Has Democracy Had Its Day?

The Old Testament tells us that God chose the Hebrews and covenanted to rule over them in a theocracy. All that ended with the dispersion of the Jews. The New Testament does not decisively commend any one form of government. Democracy was born in Ancient Greece, and the philosophers thought poorly of it. In Athens every citizen was a member of the assembly, and the philosophers said that such an arrangement attached as much importance to the ignorant as it did to the intellectuals. So Plato emphasized the importance of the philosopher-king. Greek democracy was direct rather than indirect, rather than representative, and had little influence on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century representative democracy. Many Christians regard representative democracy as the preferred framework for fulfilling God's commandments and their own public duties. We have been appropriately reminded that human depravity often translates the centralization of power into tyrannical oppression of the governed.

And yet democracy is not flawless, far from it. It has the potential for great good and for great evil. There is ample justification for books like my own Twilight of a Great Civilization and Chuck Colson's Against the Night: Living in the New Dark Ages. No society can long escape the chaotic impact on family values of a sexual revolution that treats human abortion as routinely as a hernia operation. Statistics of violent crimes are awful. Serious crimes are committed by ever younger people and without remorse. The hallmarks of our generation and society-the drug culture, the reduction of morality to majority opinion, the decline of the public significance of religion, the orientation of public schools to naturalism-invite moral judgment and destruction. Early Americans had town hall forums where citizens earnestly discussed and debated the pressing political issues. That has largely given way to the incivility of talk shows and raucous TV panels. Television becomes modernity's worship center. It displaces the Church as the consolidator of values. It's not the presence of diverse views but the flirtation with relativism, that is the threat.

The alternatives facing democracy are either self-restraint and self-discipline or chaos and authoritarian repression. The conflict over values has become so combative that Professor James Hunter of the University of Virginia has declared that its very intensity may imperil America's stability.¹ Despite the global defeat of totalitarianism, the future of democracy seems problematic to many observers. Will it disintegrate under its own compromises? Christopher Lasch has penned a new book titled The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. Jean Bethke Elshtain has written of Democracy on Trial. The January 22, 1995, New York Times Book Review even devoted its cover article to the question "Does democracy have a future?" In the aftermath of the fall of the Communist empire, one might expect democracy to be applauded, extolled, and eulogized. But many citizens instead are disaffected by the political process, and they cannot be reduced to antigovernment terrorists. There is a lowered respect for the criminal justice system, accelerated by the tragically farcical trial of O. J. Simpson. Skepticism mounts over the media as the instrument of public education.

The notion that democracy is damaging is echoed by Asian leaders. They point to an unenviable trend toward anarchy and the huge prison population in the United States. Even more pointedly, they insist that more government authority is needed but is prevented by the West's emphasis on human rights. The Singapore School resents an emphasis on individual rights as a condition for receiving Western economic development aid. They instead champion the Confucian emphasis on community rights, on the extended family, against what is sometimes portrayed by Asians as a Christian, Protestant liberal alternative. But the critics say that if Confucianism is to be credited for Singapore's recent capitalistic success, as some claim, then Confucianism would also have to be blamed for the previous four centuries of economic stagnation.² Of course, not all that passes for human rights should be considered Christian. Desires and needs are often confused with rights. And we must emphasize that ethical decline is not integral to a democratic society. The defeat of communism was an ethical victory of democracy over dictatorship.³ The Asian emphasis on increased government authority, which seems on the surface often welcome, really accommodates a muzzled press, arbitrary arrest, forced labor, and even public execution. It restricts representative government and individual rights.⁴

Still another center of criticism of democracy is Latin America. Critics charge that democratic processes are too slow in promoting social change, that they simply postpone the need for far larger reforms. The critics say that the slow pace of social and economic change invites revolutionary liberation theology and even terrorist guerrilla methods. Revolution theologians are especially sharp in their criticism of democracy. But we should be aware that they prize revolutionary change and violence above education and legislation and regeneration as catalysts of social change. But we should not let their argument obscure the fact that nations that embrace only economic reforms while rejecting democratic political processes have often failed, while those practicing democratic capitalism generally speaking do better.⁵

