The cognitive dissonance, it hurts

[astra_nomer]

Exactly how do Christianity and democratic principles go together?

Christianity: Here are some rules passed down from On High. Follow them or die.

Democracy: Decide the rules amongst yourselves, after discussion, debate and voting.

Am I missing something?

Comments

[narya.livejournal.com]

Christianity is good and American and democracy is good and American. Therefore they go together. Duh!

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Reese's peanut butter cup model for America!

...but what if you're atheist or allergic to peanut butter?

[ayekamn.livejournal.com]

Then you're a commie and need to go back to Mother Russia!

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

Depends on the interpretation of Christianity. Essentially, the only "rules" from on High that I see are "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Love God with all your heart." And it's totally possible for people with good intentions and decent morals to disagree on the details of what that looks like (for example, is it loving my neighbor to set the driving at at 15 or 18? Or to have cellphone bans while driving for everyone? Or just for people under 25?)

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Essentially, the only "rules" from on High that I see are "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Love God with all your heart."

Ah, but so few hold that interpretation of Christianity. The people who are running around claiming that the US was founded on "Christian principles" seem to believe in a much more authoritarian God.

[dcltdw]

I'm pretty sure you're missing something about buying votes in the democracy model.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Silly rabbit! Buying votes is neither Christian nor democratic!

... hey, wait a minute...

[nonnihil.livejournal.com]

Now you're making me remember my theological education. Let's see if I can't dust of the Presbyterian argument for democracy. Note that this doesn't represent my own views as these days I believe in neither democracy nor Christianity. Anyway, here goes:

Scriptural and doctrinal commands are qualitatively different from legal rules. In particular, religious commands are self-enforcing (eg, I will go to hell for breaking them) so no person has to enforce them (ie, there is not some person who has the job of dragging me to hell). By contrast, legal rules are defined by the fact that some person has to execute the rule. There are actual cops who have to actually put me in prison.

Now, if I were to shoot any (eg) sabbath-breaker who happened to walk past my house, that would be wrong. It violates religious commands, eg, to not kill, to turn the other cheek, to look to the log in my own eye before the mote in others', etc. The reason that this is wrong in this case is that while the sabbath-breaker is clearly an evildoer from the point of view of the religious commands, that evil does not excuse me from other relevant moral commands that prohibit me from harming him; the moral commands he may be breaking have no relevance whatsoever to the moral commands I would be breaking.

So how then are evildoers to be punished? Christianity forbids individuals to act in their own capacity against evildoers who have wronged them (they must turn the other cheek). Theologians have long debated whether Christianity permits self-defense at all; also it doesn't take even a single step toward the question of why it's okay to punish someone after they've committed the crime (it's too late to defend against it, after all) or who committed a crime against someone else..

Christian religious commands do however permit a person to act in defense of or to the benefit of another. So we can see secular law and its agents (police, soldiers, and what-have-you) as acting in defense of or toward the preservation of the common good. But this law is justified by a specific purpose -- the defense and preservation of the common good -- which is entirely different from religious commands. Religious commands are not justified by the common good; even if they were bad for people right now, they would still be binding. By contrast, if the agents of the state were to enforce a religious command that was actually bad for people, the agents of the state would be acting wrongly -- violating religious commands themselves -- even if they were promoting religiously mandatory behaviour!

Thus law is constrained not only by religious commands in its ends (the law may not require you to do evil) but in its means (the law may not require its enforcers to do evil, eg by enforcing a harmful law). The government is much more constrained than God in its law-making capacities. This is why Christianity is morally incompatible with outright theocracy: As soon as the law extends beyond doing actual good for actual people and society, it is religiously prohibited to enforce it, even if the law itself enforces religious commands.

What, then, will make sure that the law is good? Well, the drafting of laws is basically a human endeavor, so it must come down to who makes the laws and how. Individuals given great power make evil decisions; individuals with large personal stakes in the outcome make decisions favoring their own interests; groups in which people can monitor each others' votes and bargain and trade their support with one another simply put each individual member in a conflict of interests. Thus individual despotic rulers, people with conflicts of interest, and people watching and bargaining with each others' votes will not vote their consciences and will create laws that, because they do not serve the overall good, it is morally wrong and religiously prohibited to enforce.

By contrast, the way in which God acts upon individual decision-makers -- the conscience -- will be best brought to bear on public choices when the choices are made by a large group of people, each with a small or zero personal stake in the outcome, secretly voting their consciences on measures. Thus, the argument goes, Christianity demands that law be made democratically.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Here I am trying to be snarky, and you have to go and be all serious.

You might as well keep the argument simple, and say that just as Protestantism rejects any one anointed authority to mediate between people and God (i.e. the Pope), there is no one anointed authority to rule over people (i.e. a King). Ergo, democracy.

However, democracy is not inherently Christian, given that the ancient Greeks came up with it long before Christ.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

America has massaged Christianity into something special that it wasn't always. Many varieties of Christianity that spring up here are explicitly non-hierarchical: that's American populism at work. (And actually you probably could interpret Jesus as having advocated that sort of thing.) There's also some weird underlying theology here in some of those independent churches that essentially identifies the Invisible Hand with God and says, well, if you're wealthy it must because you've been favored by God, so let's all celebrate American prosperity! And there's a sort of nauseating emphasis on The Family, by which they mean Mom, Dad, and kids, that feels sort of alien to anyone who remembers that bit about abandoning your family to follow Him. So there are a lot of ways that Christianity and American culture conflict, and America has tended to solve this by changing Christianity.

I was talking to a cool divinity student not too long ago that had a name for this way that cultural values get infused into religions. I see it happening today both with American cultural values I like (the Episcopalians, with their ordination of women and gays) and with the above values, which generally I don't like.