Religion of Democracy

[muse]

I thought you might enjoy this -- I for one am persuaded that "democracy" is a religion, especially in Pakistan, but does Christianity have a realtionship with Democracy? Does or Can Islam? How? WHY?







Christianity and the West
Posted on September 1st, 2010 by Daniel Larison


Yesterday, Joe Carter cited an interesting passage from a recent address by the Catholic Archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput:

Two of the biggest lies in the world today are these: first, that Christianity was of relatively minor importance in the development of the West; and second, that Western values and institutions can be sustained without a grounding in Christian moral principles

.

Archbishop Chaput was speaking in Slovakia, whose government was subjected to pressure from the EU in recent years because Slovakia’s government had made a treaty with the Vatican that would require Slovakia to allow Catholic hospitals in the country to refuse to perform abortions. Indeed, the Slovak coalition government collapsed four years ago on account of this pressure. The archbishop’s remarks may have been alluding to that specific dispute, and they also touched on the broader question of whether the current European project has any relationship to Europe’s Christian heritage. The unfortunate irony is that the European project has been a favorite of many Christian Democratic parties in western Europe, and it has ended up becoming the bane of those Christian Democratic parties in central and eastern Europe that are still more firmly-rooted in their Catholicism.

There is much in the address that I agree with, but what struck me about the passages Carter cited was this paragraph:

Our societies in the West are Christian by birth, and their survival depends on the endurance of Christian values. Our core principles and political institutions are based, in large measure, on the morality of the Gospel and the Christian vision of man and government. We are talking here not only about Christian theology or religious ideas. We are talking about the moorings of our societies – representative government and the separation of powers; freedom of religion and conscience; and most importantly, the dignity of the human person

.

Whenever I see or hear politically conservative and religiously traditionalist Christians make an argument like this, it brings me up a little short. There is some truth in this claim, but it seems to me that it is especially important for traditionalist Christians to distinguish between arguing for the undeniable Christian heritage of Western societies and the importance of Christianity for the flourishing of those societies, which Christians should argue for, and making claims for the direct link between modern political arrangements and the Gospel.

For one thing, the latter claims are very debatable, and I doubt that they are persuasive to anyone who is not already inclined to accept them. For most of Christian history, the Fathers of the Church and Christian theologians would have rejected the idea of freedom of religion as we mean it, and they would have been mostly indifferent to or agnostic about the relative merits of one system of government compared to another. To the extent that the Fathers of the Church shared the philosophical assumptions of their times, they would have regarded democracy with the same horror that the Founding Fathers generally did, and they might or might not have regarded a Polybian constitution as a good way to organize a polity. On the whole, modern Orthodox Christian polities only very belatedly and grudgingly accepted ideas of representative government and separation of powers, and in Catholic Europe the proponents of these ideas were as often as not virulently anti-Catholic.

One of the things that always bothered me about George Bush’s revolutionary rhetoric was how he identified the expansion of political freedom with God’s design for man, which makes God’s plan one of narrow political deliverance rather than deliverance from death. These claims that representative government and separation of powers have some grounding in Christianity bother me in a different way. Probably the most thoroughly Christianized state in the medieval world was Byzantium, but it retained a late Roman autocratic system of government for its entire existence, so what is the connection between political structures and Christianity? Because the experience of most of Christian history in most parts of the world does not fit this picture of Christianity as the foundation of modern constitutional government, these claims have to privilege the Christianity of certain parts of western Europe and North America as the norm when it was clearly the exception. Furthermore, the reason for privileging Christianity from these parts of the world becomes an expressly political one. In other words, the quality or acceptability of one’s Christianity becomes dependent on the extent to which it complements the political values of modern Western states. Tying the importance of Christianity to the instrumental claim that Christianity is necessary because it created or undergirded our political culture takes us closer to defending Christianity in terms of little more than “Christian-flavored civic religion.” Even if it were true, I’m not sure that Christians should want to make that argument.