What is even more noteworthy is that American democracy is being questioned more and more here at home. Cynicism from time to time runs very deep about the Presidency, the Congress, and even the Supreme Court for creating law rather than simply interpreting the Constitution. It is charged that there has been serious military and intelligence misjudgment in high places (here we need only recall Robert McNamara's reversal regarding Vietnam, and the recent problems at the CIA). Above all this, the critics focus on the financial irresponsibility that can be a part of the democratic political system. They point to the failure to erase the budget deficit and massive national debt. And there are many who say that the adoption of an alternative budget plan does not in itself secure a change in historical actualities, especially if we must wait five or seven years to see what happens. Many ask whether Democratic or Republican administrations can be trusted with monetary matters. But most of all, a common complaint is that there is a striking absence of national leadership, a lack of direction and purpose. Even our international role as peacekeepers produces victories that are somewhat ambiguous. Not surprisingly, an article in the November 1993 Commentary magazine asks "Can American Democracy Survive?"

A century ago Tocqueville in his classic work Democracy in America said that foreigners coming to the United States were impressed by the benefits of democracy. Now, Christopher Lasch writes, what most impresses the visitor to the United States is the violence, crime, and the general disorder of society. He foresees the impending collapse of the social order due to the lust for immediate gratification, the pursuit of self-fulfillment, and the fact that our children are becoming part of the culture of crime. Lasch says that the cultural elite-not the mass culture-now leads the rebellion against the spiritual and moral heritage of the West.⁶ The elite contribute to the decay of religion as a public influence, whereas Tocqueville held that religion contributes powerfully to the maintenance of republican institutions. Despite the disintegration of communism, the Western powers now seem less confident about their democratic institutions than they were during the Cold War. The January 22, 1995, New York Times Book Review comments that many are unsure whether democracy can cope with staggering new problems. Can violence be contained in a free and open society? Can the legal system escape corruption by high-powered lobbies and lawyers? Can democracy cope with a radical feminism that views Western history as distorted by patriarchal assumptions?

It is clear that if Christians have any contributions to make to the survival, reform, or superiority of democracy, now is the time. Or we may forfeit democracy to the forces of decadence. Disinterest will be costly. In the 1992 election, only 61 percent of American voters went to the polls. Christians must not forsake political engagement in 1996. Yet meaningful political survival requires much more than demolishing warheads once aimed toward Washington. Unfortunately, Christian political involvement has been more a matter of resentment and confrontation than of participation and penetration. Yet religion can condition human behavior even more than totalitarianism. Think of Solzhenitsyn and the Soviet Gulag and how he nonetheless spoke to the world.

We must ask what religious emphases are essential to the vitality of democracy.⁷

The internationally known Catholic scholar Thomas Molnar deplores democracy as largely, though not entirely, a Protestant liberal invention.⁸ Instead of engaging politically on the assumptions of a pluralistic society, he thinks that the Church should withdraw. The Church should seek the renewal of culture on her own premises, he says.⁹ Richard John Neuhaus agrees that "the naked public square" or the desacralization of society renders the survival of American democracy problematic. For when freedom becomes an end in itself, it is self-defeating. Neuhaus thinks that this historical situation is "the Catholic moment" for shaping a sociopolitical reversal. Moral and religious judgments are implicit in all thought and action, Neuhaus emphasizes.¹⁰ He urges Christians to reconstruct the public philosophy on religiously based transcendent values. Neuhaus calls for persuasion and political change based on a shared philosophy and strategy.

