Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies
Thoughts on David Gushee's new book
Yesterday was the release date for David Gushee’s Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies. I was on the book launch team and got to read an advanced copy on PDF until my actual book showed up last week. Gushee writes in his professional capacity as a social ethicist, exploring the meaning of democracy and the threats it faces, with particular attention to what he calls “Authoritarian Reactionary Christianity”.
David has a chapter explaining why he thinks this particular ordering of concepts is the right one and I don’t disagree. Still, it’s worth considering what happens with different arrangements. For example, Reactionary Christian Authoritarianism speaks to issues documented in Putnam and Campbell’s American Grace on how the social changes of the last 60 years caused a reaction among evangelical Christians. I’d argue that this reaction makes them more acceptable of authoritarianism. One could go with Authoritarian Christian Reactionism to pick up the ways in which some segments of modern Christianity (perhaps clearest in the New Apostolic Reformation movement) look to powerful Christian leaders who explicate how their flocks should understand politics.
He begins with a robust defense of modern democracy and explains its connection to Christianity.
Christians can defend a modified understanding and practice of liberal democracy1 as congruent with Christian theological convictions and moral norms. We can likewise view democratic participation not as rebellion against Christ or a sidelining of our church commitments but as an expression of both. I also firmly believe that Christian rejection of, or indifference to, democracy in past centuries and today has been one of our greatest and most damaging mistakes (24).
The middle of the book provides a series of national case studies on how Christianity (as well as other religions) have had a tendency to foster a move toward authoritarianism. He has chapters on the French revolution and its aftermath, pre-Hitler Germany, Russia under Putin, reactionary moves in Poland, Orban’s Hungary, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, and the Trump administration in the US.
The claim here is that the slide away from democracy and toward right-wing authoritarianism in nations including Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the United States today, and other nations in the past, is connected to and exacerbated by the historic and contemporary attitudes of a substantial part of the Christian populations of these lands (41-42).
David makes some separation between his ideas and those of Andrew Whitehead and Sam Perry in Taking America Back for God. He suggests that Christian Nationalism need not lead to extremism or violence. However, Whitehead’s new book American Idolatry identifies comfort with violence as one of the key idols of Christian Nationalism.
The close linkage between Christian faith and reactionary movements, often involving authoritarian expressions create difficulties. Or, to say the same thing more positively, Christians need to develop a pro-democracy commitment that safeguards against these tendencies.
The claim here is that Christianity, with it ancient roots, carried forward many authoritarian, pre-democratic, and even anti-democratic tendencies into the modern world — centuries after politics in many historically Christian lands embraced democratic norms. I am not arguing that every structure in human life must be governed democratically; this will not and cannot ever be the case. However, I am suggesting that it is significant that that majorities of Christians participate in nondemocratic and sometimes authoritarian religious institutions. It may be that where a significant number of Christian groups and individuals have not democratized their understanding of the organization of power in human communities, these Christians unwittingly function as antidemocratic incubators in modern societies (47).
It is helpful to consider Gushee’s ethical consideration alongside Robert P. Jones’ The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future released last month. Using histories from Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma, Jones traces how the 1493 Doctrine of Discovery2 was influential in justifying Native American forced removal from lands, lynchings, the murder of Emmett Till, and the destruction of Black Main Street in Tulsa.3 He also provides some hopeful stories of preliminary moves toward healing in these communities. At the end of the book. Robbie strikes a theme very similar to David’s.
We white Christians no longer represent the majority of Americans. We are no longer capable of setting the nation’s course by sheer cultural and poltical dominance. But there are still more than enough of us to decisively derail the future of democracy in America. If we wish to do otherwise, we can no longer disingenuously pretend that democracy and the Doctrine of Discovery are, or ever were, compatible (309).
After moving thorough the case studies mentioned above, Gushee moves to sources of rediscovery of democratic impulses Christians might draw upon. These are the (historic) Baptist tradition, the Black Christian tradition, and the nature of Covenant.4 Of the first, David writes:
Baptists5 have learned to value and to practice democracy in their congregations over more than four hundred years. This has been crucial in creating the conditions for a sustainable democracy where there are plenty of Baptists and other congregationalists — or at least where democratic congregational life is socially influential (157).
Turning to the Black Christian tradition, David argues that there is a not-yet-but-someday celebration of democracy present in a tradition characterized by MLK, James Cone, and Randal Jelks. As he points out, this tension is evident in King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, where the first part lays out the shortcomings of democracy and the very end lays out a hoped for future.6
Understanding Covenant means that we are bound up together, Christian and not, gay and straight, white and black, native born or immigrant, male and female, Republican and Democrat. Christians, committed to loving God and other, should understand this better than most. When the preamble to the Constitution says “We The People”, it doesn’t mean “our team”. It means everybody, which is why it speaks of the General Welfare. David writes:
We can renew our commitment to the political, civil, social, and economic rights of our fellow citizens, as an expression of how much God loves and values all people. While we may not accept the legitimacy of everybody’s claims to this or that supposed right, we can begin with a tender regard for the needs and rights of all our neighbors (189).
At a time when many Christians have become so wedded to one political party that it becomes hard to separate their views as Christians from those of their partisan peers, who are comfortable demonizing others as socialists who want to destroy the country, who will look to a strong leader who will give them power rather than caring for the community, this is an important book. As we continue to have “Flight 93” elections seen as existential moments shaping “whether we have a country or not”, Gushee’s call to renew our shared commitments to democracy couldn’t be more timely.
In the Lockean sense, not the left-right sense our political media is obsessed with.
For an in-depth theological look at the Doctrine of Discovery, see Mark Charles and Soong Chan Rah’s Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery.
I should note that David has done YouTube conversations with both Andrew and Robbie. Check out David’s webpage for those and more.
I was particularly pleased to see this last theme as I did quite a bit of work in the 1990s arguing that community was based on an understanding of mutual covenant and not on a social or economic contract.
While he doesn’t make this qualification, I’d argue that both the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC over the last 40 years and the role of megachurch pastors run counter to this idealized frame.