I had the same reaction after reading this column by William Murchison. Murchison makes a similar claim:

Where on earth do claims to liberty under law arise if not from the heavily plowed ground of Christian belief concerning man—and, as we would add nowadays, woman—as the special creation of God, worthy of protection against tyranny, oppression and other awful incidents of existence? No God—no Christian God at any event—no liberty, no freedom, no personhood, is the rule of thumb


Islam’s claim to partake of “Abrahamic faith” falls short of the Christian understanding in all its fullness. Were it otherwise, wouldn’t one expect to see robust democratic republics throughout the Islamic world, full of Barney Franks and Nancy Pelosis (with maybe the random Mitch McConnell) instead of the despotisms that squash and mismanage their peoples? Where are they?

The first paragraph can be defended, but the second makes no sense. Possibly Turkey, Indonesia and Bangladesh are insufficiently robust democratic republics, or perhaps there aren’t enough of them to satisfy Murchison, but that isn’t the main problem with this second paragraph. If Islam falls short of the Christian understanding in all its fullness, and both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches clearly teach that it does, it is because Islam does not recognize the full divinity of Christ or the unity of the Three Persons of the Godhead. From the Christian perspective, if Muslims around the world accepted those fundamental teachings (i.e., accepted the central truths of Christianity), the present political arrangements in many Muslim countries would tell us very little about their religion, which should tell us that there is not necessarily a strong connection between the religion people profess and the political structures that prevail in their countries. It seems to me that Christians can resist the falsehoods that Archbishop Chaput identified without endorsing claims of questionable validity.

 

[oceanx]

Thanks for posting that from the "American Conservative". The part about Byzantium provokes thought.

It does not surprise me that AMCONMAG has been getting some mileage and perhaps increased attention as time went on. I subscribed to it almost when it first came out.

Don't ask me how and why. And I have not pay-subscribed any other periodicals in my life so far. Its educational value has lessened for me of late ... but I still enjoy the read in general.

The irony is that it was founded by that "bigot" Buchanan ... God works in mysterious ways indeed!

 

[oceanx]

Here is another thought-provoking but utterly "inconvenient" article from the same magazine by a different author just under a year ago.

I'd be interested if you care to commment on that or on any link between that and the one you posted ...

I didn't get a single response when I posted it back then and I am not about to engage in "thread necrophilia".

But I thought if anyone around here would care to comment on the articles above, you probably will, Mister or Madam Muse.

 

[oceanx]

BTW, I do not mean to put you on the spot, Muse.

I for one, believe that democracy is a means to an end. I am not sure what exactly the end should be, however.

My own understanding of the history and evolution of democracy remains superficial. However, it is beyond dispute that its basic concept and practice predated the birth of New Testament Christianity.

And for most of the period Christianity existed as an organized religion, democracy was nowhere near any of the countries in the "Christian West", let alone in Orthodox Byzantium - just as the author you quoted has argued.

And these days, I am increasingly gloomy about the future of "political Christianity" itself.

The brand of "political Christianity" centering around Christian Zionism is introducing a new schism. I will not say more on that given the forum policies.

In my current understanding (which is subject to change without notice), democracy has more to do with "secularism" than with any organized religion per se.

One can debate whether "secularism" was rooted in the New Testament ... My own view is that it's tenuous to make a definitive link. Certainly the New Testament championed a certain measure of egalitarianism. Can't have democracy as we currently practice without a degree of egalitarianism.

Secularism is loosely related to rationalism and empiricism. These have given rise to Enlightenment ideals, and from there perhaps the intellectual underpinning of modern democracy.

However, in the "West" at least, once the New Testament foundation eroded in the exuberant technological age, rationalism and empiricism gave birth to social darwinism.

Socail darwinism spawned Fascism and Communism.

The rest is history ... and the present.

 

[CardSharp]

New Testament foundation eroded in the exuberant technological age

I know you're a Christian but are you really blaming the Nazis on the fall of religion?

This is an anachronism for one and.... loads of other stuff that I can't be bothered to think up right at this moment. (I gotta wake up early tomorrow)

 

[oceanx]

I know you're a Christian but are you really blaming the Nazis on the fall of religion.

I am not much of a writer. But you can read better than that!

 

[CardSharp]

No I read that last part pretty clear.

However, in the "West" at least, once the New Testament foundation eroded in the exuberant technological age, rationalism and empiricism gave birth to social darwinism

You logic goes new testament engenders egalitarianism and once this was eroded by rationalism and science in the modern age, we became real bastards like the Nazis who believed in racial superiority.

Please examine the order of the events you mentioned. Again it's an anachronism.