The statement "Evangelicals and Catholics Together"-spear-headed by Neuhaus and Colson-displeased many Reformed Protestants who felt that it minimized the concerns of the Protestant Reformation and was otherwise ambiguous. R. C. Sproul, in Faith Alone, calls it a betrayal of the Reformation and he has split with his faculty at Reformed Theological Seminary over the matter. Some Catholic intellectuals, notably Molnar, hold that Neuhaus promotes an unacceptable political philosophy-that is, liberal democracy. He condemns it for regarding the Christian view as but one of among many options, and for subscribing to the separation of church and state. Neuhaus accommodates the pluralist status quo, says Molnar. In Molnar's view, liberal democracy is a fragile option. It lacks cohesive authority and tilts toward chaos. Yet Molnar does not propose a return to an alliance of church and state nor to a revival of historical Christendom. Instead of the politicization of the Church, Molnar proposes its respiritualization.¹¹ The Church should focus on the gospel instead of politics.

After two generations of withdrawal from culture, American evangelicals now face dramatic alternatives in their reentry to the public arena. Some on the Religious Right have looked at political engagement as a way to Christianize or re-Christianize America, much as liberal ecumenism a generation ago sought to shape "social-gospel" politics on the Left. Others seek more broadly to rescue Western culture from secular humanism. Molnar thinks both are unrealistic. He stresses the moral bankruptcy of the West and the potential of the non-West. Indeed, many writers now speak of the West's spiritual impoverishment. Alasdair McIntyre's After Virtue and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind are only two of the most well-known examples of recent jeremiads. Neuhaus, though, calls for political engagement to halt the erosion of Judeo-Christian values and to preserve for Christians the same public benefits available to others. Christians should surely participate in the political process to the extent they are competent and able. We are citizens of two worlds. Yet any revocation of church-state separation would politicize religious forces as much as any preservation of it on deliberately atheistic lines.

More and more, recent theologians and churchmen approve of the church's growing involvement in concrete political matters. This goes beyond an identification of biblical principles that the laity can in good conscience apply to specific policies. Both the National Council of Churches and the U.S. Catholic Conference have sponsored specific political positions on selective issues. We should keep an eye open for the appearance of the autobiography of Ernest Lefever, who was in the employ of the ecumenical movement and who finally wearied of what he thought was direct and indirect subsidizing of left-wing causes. He bolted from that ecumenical Left to a position on the Right. Probably more Niebuhrian than either Thomistic or Evangelical, his work nevertheless represents a clear refutation of the assistance that he felt that the ecumenical leadership was giving to quasi-Marxist positions. The justification often given for the church's political program or involvement in specific political matters is that the church's influence would be nil if it did not promote specifics and spoke only in generalities. But resolutions do not automatically change society. Inculcation of the love of God and neighbor will best alter the sociopolitical arena. The promotion of quasi-Marxist positions undermines respect for church bureaucracies and their constituencies. This need not preclude Christians from using legislation and other means to combat abortion or other evils such as race discrimination and religious intolerance. But if such advocacy becomes the Church's primary task, its mission will be misperceived as essentially political.

Remarkably, the liberal media have sometimes viewed politically active conservatives as a greater threat to democracy than communism. The editorial in the New York Times on August 29, 1993, holds that the Religious Right seeks to impose its special prejudices on the entire citizenry. Actually, of course, the Right only seeks the same opportunities that secular humanists and others possess and often monopolize. Tocqueville, 150 years ago, recognized that a spiritual and morally vigilant citizenry is among the main strengths of democracy, but he also insisted on the separation of church and state.¹²

Among the basic ills of contemporary democracy is the privatizing of religion and the fact that no public significance is attached to it. It is thought to have only internal subjective significance, if that. And also among these basic ills is the public reliance on federal funding to remedy all the ailments of society. The importance of personal character is overlooked. Self-interest and self-fulfillment replace moral absolutes. Some big cities in our nation today are held together more by flood and earthquake relief and major sports events than by ethical imperatives. Our generation took the Bible out of public schools and then had to put policeman at some school doors to discourage violence and to preserve order.

