democracy and authoritarianism

I had an interesting discussion yesterday. "Interesting" here is a euphemism.

 

I had proposed that in looking at contemporary moral problems, that we should deepen and broaden our gaze -- well beyond the "hot-button" issues that have been exploited by partisan politics for about five decades.

 

One issue has to do with the American form of government. We are a constitutional republican democracy. The constitution makes it clear that the government derives its power from the consent of the people governed -- hence, "We the People," etc.

 

I proposed that such a political system is a superior, and more moral, form of government than any other in history.

 

In general, all other forms give power to individuals or small groups who do not have the consent of the governed. These systems are "authoritarian."

 

Authoritarian governments come in different forms: monarchies, oligarchies, plutocracies, and theocracies.

 

What is troubling is that there are many American Christians (Protestant Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox) who prefer authoritarian systems over democracy.

 

They do this for various reasons. Democracy itself is blamed for allowing, even encouraging, the advance of secular modernism. Democracy, it is said, advances the loss of Judeo-Christian morality and the rise of atheism.

 

"If only we could have a Christian king, or a tsar, or some kind of theocracy," the thought goes.

 

This thought is hardly unprecedented. It has a long and terrible history. People who have advanced this thought, more or less innocently, have unwittingly aided and abetted the rise of tyrants who may have started out benefiting their Christian sponsors but ended up betraying them, too -- eventually sending them off to concentration camps, canceling their own liberties of speech, freedom of movement, and even religious assembly.

 

Christians who support authoritarian politics (that is, who adopt the ideology of authoritarianism) are naive.

 

And they are also engaged in immorality. Democracy -- as secular and liberal as it indeed is -- is based on the fundamental idea of individual liberty. This priority of individual concern is deeply related to, and completely reliant upon, the "personalism" of the New Testament.

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" is an essentially Christian statement. It could never have been possible without the Lord saying "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

 

Christians should be thankful that they live in a democracy. Yes, it is a "liberal democracy," as democracies must be. There is no such thing as a democracy that prefers or advantages Christianity. A democracy cannot permit or tolerate the establishment of any religion: it must be essentially "secular."

 

Democracy must, for it to remain democratic, separate church and state.

 

The church has no business colluding with the state, as the state must wield violent and dominating powers of coercion, even the power to inflict death. The early church, in its first generations, refused to permit its members to enlist in the government just because that required participation in death.

 

Many Christians forget this -- or, more likely, they deliberately disregard that historic truth: the "Seven Mountains of Influence" folk (C Peter Wagner's "New Apostolic Reformation" group) ... Roman Catholic Neo-Integralists like Adam Vermeule at Princeton ... Orthodox monarchists (or "neo-tsarists") ... so-called "Christian Nationalists" (which is a terrible oxymoron).

 

I worry that too many of my fellow clergy and co-religionists are so tired and fearful of modern challenges that they pine away for some easier, more "Christian-friendly," society. Like a nice theocracy. The trouble, though, with "theocracies" is that there is the real "Theos" is never present, but is represented by tyrants who might give ceremonial lip-service to God, but don't really know Him.

 

I suggest to clergy and laity, hierarchs, prelates, and big-box church CEO's that it is a far, far better thing to be Salt and Light in the world as it is, rather than wishing for a fantasy. It is better to make like the catacomb Christians who really did turn their world upside down, than to play, like basement nerds, ecclesiastical D&D.

Seminaries ought to spend a lot more time in theological education preparing new clergy for a confident, winsome witness to the Gospel in liberal democracy. They should get away from fostering a cult of grievance and withdrawal. In my own community, Orthodox seminaries should never promote the unhelpful cliches of the so-called "culture wars" or ridiculous notions like "soft totalitarianism." Is it too much to expect that seminaries, at least, ought to be able to distinguish socialism from communism, to critique materialistic philosophies (both communism and capitalism). Instead of hiding behind the white picket fence of hot-button issues, or complaining about universalism and the penchant of certain authors for their rhetorical style, it would be more profitable to ask why infernalism has become such a positive emphasis. Or how trinitarian kenosis has become eclipsed by power and domination. Or how the aristocracy has made so many inroads in a community that originally formed around a penniless itinerant prophet.

These questions should be more prominent in "priestly-formation." Better this than edifice-complexes and marching off to insurrections.

I am burdened with the anxious sense that Orthodox seminaries have abdicated their responsibility of authentic prophetic critique, and have latched on simplistically to the easy and broad path of fundamentalist complaint. 

The fundamentalist theocratic agenda is a deliberate preference for authoritarian ideology. And, it must be said, ideology always displaces theology. The desire for a "Christian strong man" is not only unpatriotic. It is also simplistic fantasy.

 

The trouble with political fantasies is that the antichrist feeds off such fever dreams.

 

So, I proposed that any attempt to supplant American democracy with a more authoritarian form is immoral.

 

Not surprisingly, a few correspondents carted out that old and boorish non-rebuttal (and very non seqitur) "I don't know what authoritarianism means."

 

Well, now you do.