(I really gotta go but I'd be interested in talking about this tomorrow night, it looks like you're interested in this area of discussion, as am I)

 

[oceanx]

No I read that last part pretty clear.



You logic goes new testament engenders egalitarianism and once this was eroded by rationalism and science in the modern age, we became real bastards like the Nazis who believed in racial superiority.

Please examine the order of the events you mentioned. Again it's an anachronism.

(I really gotta go but I'd be interested in talking about this tomorrow night, it looks like you're interested in this area of discussion, as am I)

Fair enough. I didn't give you enough credit. My bad.

However, the link is not with "egalitarianism" - at least not how you appear to understand it.

Now some would consider the SS organizationally and "spiritually" much more "egalitarian" in a raw sense of the word than the old Prussian aristocracy ...

So clearly a "superficial" egalitarianism isn't it ... so Nazism wasn't about German peasants vs Junkers, though it may "subsume" this aspect of the struggle and render it moot ...

Anyhow, pick it up when you have time and interest.

 

[muse]

fun articles - but can only pick this up in perhaps 4 or 5 hours

 

[somebozo]

Religion is the stiching thread between social, politic and economics. This is why any pea brain who had read Quran can understand why it has devised a whole system for Muslim nation. From ruler to subject, from economy to releations, from birth to death.

 

[Tractor]

Something on account of Max Weber's book "The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism"?

 

[Durran3]

The West became a rational, tolerant society when it LET go of religion.People like Galileo were executed by the Church not praised for their scientific endeavors. If we were to leave governance to a bunch of Jesus thumpers we'd go back to the Dark Ages.

Sure this is a very very generalized video but it does hold a grain of truth.
Also this list doesn't include South Korea, New Zealand and many other Atheist, Deist, Agnostic countries.

 

[muse]

Originally posted by Oceanx


I wanted to post this a while ago but frankly, have let it slip my mind. All thoughtful comments are appreciated. And I apologize for it being quite long (I quoted about 3/4 of the original).

Every Man a God-King

The danger of popular sovereignty

By Daniel McCarthy

The liberal blogosphere had a ready explanation when Scott Roeder, a Christian of Old Testament convictions, murdered Kansas abortionist George Tiller. Roeder was what Andrew Sullivan calls a “Christianist,” someone who believes “that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.” The term echoes the description of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda as “Islamist,” though Sullivan allows that “only a tiny few” Christian or Muslim extremists are violent.

In the West as in the Middle East, the story goes, fanatical believers in medieval moral codes want to impose their views on others, either by force of law or terror. But the trouble with this account is that Roeder’s actions cannot be reconciled with traditional Christianity—and what’s more, those Islamists may be less religiously motivated than most Americans believe.

One man who should know is Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit. In Marching Toward Hell, he highlights al-Qaeda’s stated motives, which have more to do with Israel, U.S. foreign policy, and the domestic politics of Arab countries than with Mohammad and the Koran. Scheuer also reveals a surprisingly modern side to al-Qaeda: the group draws much of its strength from “the desire of Muslims to attain what Jefferson called the ‘inalienable rights’ that the Founders believed to be hard-wired into human beings simply because they are human beings.” Bin Laden, a would-be tyrant in the eyes of the West, “is urging Muslims to liberate themselves from tyranny in order to attain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in terms that are compatible with their Islamic faith.”

Shocking though it may seem, Islamists are not opposed to rights or popular rule, but their understanding of those terms is very different from ours. Then again, maybe they aren’t so different: Scott Roeder also killed in the name of rights—the right to life. But religion is only a secondary dimension in rights-driven terror. The primary one is political: the belief that the state must uphold the values of the people (rightly understood), and should it fail to do so, ordinary men may take action. What underpins this belief is not a creed but an ideology—republicanism. Its roots lie not in the Middle Ages or Middle East, but in modern Europe.

Political theorists have long recognized the dangers inherent in republicanism’s near cousin, democracy. James Burnham likened democracy’s potential for abuse to the doctrine of the Divine Right of kings—at an extreme, “the law [becomes] the expression of, or rather identical to, the popular will. There is no independent law, human or divine; or, if there is, there is no source other than popular will that can proclaim, interpret and judge it.” Whatever the people desire becomes licit; whatever they dislike becomes criminal.