Eastern European countries are at a crossroads, where new opportunities for freedom also bring new challenges. The citizens of those countries have their eyes on America to see what democracy means. There is no absolute guarantee that Russia will make the turn to democracy; the succession after Yeltsin is in doubt. East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic, however, are quite on the way to democratic alternatives. Yet the problem is not only inflation and unemployment but also the misuse of new freedoms, as in the West. Some even long for a return to the values of communism, among which they list the provision of jobs for everyone and the social restraints that communism enforced against the emergence of the Mafia and the racketeers. When I was in Moscow at a conference two years ago, one of the educators presenting his paper argued that the values that ought to be achieved are precisely the values of communism, including full employment and social stability. I relate this anecdote only to show that a plea for values per se is open-ended and provides very little guidance to the solution of our problems. Mainland China is held together more by power than by law. Its bureaucrats favor primitive economic reforms much more than they favor democratic political change. To be sure, economic reform gradually nurtures a middle class with a concern for human rights and freedom. But that is a long and unsure process. We should not minimize the fact, however, that Eastern Europeans again enjoy the freedom of choosing a vocation, of advancing by merit, of a free press, and of a multiparty electoral system.

Freedom is more than deliverance from authoritarian rulers and military dangers. It is not reducible to hostility to totalitarian communism and repressive worldviews. It concerns shared beliefs and values. The surest way to lose democracy is to take it for granted. Every citizen must contribute to its advancement in some way. No nation or culture can long survive the absence of transcendent values and absolutes. A lively, good conscience is among a citizen's basic assets. Happily, public fiscal responsibility and family values are now coming to the fore again in government. To some extent, illegitimacy is even being restigmatized. "Feeling good" is being reconnected with repentance.

One's worldview inevitably conditions one's behavior, including political involvements. The future of freedom itself may well hinge on a decision of whether the Judeo-Christian heritage is to be checked at the entrance of the public square. Christians insist that love of neighbor, religious freedom, a free market, and private property are not merely matters of majority opinion but affirm rights and duties that are prior to the state, rather than established by the state. Christians affirm a transcendent creation ethic for all mankind, and they attest to a new power for personal righteousness available through a regenerate walk with God.

Freedom is revealed religion's supreme political promise: political freedom from tyrants, moral freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of expression. But religious freedom is basic to all else. It includes the freedom not to worship Caesar, but rather, Caesar's God, who grounds all human rights and duties. One of the most demanding questions of social ethics concerns the nature of the warrants that Christians are ideally to adduce in promoting moral imperatives in a democratic society. We must beware of publicly basing specific legislative proposals on an appeal to revelation. Are we going to support the balanced-budget amendment or a line-item veto by saying that God wills them? And what happens when some of these proposals go awry? What is politically prudent calls for reasoned debate. It is unwise for Christians routinely to promote their legislative preferences on the ground of divine revelation. The purpose of the political process is to define and enforce public justice, not to arbitrate between rival metaphysical or theological beliefs. The state is not an arbiter of metaphysical or theological alternatives. There are times when Christians can and ought to appeal openly to the will of God as when we are mandated to do what God forbids or we are forbidden to do what God requires. We need to remember, however, that this is not our everyday predicament.

We may be grateful that as imperfect as democracy is, the United States remains democracy's strongest global supporter. Multitudes of the world's underprivileged still aspire to share its privileges. Yet democracy is at a watershed moment in its history. Secular humanism has moved Judeo-Christian values to the cultural margin. Democracy does not require a specifically Christian citizenry, but it does function best when it acknowledges God's creation and judgment and is reinforced by Christian character. If we are going to set democracy aside, we must be sure of what we encourage in its place. We must cherish what we have and improve it. Christians must not be idle or silent when it comes to the proclamation and preservation of freedom. The contemporary choice is not only a matter of human dignity and depravity or of cultural life and death, it is a choice also concerning God and the gods.

Carl F.H. Henry is one of the most prominent evangelical theologians. He is the author of over thirty books, the founding editor of Christianity Today magazine, and a founder of Fuller Theological Seminary.