The Future of Democracy
In its 2019 annual Audit of Political Engagement, the Hansard Society asked if Britain ‘needs a strong ruler willing to break the rules.’ Whilst 54% of respondents said yes; only 23% said no.[1] Even given the long drawn-out stalemate over Brexit in that year – in which the “will of the people” seemed to be thwarted by parliament itself – this is a disturbing outcome. The nation promptly went ahead and elected a ruler willing to break a number of rules, before and during the pandemic.
Democracy is not only under pressure in Britain. In 2020, the Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy warned that democracy worldwide is in ‘a state of deep malaise.’ It stated:
In the West, growing political polarisation, economic frustration, and the rise of populist parties, have eroded the promise of democratic institutions to offer governance that is not only popularly supported, but also stable and effective. Meanwhile, in developing democracies the euphoria of the transition years has faded, leaving endemic challenges of corruption, intergroup conflict, and urban violence that undermine democracy’s appeal.
Global Satisfaction with Democracy (Bennett Institute for Public Policy, 2020), 3.
Some liberal democracies reel under an authoritarian populism pitting so-called ‘real people’ against the rest of the population. Others are corroded by a consumerist liberalism which feeds self-interest and saps people’s energy for local participation. All face unaccountable tech giants creating powerful digital social media tools easily exploited to poison democratic communication.
In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis lamented that terms like ‘democracy’ have been ‘bent and shaped to serve as tools for domination, as meaningless tags that can be used to justify any action’.[2] Democracy needs all the help it can get from people of faith as well as others. Let me suggest three enduring theological insights highly relevant to the protection and renewal of democracy.
First, the fundamental claim of a Christian vision of politics is that government exists in order to promote justice and the common good not to secure power, impose order, or assert “national sovereignty.” That is their divinely-assigned vocation. They are to pursue it by establishing institutions, laws and policies that promote peace, order, justice, liberty and other necessary conditions for a flourishing social order.
Second, governments can only promote such goals if they are committed to the “the rule of law” – the principle that governments, not only the people, are under law and can be held effectively accountable for breaches of it. Even in the UK, often called the “mother” of democracy, this requires constant vigilance. Thankfully, the UK government’s attempts to circumvent the rule of law during the Brexit process were thwarted twice by the Supreme Court. In Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia or China, courts do what governments tell them.
Note that “law” here does not mean whatever laws happen to have been imposed by governments or parliaments. These can, as the psalmist warns, ‘contrive mischief by statute’ (Ps. 92.20 NRSV). It means the rule of just law. It requires, at least, laws binding all state institutions and officials to principles of fairness, equality, consistency, transparency and accountability.
Democracy is not, after all, the most fundamental condition of legitimate government; that is the rule of just law. A Christian vision does not affirm mere democracy but just constitutional democracy.
Third, democratic structures and processes are, nonetheless, absolutely indispensable to just government. They are the means by which the people – the body of citizens – choose their elected officials, exercise continuous influence on state institutions, hold them accountable for promoting the common good, and replace them when they judge them to have overstayed their welcome.
Written in the ancient near east and under the Roman empire, the Bible doesn’t commend ‘democracy’ as such. But many Christian thinkers reflecting on the Bible in the light of history and experience strongly endorse constitutional democracy as a powerful imperative for today.
A key reason is that the Bible, and the practice of the early church, affirm an egalitarian understanding of “the people” (the laos). Even in the Old Testament all twelve tribes, and every member of each tribe, were seen as full members of the covenant. Torah – divine instruction in the pathways of wisdom and justice – was a gift to all and was intended to promote justice for all, especially the most vulnerable, those at risk of exclusion from the community: widows, orphans and foreigners.
This inclusive conception of the people is radicalised in the New Testament. The new covenant inaugurated in Jesus Christ is no longer offered exclusively to one ‘chosen’ people, the Jews, but made available to Gentiles – to “all nations.” Particular ethnic, national or political loyalties are relativized against the church’s overriding loyalty to Jesus Christ. The new people of God are a voluntary global fellowship of spiritual equals. All are gifted by the Spirit and eligible to speak the Word of God into the congregation. This participatory vision was powerfully revived at the Reformation. Once it began to spill out from the church into wider society, it turned out to be one of the most potent sources of modern democratization.
Such a vision of a just and participatory constitutional democracy enjoys strong theological endorsement. Where people of faith, alongside others, work to realise it in practice, however incrementally, their democracies might begin to experience repair and renewal, and the broken trust between people and government begin to be restored.
References
[1] John Smith Centre, “Audit of Political Engagement 16 – The 2019 Report,” (2019).
[2] Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti (03/10/2020).
© Jonathan Chaplin, 2022.
This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Cover Image: “Pope Francis holding a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg” by European Parliament is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Dr Jonathan Chaplin is Honorary Fellow of Wesley House, Cambridge where he contributes to the Centre for Faith in Public Life. He is author of Faith in Democracy: Framing a Politics of Deep Diversity (SCM 2021).
