtis Chang,

    I am a regular listener to your podcast since the beginning, and I always find it interesting, especially when I disagree.

    This is the first time that you both deeply disappointed me when you both went uncritically full Whig on us: Liberal Democracy, the Anglo-American thingy coming from Protestantism, Grotius, Locke, etc.

    Not only you are leaving outside the various Orthodox Churches (not just the Russian Orthodox Church), the Catholic Church, but also most established Protestant Churches, which you would all include into sinful Christendom, instead of pure Christianity (the readers of Kierkegaard, as most of your readers are, know the difference).

    But the Whig thingy does not bring any actual arguments against the Political Evangelists, or the Pretend Catholic Integralists, or the Orthodox Nationalists (including the Ukrainian Orthodox Nationalists who objected strongly to the Pope having two women, Ukrainian and Russian, holding together a cross on the Way of the Cross).

    Christianity is independent of political systems, and in its dedication to the poor, the sick, the hungry, it only inquires about "social justice", but it is all irrelevant as political systems when it comes to personal redemption, except as how we react as individual Christians when faced with injustice and misery, how we deal with Lazarus having his sores licked by dogs in front of the door of the rich man.

    Your mutual comparisons about the "image of God" fall seriously flat when one wants to apply it to a specific American form of Christian Liberal Democracy (that is in your Whig interpretation). The problem is that (and it is ironical coming from two Protestants) you fall in the trap of a simplistic "analogia entis" between God and his creatures, failing to take into account the infinite chiasm which exists between the one and the other, which means that the "image" must be understood with an almost infinite deformation in proportions.

    An example among many others. Curtis Chang: "we worship a God that is merciful, humble and just, so if we want to image that God that is merciful, humble and just, we want ruling democratic institutions that reflect that", supposedly based on Micah 6:8.

    "Humble"? God?

    What does Micah 6:8 say? " 8 You have been told, O mortal, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness [mercy], and to walk humbly with your God."

    It does not say that God is humble, it tells us that we should walk humbly with God, that is, let our pride aside and listen humbly to God.

    There is a confusion between the creature, and what the creature should be, and the "image" that we make of God from the creature... The analogia entis is reversed and uncritical.

    As Curtis Chang keeps repeating, we must not be "self-seeking"... and yet is there anything more self-seeking than the American individualistic and libertarian idea of liberal democracy, is there anything less "humble" than that?

    From the theological, political, historical points of view, the Whig interpretation which you put forward can be very easily blown away. You do not have here the argumentation which would bring to you those who are not already blindly and deafly convinced, and certainly not the Political Evangelicals nor the Political Integralists.

    One wishes you the best for your Post Partisan Christian Project, but you need to hire people who can complement what you are lacking (lack made obvious in your podcast), and challenge both of you, if you want it to have a chance at success. You must include people who are able to have a discourse that starts well before and goes well beyond your own Whig interpretation.

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    1. Richard Kennedy

      God is not humble? God is not humble? By our standards, you might be right. However, if God is the God of the Old and New Testaments, only a superficial reading will suggest He Himself is not humble. And it would seem to me that Chang hints at God’s humility by appealing to love and quoting ICor 13.
      I don’t know how one can read I & II Samuel, The Kings, and The Chronicles without coming away with a sense of God’s infinite patience with His People despite waywardness and out and out disobedience! How are love and patience *not* expressed without humility and deference. Yes, deference. After the Flood, God promises never again to destroy the world so thoroughly. To be true to that promise there will be much, much patience and deference to His Creation. He in His absoluteness doesn’t have to. But He does.
      A close reading of the books of the history of His People mentioned above yield a humble God who exhibits patience generation after generation after generation multiple times punctuated by His People coming back to Him.
      In the New Testament, God’s humility is demonstrated in Jesus’ ministry and crucifixion. This is summarized beautifully in the hymn in the 2nd chapter of Philippians. Jesus, equal with God empties Himself of His prerogatives as Diety and sacrifices Himself for us. This rejecting do prerogatives considering who He is according to the scriptures, is as humble as it gets. I’m open to arguments that the Christian God is not the God of the scriptures. I will say though, that where else do we go for the Christian conception of God?

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        Jean-Christophe Jouffrey

        Dear Richard Kennedy,

        1) you initially manage to sound like Trump claiming that he is the humblest of them all. 😏

        2) "Chang hints at God’s humility by appealing to love and quoting ICor 13"

        Initially the question of God's supposed humility came from the quotation of Micah 6:8, which as I have shown is about walking humbly with God, not God being humble.

        3) The you replace God's humility by God's patience... one virtue is not another virtue... otherwise we can play this game all the way. In order to be patient one must show a lot of fortitude... in order to be patient, one must show a lot of mercy... etc.

        4) deference... well apparently it means something else to you... I see little submission from God towards his creature... unless we play the game in 3)... why not speak also of the subservience of God?

        5) you go back to patience... instead of humility

        6) You do have something regarding the humility of Christ who suffers the very common punishment (and not unusual as Curtis Chang says) which is meant for slave: God incarnate in Jesus indeed showed humility to show us that we must follow the will of the Father even if it takes us to an ignominious death. Which has nothing to do with any political system... which was the point of Curtis Chang.

        7) "I’m open to arguments that the Christian God is not the God of the scriptures. I will say though, that where else do we go for the Christian conception of God?"

        Well I am not open to the notion that the Christian God is not the God of Scriptures, nor am I open to the idea that we call any of the virtues and any attribute of God "humility".

        Words have meaning, and so do the Scripture.

        As I have said, in order to follow an idea, a "narrative", some people are ready to corrupt and reverse the analogia entis, including to the point of claiming that God is humble (when we are in fact asked to walk humbly with God, that is to obey him with "fear and trembling", without having our ego interfere, and even claiming that God is "deferent" towards his creature... You might even have said that God is in awe in front of his creature, which is obviously so eager to learn humility from Him, that it asserts its dominance over its creator. 🙂

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    hajaXavier

    I was raised by my parents. When did we stop raising our children and start parenting them? I’m probably the only person who thinks there’s a distinction. The verb in spanish is “educar”, to educate, which is what my parents did. They educated so that I could grow into adulthood. I wonder if the verb has changed in other languages. I hope not.

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      hajaXavier

      I am fully bilingual and rarely have issues with English. I don’t understand what image the love means. Image vs imagine? Raising vs parenting. My conservatism also applies to language.

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        CynthiaW

        According to what I was taught in elementary school, we "rear" children and "raise" chickens. That aside, "parenting" is a ridiculous neologism and should be eradicated.

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          Jack

          What's so bad about "parenting?"

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            CynthiaW

            "Parent" is a noun.

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