DEMOCRACY AND

"CHRISTIAN POLITICS"

 

By Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)

 

The Pros and Cons of Christian Democracy

 

      In the past few decades many, if not most, Christians have come to assume that the only truly Christian political system is democracy.[1] Kingship has to be rejected, so the argument might go, because the Bible tells us "There is no one who does good, not even one."[2] Indeed, Jesus is even reluctant to allow people to call him good, because, as he says in Mark 10:18, "No one is good except God alone." So it would seem to be an impossible ideal to have a "good" king. Defenders of democracy might proceed to argue that aristocracy and polity must likewise be rejected, because all class distinctions are dissolved by Jesus, who came to make all people equal before God. As Paul says in Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." And what political system is able to dissolve such class distinctions, except democracy?

 

      There are, in fact, two positive reasons commonly used to defend democracy as the most truly Christian political system. The first is that it is the system that best takes into account our radically evil nature.[3] The Bible portrays us as beings who were created good, but whose good potential has been corrupted by the Fall of Adam [Gen. 3], so that our natural state is to be sinful [Rom. 3:23]. Democracy, then, appears to be the only realistic political system inasmuch as it acknowledges this evil nature and attempts (in theory at least) to use laws to minimize the extent to which people can act in evil ways towards other people. As Niebuhr puts it, "democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions to insoluble prob­lems" [N2:118].

 

      The second reason is more straightforward. It is, quite simply, that citizens in a democratic state are normally given the right to practice religion in whatever way they wish. (This right is often called "freedom of religion". However, we will have cause to question this assumption later.). In other words, Christians tend to think of democracy as a Christian political system because it enables people to practice their religion without much interven­tion from the government.

 

      Both of these reasons, however, are highly questionable. First, human sinfulness is never actually used in the Bible as a reason for supporting or rejecting any particular political system. Rather, the point of emphasizing human sinfulness is that no such system, no politics, no agreement between a citizen and a state, can ever be good in itself. Instead, the universality of human sin should lead us to look beyond all man-made political systems for the true source of good government. Moreover, the rationality of this first reason is dubious in itself, since it seems to be saying that an evil system is capable of minimizing evil! Jesus himself points out the irra­tionality of such reasoning in Matthew 12:25-26: "Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city ... divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand?"[4] Supporters of democracy are divided against themselves in just the same way as long as they claim the best city is one established on the basis of an evil political system.

 

      The second reason is just as fallacious. For the Bible also never cites "religious freedom" as a good reason for supporting a particular political system. On the contrary, at numerous points in the New Testament it is assumed that true Christians will inevitably "suffer with [Christ]" [Rom. 8:17] in some way, "because he who has suffered ... has ceased from sin" [1 Pet. 4:1]. The role of suffering in Christian politics and its relation to true religious freedom will be considered in more detail in Chapter Six.  But here we can simply point out that the Bible offers religious freedom as something to be experienced in spite of one's current political situation, not as a result of it.

 

A Christian's "Rights"

 

      If we wish to adopt a form of Christianity consistent with the Bible, then we must seriously consider whether or not we are perhaps being deceived by our society and culture-and perhaps also by our own human selfishness-when we preach democracy as the panacea for all political problems. Aside from offering the citizen certain legal rights, most versions of democracy tell us we have the power and authority to claim for ourselves certain "inalienable rights", such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Yet this is one of the greatest political lies ever told! Christianity is a religion of the cross, a religion whose founder taught that true life comes only to those who are willing to die [see e.g., Mat. 10:38-39; 16:24; cf. 1 Cor. 15:31]. Among other things, this means Christians are called to give up all rights:[5] not just the basic right to "life", but also rights such as "liberty" and "the pursuit of happiness". For the Bible repeatedly says Christians are to be "slaves of Christ" [e.g., Eph. 6:6; Rom. 6:22] and are to endure all manner of suffering for the sake of a future glory [see e.g., Rom. 8:18; 1 Pet. 2:18-4:19; and Chapter Six below]. How, then, can a Christian defend a political system which encourages its citizens to stand up and de­fend their "basic human rights"?[6]

 

      I can think of only two ways in which Christians might try to base a belief in inalienable rights on the Bible. First, a Christian could refer to the creation story, and say that because we are created in the image of God, we must have various rights, such as the right to "fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over ... every living thing that moves on the earth" [Gen. 1:28]. This may be true; but if we read the whole creation story we will see that the main point is to explain how this image of God was corrupted, that is, how we lost the rights which would other­wise have been ours.

