Christian-Democratic Pursuit of Justice?
Fourth Quarter 2004
Excerpts from a New Book by James W. Skillen
Joining the words "Christian" and "Democracy" undoubtedly raises questions. The combination suggests a compatibility, but what does the word "Christian" add? Isn't democracy simply democracy, and by its nature isn't a democratic society open to everyone without religious qualification? A democracy is a community of citizens, not a community of faith. There is nothing peculiarly Christian about it. The word combination is, thus, superfluous, is it not?
Considered from another point of view, perhaps there is something incompatible between the two elements of the hyphenated adjective. Didn't the rise of democratic governments in the West generally undermine the establishment of Christianity? If so, doesn't the use of the word "Christian" in connection with contemporary democracy suggest that Christians still have designs to control government even if they are now willing to work through democratic means to try to gain that control? In that case, the combination is fraught with ambiguity and perhaps even a dangerous tension.
A third possibility, suggested by Robert Kraynak in Christian Faith and Modern Democracy, is that Christians have been willing to relinquish too much of what is distinctively Christian in their rush to become supporters of democracy. This is a problem both for Christianity and for sound government, because in Kraynak's view secular democracy and Christianity are not fully compatible.
There is, however, another interpretation of the combination, and it provides the underlying thesis for the explorations of this book. Two important distinctions are necessary at the outset. First, there is a difference between using the word "Christian" or "Christianity" to refer to a normative pattern or normative standards for life, on the one hand, and using the word to refer to actual churches and communities of people throughout history who have identified themselves as Christians, on the other hand. Christians, in practice, do not necessarily conform to Christian normative standards; rather, those standards often call their practices into question.
Second, there is a difference between referring to democracy as a system of representative government open equally to all citizens, and using the word "democracy" in an ideological way to insist that all authority and principles for government reside in, and arise from, autonomous individuals or "the people."
I want to argue that human responsibility before God in conformity with God's creating, judging, and redeeming work in Jesus Christ is not only compatible with democracy as a system of representative government, but actually calls for it. In other words, the truth of God's creation, human sin, and God's redeeming judgment, when properly understood, lays the foundation for an open society whose just governance requires the equal treatment of all citizens without regard to their faith, and calls for the accountability of government to them.
At the same time, Christianity as normative pattern for life is quite incompatible with the ideology of democratism, because, from a Christian point of view, the normative standards for the just governance of a community of citizens derive ultimately from the Creator, not from the people. By the same token, what we generally identify as the "Christian" societies of the medieval and early modern period do not represent the normative pattern of just governance, but rather display the accommodation of Christianity to patterns and ideals of Roman imperialism and its attendant influences and consequences.
My thesis can now be summarized as follows: a Christian-democratic approach to government represents a positive advance, a move away from past accommodations to imperialist and statist structures and ideologies toward a more normative Christian realization of public justice. But a Christian-democratic approach will exist in tension and sometimes in conflict with approaches grounded in an ideological commitment to democracy—democratism—as it will with other political ideologies, even as it insists on equal political treatment of every citizen without regard to their ideological commitment or faith.
Before elaborating on this thesis, a few additional clarifications are necessary. First, the tension between what Christians are called to do and what they actually do remains a problem. Therefore, Christians should never claim that their achievements or their aims in politics or in any other arena of life represent God's will. They should claim only that they are trying to respond obediently to God's call to love their neighbors and to do justice. That way they remain open to correction and reproof from fellow Christians and from all their civic neighbors. Admittedly, the words "Christian-democratic" can be problematic, because the word "Christian" may suggest an identification of the fallible political efforts of Christians with God's will. Instead, the words should be used to convey the modest aim or aspiration of those who are trying to contribute to a justly governed, democratically open society.
Second, a Christian-democratic approach to politics and government does represent an attempt to bring a distinctive point of view into political debates and the work of government. Even this is something that many Christians and non-Christians alike find unacceptable, particularly if they think of Christianity as a private matter or identify it with an impositional approach to politics that is incompatible with democracy. Nevertheless, if normative Christianity represents God's call to faithful service in all arenas of life, then trying to develop a Christian approach to politics is as necessary and legitimate as the attempt by liberals and conservatives, libertarians and socialists, to develop an approach to politics consistent with their deepest commitments.
Of course, many Christians may consider themselves conservative or socialist or libertarian, politically speaking, and will not be sympathetic to a Christian-democratic approach. That is precisely what an open, democratic political system should allow. The aim of a Christian-democratic approach to politics is not to try to divide Christians along political lines, or to separate Christian citizens from non-Christian citizens, or to claim divine favor for its political agenda. Instead, the aim is to bring into public debate a point of view not offered by those of other political persuasions and ideologies. This is why citizens oriented by a Christian-democratic perspective should, as a matter of principle, work for an electoral system that makes room for all groups of citizens to contend with one another freely and openly in political debate from out of their distinctive points of view.
Of first importance here is not so much the question of political party formation, but rather the clarification of differences among ideological commitments that are competing today to shape and control nations around the world. Christian-democratic efforts in Europe arose largely as a counter to atheistic and anti-Christian movements carried along by secularistic ideologies. Catholics and Protestants held views of the person, family life, education, the church, and society that were different from the views of liberal individualists and socialist collectivists. Many such Christians were willing to give up established churches and aristocratic patterns of social and economic life, but they refused to give up their Christian faith or to confine it to worship and prayer, leaving behind an appeal to Christianity's normative standards for all of life. The question was whether Christians had anything distinctive to say about the political, social, and economic changes unfolding so rapidly around them, particularly changes associated with the growing impact of science, the Industrial Revolution, European empire-building, and the crises brought on by two World Wars and the Great Depression.
In the United States, by contrast, Christianity was never directly threatened by attacks from atheistic liberal and socialist political movements. American Christians themselves are the ones who gradually accepted the privatization of the "sectarian" elements of Christianity even as they transferred the idea of God's specially chosen people from the church to the nation, adopting a great deal of liberal-republican political ideology as they went along. Then, between the Civil War and World War II, when the United States grew from an emerging power to dominant global superpower, a gradually secularizing pragmatism took over as the driving force of politics and economic life, amalgamating nationalist, civil-religious, liberal, and Christian convictions into a public ethos of American exceptionalism, which was validated, in the judgment of its adherents, by the success of American leadership in promoting economic growth and democracy at home and abroad.
In the past two decades, hundreds of books have rolled of the presses from authors in search of the foundations of democracy and the origin of modern ideologies, seeking explanations for the crisis of Enlightenment faith and the continuing vitality of diverse religions, and rethinking the political meaning of Christianity. This is the context in which the pursuit of justice from a Christian-democratic perspective must find its way.
[James W. Skillen's In Pursuit of Justice, published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, is available from the Center for Public Justice bookstore.]