Yet the evil that Burnham described is not limited to democracy. It afflicts every kind of popular government, where political right is understood as emanating from the bottom up rather than the top down. In a republic—literally res publica, the public’s affair—the government’s business (legislating, judging, and enforcing law) is the people’s business, and the people’s business (the passions, interests, and values of individuals) always threatens to become the government’s. The Divine Right of the public thus goes farther than the Divine Right of kings. An absolute monarch might say, “l’état, c’est moi,” but he could never pretend, as popular government does, to embody all of society.

Over the past 400 years, the idea that government rests on the consent of the governed has come to dominate Western thinking—and indeed thinking all over the world—to such an extent that it seems less a proposition than a natural fact. Yet there is nothing natural about it. Indeed, even after four centuries, popular government remains a revolutionary idea that often drives its adherents to assume for themselves the prerogatives of the state. Vox populi, vox dei, the assertion that the voice of the people is the voice of God, has led to terror as well as representative government.

Ideologies can have real-world consequences even when they distort reality. Popular sovereignty and the consent of the governed can hardly be taken as literally true—thousands, let alone millions, of human beings cannot jointly exercise power, nor is it realistic to think such multitudes can long consent to exactly the same thing. In practice it doesn’t matter: “the people” is a concept more than a reality, and in various permutations on republican theory even the concept may be reduced to something more manageable. For Marxist-Leninists, “the people” becomes the proletariat, which is led by the workers’ vanguard, the Communist Party. A very small number of people may thereby claim to speak, and act, for the largest of populations—the workers of the world.

No elections or other outward signs of popular approval are necessary to confirm the party’s status as the workers’ true representatives. Similarly, bin Laden does not need to put his authority to speak on behalf of the Muslim ummah to a vote. If need be, the popular revolutionary can simply redefine the people to suit his purposes—as including all virtuous Muslims, for example, but not apostates so designated by the leader. Even in non-revolutionary situations, the republican ideal can become separated from quotidian reality. In the United States, every four years it transpires that some people are more truly American than others—they are the “real America,” regardless of how outnumbered they might be by inhabitants of the coasts and cities.

For the revolutionary, the reality of wide public support is less important than the myth that popular will provides sanction for violence.

Republicanism is a potent ideology because it is psychologically participatory—it makes individuals feel imbued with the moral and political authority to remake their world, indeed to create law, a truly godlike power. The state exercises the roles of legislator, policeman, judge, jury, and executioner only as an agent—the principal is the people, and what powers an agent possesses, a principal must also possess. Moreover, since the will of the people is not necessarily identical with the will of the majority, a minority—even a single person—may claim to be the true voice of the public.

In the Anglo-American context, republicanism arose as a reaction against monarchical abuses. But kings are not different from other people, not even in their appetite for power—what St. Augustine called the libido dominandi. When monarchy becomes tyranny, one man’s libido dominadi can run unchecked. But by making every man a germ of the state, popular sovereignty has the potential to unleash all men’s libido dominandi. The republican ideology owes its popularity not just to its ability to preserve liberties and the social order, but to the sense of empowerment it creates in individuals, the feeling of a libido fulfilled.

Yet because the republican spirit leads people to believe that their will and values should be expressed in government, it follows that when the state fails to live up to those expectations, individuals feel thwarted and alienated. A passion has been excited, then denied. If a king did not do what his people wanted, they could chalk it up to his personal flaws. But when a government that claims that it is people fails to do what the public—or the person who thinks he speaks for the public—demands, the entire theory of legitimacy upon which the state rests has been undermined. A practical justification for revolution and the psychological impetus for one (frustration) have emerged.

The republican ethos is a double-edged sword. So long as the individual and the public identify with the state, they are willing to expand its powers. Thus revolutionary France could enact the levée en masse—mass conscription—though the supposedly absolute king had never been able to do so. But once the citizen becomes alienated from the state, it loses all legitimacy in his eyes, and he believes he acts justly in appointing himself as the new legislator, policeman, judge, jury, and executioner. The principal is merely recalling delegated powers from a faithless agent. And now the citizen may create a new government that better exemplifies his will and values. If Protestantism entails the priesthood of all believers, unmediated republicanism entails the statehood of all free men.