 

      Genesis 2:15-17 explains how God makes an agreement with Adam when he places him in the garden of Eden: God gives Adam the right to eat "from any tree of the garden" as long as he does not eat "from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil". This agreement is political in the sense that it offers a right in exchange for a limitation of freedom. But Chapter 3 tells how the serpent causes Adam and Eve to break this agreement by first questioning the reality of their right [3:1], and then, when that tactic fails, by convincing Eve that God's limitation of their freedom is unfair [3:4-5]. The story suggests that Adam loses his right to enjoy the fruit of the garden in the very act of claiming what he thinks is due to him-i.e., by treating his right as a possession that could be grasped (like the fruit on a tree), rather than as a gift. The image of God in man is corrupted as a result of this selfish ac­tion [see Rom. 5:12-14], which results in Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden [Gen. 3:23]. Hence, it would be unreasonable to base a belief in human rights on an image we no longer fully possess.[7]

 

      The second possibility is that Christians could claim mankind's original rights were restored by the blood of Jesus. The New Testament seems to provide ample justification for this. However, if we look carefully at the relevant texts, we will find that the newborn Christian is actually given only one right: John 1:12 claims that "to all who received him [i.e., the "Word"] ..., he gave the right to become children of God".[8]But what inalienable rights are young children able to claim, except those which are given to them by their parents (who are the source of their very life)? None at all! From the child's point of view, the parents' authority is absolute, and calls for loyal obedience even if the child does not understand the reason why.[9] When Paul uses the analogy of sonship to describe the Christian's relation to God, he goes even further and says as "sons of God", Christians "have received a spirit of adoption" [Rom. 8:14-15], thus imply­ing that we cannot even claim that our status as God's children is a right by birth.

 

      Christians should not, therefore, regard their inheritance as their own rightful possession; rather, the Bible speaks consistently of the power and authority given by God to his adopted children not in terms of rights, but in terms of gifts.[10]In the parable of the lost son [Lk. 15:11-32] Jesus describes what will inevitably happen if we do make the mistake of insisting we have the right to possess our inheritance: the son who insists on receiving his rightful possessions ends up losing everything, so that his only hope is to crawl back to his father and ask to be a servant.

 

      Good parents, of course, give many gifts to their children, some of which could be (and often are) called "rights", such as certain freedoms, various ways of achieving happiness, and even life itself. However, most parents are reluctant to let their little children get away with claiming their rights (i.e., with claiming they have a right to be given these rights). When a child stands up and defends his or her rights in this way, the parent's nat­ural reaction will be to show the child through discipline who holds the power and authority.

 

      This is one way of understanding why God reacts so harshly to Job's complaints, by impressing upon Job his power and authority [Job 38-41], even though he later commends Job for responding properly to his "comforters" [42:7,9]. Job's mistake is not his failure to admit his own sinfulness, for we are told at the very beginning that he is righteous [1:1]; rather, his mistake is to insist on having the right to stand up and claim his own righteousness, as he does in Job 27:5-6: "Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go. My heart does not reproach any of my days." This, I believe, is the attitude to which Job is referring when he says in Job 42:6 "I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes."

 

      There is one text in the Bible which could be interpreted as condoning the practice of defending one's own legal rights. In Acts 16:37-40 Paul complains to the chief magistrates that he and Silas were treated unfairly "even though we are Roman citizens". The text itself, however, says nothing about whether or not it was good for Paul to say this. Moreover, although the officials do allow them to visit their friends [16:40], the end result of claiming their right of citizenship is that Paul and Silas are urged "to leave the city" [16:39]. This seems to support the very point which I will suggest is vital to the Christian message, that if we stand up to our rights, we will lose our freedom. For as soon as Paul appealed to his rights as a Roman citizen, he was obligated to keep his side of the political agree­ment by loyally obeying the request of the officials.

 

      One of the main problems with viewing democracy as the most Christian political system is that it tends to encourage citizens to stand up for their rights. Yet as we have seen, the Bible suggests that if we do so, we will lose these very "rights", along with the freedom they supposedly protect, because they are actually gifts. Apparently, God made the human situation this way so that we would have no choice but to come back to him like the prodigal son, admitting our weakness, in hopes of being accepted as servants. The good news of the New Testament, of course, is that if we do so, he will respond by adopting us as his children. So the right to be a child of God is simply the right to accept the human situation as one in which we should not insist on having any rights of our own (except the right to give up all supposed rights and to die, as did Jesus, the "first-born" of all the children of God [Rom. 8:29]). Instead of grasping our rights, we should open our hands to receive whatever gifts God chooses to give us.[11]

 

The Paradox of Absolute Freedom

 

      This view of human rights gives rise to a paradox, according to which we can receive absolute freedom as a gift from God only by giving up our rights and offering absolute loyalty to God alone, i.e., only by risking the total loss of all our freedom. If we recall that "sonship" implies a spirit of dying to one's own rights in order to become absolutely dependent on God, then we will see that such a paradox is implied in John 8:36: "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." But this freedom is never a right or a possession for the Christian, never something which can be grasped or which God is forced to give, but is always a free gift.[12] This means the only way to be righteous before God is to give up all our rights. Indeed, this is one of the central concerns of the Sermon on the Mount, which is why Jesus says in Matthew 5:17: "I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill [the Law]." He fulfills the Law by dying to it in perfect obedience to the Law of God in his heart. And as a result he receives from God the gift of new life on the first Easter.

