Introduction to Has Democracy Had Its Day?

I have heard Carl F. H. Henry described as the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. Impressive though this accolade is, from my perspective it may be somewhat modest, for God has endowed Henry with remarkable gifts and used him for an historic task of epic proportions.

The fact is that modern evangelicalism, arguably one of the most significant cultural and political movements of our time, has indeed been defined and then shaped by Henry. His book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism pricked the conscience of millions of separatists who for the better part of the twentieth century had withdrawn from the mainstream of American life. Scandalously, many didn't even vote. But Henry's book caused them to return to the mainstream under the banner now of evangelicalism. Henry is founding editor of Christianity Today and a founding professor of Fuller, two of the earliest and most significant pillars of modern evangelicalism.

Through his work, Henry gave birth and respectability to a whole new generation of evangelical thinkers and scholars, who in turn began to reinvigorate the academy and the communications network. Most of the better things we see in evangelicalism today are-coupled, of course, with Billy Graham's preaching-the direct result of his efforts. Henry's life work, the massive five-volume series God, Revelation and Authority will endure well into the next millennium as the critical and defining theological work of our time.

But Henry's gifts have gone far beyond theologically affecting the vast array of cultural critique. On questions of Christian worldview, that is how a Christian sees all of life-art, science, music, politics, and the like-from a biblical perspective, he has had uncanny insights. And some of those insights are what he shares in this lecture that raises what is surely one of the timeliest questions of our day: Can democracy survive?

Tocqueville, though enraptured by the democratic experiment he witnessed in America, would probably answer today much as Henry and others do. Tocqueville was a realist and recognized how fragile democracy is. He saw, as many moderns do not, that it could only survive if citizens continue to exercise their civic responsibilities, which is what our founders knew to be the most essential republican virtue. They also understood that democracy is sustained and fueled by the religious impulse. Thus, John Adams wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." And this is what caused Tocqueville to observe that, "Religion in America must be regarded as the first of their political institutions."

For nearly two hundred years, cultural elites recognized the essential role of religion in sustaining the moral consensus that in turn sustained the political order. No less a civil libertarian than William O. Douglas wrote in Zorach v Clawson in 1952, "We are religious people whose institutions presuppose a supreme being when the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities, it follows the best of our traditions for it respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their needs."

What a change in forty years! Today we have eliminated crèches from public property unless they're surrounded by statues of Santa Claus, we forbid the singing of religious hymns on public property, and the city of Pittsburgh even renamed Christmas as "sparkle season". A high school student in Utah, in an overwhelmingly Mormon school, was escorted by uniformed police off the platform when he attempted to lead the crowd in the innocuous song "The Lord Bless and Keep Us."

So the question today is, Can democracy survive in a post Christian, secular state, one in which, in fact, cultural elites openly mock the religious impulse?

It is this question that cries out for biblical prophets. For as Henry so eloquently argues and is so evident from the facts, the prospects in purely human terms are indeed grim.

From my perspective, I already see evidences of collapse. There is a juvenile crime surge in this country of epidemic proportions. In the next twenty-four months alone, there will be one million more fourteen- to seventeen-year olds in the population group due to the children of the baby-boomer generation coming of age.

This is the most violent prone age group in our nation. Violent crime has doubled among teenagers in the last eight years, and it shows no signs of abating.

The cause? It is the direct result of the collapse of the moral order. These juveniles, many of them cold-blooded predators, come from single parent families, have had no training in even the basic tenets of civilized behavior, have gone to value-free schools (value-free schools create value-free kids), have been pumped full of violence, hate, sex, and nihilism by popular culture, and by the age of ten are in roving gangs on the streets.

Unlike criminals of the past, these kids commit random, senseless, violent crimes. They are wholly without conscience. Dostoyevski was right. If there is no God, everything is permissible, crime inevitable.

And how is the public reacting? Gated communities are sprouting up across America. Private police now outnumber public police. And polls show that three-quarters of the American people would surrender their constitutional liberties if it would do something about crime.

As I've written in Gideon's Torch and as Lord Acton argued far more eloquently a century ago, the loss of the religious sense of duty leads to the imposition of power by the state. In short, Americans will make the same Faustian bargains that frightened populaces in the past have made: They will choose order over liberty.

Thus, there exists a direct link between the moral collapse of American culture and the viability of American democracy. Tocqueville asked the right question: "How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with the people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?"

Just as Lord Acton argued, as Henry reasons in the brilliant lecture that follows, the answer is quite clear.