All of this is radically at odds with medieval ideas of politics, religion, society, and values. Nor did earlier Christians feel spiritually frustrated—less than fully Christian or human—because the Roman state permitted infant exposure. The Christian abhorred this practice, he sought to reason with the emperor to persuade him to ban it, and he took into his own home what infants he could. But he did not feel the need to commit violence, in part because he accepted that the sword was not meant for his hands. God appointed rulers, including wicked ones, to enforce law; no member of the public could assume that power for himself.

The idea that one’s soul and one’s community depend upon the justice of one’s government—that self, community, state, and transcendent truth should all be aligned, or indeed identical—is a modern notion. The medieval Christian understood that while the king might rule by God’s leave, the king was not God and the king’s law was not necessarily the Lord’s. The king, of course, understood that however powerful in real terms the people or a legislature might be, neither was synonymous with moral right. Republicanism destroyed these distinctions, as the king’s power was absorbed by the people and the legislature. Now God’s appointed servant, earthly legislative and enforcement powers, and the multitudinous interests of society were conceived of as having one body—the people.

To be sure, changes in Christian theology and politics preceded the emergence of popular sovereignty. Perhaps ironically, Protestantism midwifed the republicanism that Osama bin Laden is now using to transform the Islamic world. As Scheuer writes,

The Protestant Reformation of Messrs. Luther and Calvin was precisely an effort to restore the direct relationship between man and God and to eliminate the intermediary role played by the corrupt priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. Bin Laden, by slowly negating the ability of regime scholars to put a break on popular enthusiasm for jihad, has ensured the continuing growth of the worldwide Sunni insurgency he is inciting.

“The direct relationship between God and man” entails not only a spiritual connection but a political one as well—the passing of the sword to the people. Although medieval Islam had no formal hierarchy comparable to that of the Catholic Church, it nonetheless recognized a distinction between rulers, subjects, and religious authorities. Francis Fukuyama recently noted as much in the Wall Street Journal:

There was a functional separation of church and state. The ulama were legal scholars and custodians of Shariah law while the sultans exercised political authority. The sultans conceded they were not the ultimate source of law but had to live within rules established by Muslim case law. …

This traditional, religiously based rule of law was destroyed in the Middle East’s transition to modernity. Replacing it, particularly in the Arab world, was untrammeled executive authority…

Islam effectively moved from a medieval system of religion and politics to what amounts to a latter-day version of the Divine Right of kings. Islamists like al-Qaeda are fighting not for medieval values but the more modern cause of popular religious and political self-determination. Bin Laden is closer to John Locke than to Savonarola.

The West can do little to help the Islamic world negotiate a path between bin Laden’s Jacobinism and the House of Saud’s autocracy. Certainly the Muslim example of corrupt princes legitimized in their oppressions by servile clerics suggests that Divine Right can be as great an evil as popular revolution. The most we can do is refrain from stoking the fires of nationalism and popular resentment by ending military operations against Muslims and ceasing to prop up tyrannical rulers. There might still be an Islamist revolution—but then, every popular revolution eventually has its Thermidor.

 

[muse]

I for one, believe that democracy is a means to an end. I am not sure what exactly the end should be, however.

The "Good" perhaps? (and perhaps this unsatisfying) Which should lead us to a discussion of the Republicanism in the above piece and

James Burnham likened democracy’s potential for abuse to the doctrine of the Divine Right of kings—at an extreme, “the law [becomes] the expression of, or rather identical to, the popular will. There is no independent law, human or divine; or, if there is, there is no source other than popular will that can proclaim, interpret and judge it.” Whatever the people desire becomes licit; whatever they dislike becomes criminal.

-- and the less than credible argument of it's link with Osama, but definitely a credible case can be made that Democracy is increasingly seen as "Republicanism" "Jumburiyat" among Pakistani politicians and that if not a religion it parallels it.

AQNd I found this particularly compelling, in the Pakistani context:

But once the citizen becomes alienated from the state, it loses all legitimacy in his eyes, and he believes he acts justly in appointing himself as the new legislator, policeman, judge, jury, and executioner. The principal is merely recalling delegated powers from a faithless agent. And now the citizen may create a new government that better exemplifies his will and values

But this seems to me to a meaty subject - Please help me break it up into questions and subsections and in this way give some order to our discussions.