 

      Paul devotes several chapters in Romans to the task of clarifying the paradox of this Easter vision. He explains that anyone who willingly enters into an agreement based on law is "free from the control of righteousness", but becomes a slave to that law [Rom. 6:20]. Such slavery to external laws (i.e., to any laws not rooted in the heart) is the source of human evil and sin, and therefore leads directly to death [6:23]. The only way out is to choose to become a slave of God, for when this happens, the law-the very ground in which human evil grows-dies, and our earthly lives are freed from such external constraints.[13] Paul also warns, however, that we should beware of concluding that the law itself is evil. Rather, it is our inevitable rebellion against law (i.e., it is "sin") that results in human death [7:7-11]. "So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good" [7:12].

 

      Although Paul may have been referring exclusively to the special Law of Moses in this passage, I believe we can apply the same principle to worldly politics in general. Accordingly, we can say that politics itself is not necessarily evil, since it is usually intended as a tool for producing order and justice in society through the imposition of laws, but that whenever human beings grasp at politics and trust it as being capable of achieving such goals on its own, it inevitably becomes the occasion for social disorder and injustice. The evil resulting from worldly politics is due not to any intrinsic evil in politics as such, but to the inevitable weakness of human nature. Thus, even the best worldly political systems, i.e., those based on good laws, are bound to fail, because of their very dependence on that external law; for such law, the Bible tells us, can never fulfill its promise to produce the "good life" in human society.

 

      We can enjoy true "freedom of religion", therefore, only if it comes as a gift from God to men who recognize their total poverty when it comes to the issue of rights. In this sense, democracy is the very opposite of religious freedom. For it asks people to insist on grasping freedom as a possession, an inalienable right. And in so doing, true religious freedom slips through the fingers of the unsuspecting citizens.[14] It slips through their fingers because the selfish insistence upon our right to life is diametrically opposed to the Christian principle of self-giving love; the selfish insistence upon our right to individual liberty is likewise opposed to the principle of absolute commitment to God; and worst of all, the sel­fish insistence upon our own right to pursue happiness is the root of all evil.[15] Satan deceived Eve by fooling her into believing she had a right to possess life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness [Gen. 3:1-6]; but her reward for grasping this supposed right was death, bondage to her desires, and unavoidable suffer­ing [3:16].

 

The Deception of Democracy

 

      Democracy deceives people who deserve no rights into feeling they do deserve rights, and fools people into believing they are determining their own future. In fact, nowadays we are almost always at the mercy of deeper, more fundamental forces, which determine our ideas in ways more subtle than any political propaganda ever could. I am thinking here primarily of the media. Who controls the media? To a large extent the answer is advertisers-i.e., people with money, who are usually motivated by greed. And together these two forces, the media and the advertisers (as represen­tatives of democracy and capitalism), shape what people think far more than most of us are aware [see e.g., E3:99-106; E4:19].

 

      In a tyranny no one has any doubt about who the enemy is. Even in an oligarchy most ordinary citizens know who it is who is trying to control their thoughts and actions. But in a democracy we are under the illusion of self-determination. And this illusion, I believe, is one of the most ingenious tools the Evil One uses to dull the senses of people into being satisfied with a corrupt and evil lifestyle. The media and its supporting advertising industry are not necessarily evil in themselves; rather, as Tillich points out in T3:110, "what is to be condemned is that [the 'structuring powers' of capitalism] operate unseen, irresponsibly and indirectly."

 

      Another example of this illusion is that, while democracy gives the im­pression of being sympathetic towards religion, it is in fact just as atheistic as communism. The difference is that communism openly admits its true attitude towards religion, while democracy eats away at religion from the inside out, by luring people into a world view which has no need of God, a world view in which people are self-sufficient and believe they have the right to pursue their own self-interests.[16] (Democracy is based on the assumption that "there is no master" [A2:1161a(247)]; yet in reality the citizens end up viewing themselves as their own master. In so doing, "the peo­ple" are put in the position of God himself [cf. p.16n above].)

 

      By masquerading as a friend of religion, yet in reality en­couraging a lukewarm attitude, democracy has become, I believe, one of Satan's most useful tools in the twentieth century. For by adopt­ing a stance which is neither openly atheistic ("cold") nor truly Christian ("hot"), it tends to en­courage Christians to take a self-interested ("lukewarm") approach to their religious commit­ment. As such, Christians today ought to consider seri­ously the warning given in Revelation 3:16: "So because you are luke­warm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."[17]

 

      Hav­ing awakened ourselves to some of the dangers of democracy, let us now look to the Bible for a better solu­tion to the problem of finding a truly Christian political system.