Bracing for charges of irresponsibility and alarmism, the editors of the conservative monthly First Things brought forth in November a five-article symposium on “The End of Democracy?”—a title they claimed was “in no way hyperbolic.” No tabloid tease there. They meant it.
The authors, a distinguished array of conservative legal theorists and political scientists, including Charles Colson and Robert Bork, argue that recent Supreme and Federal Circuit Court decisions have short-circuited the democratic process, doing an end run around the popular will in such areas as abortion, gay rights, and assisted suicide. Indeed, in the Romer case, which invalidated the express will of Colorado voters to ban gay-rights ordinances (CT News, June 17, 1996), the Supreme Court defined by fiat any disfavoring of a sexual minority as proceeding from animus (rather than principle or reason). The Court stripped the voters of their constitutional means of addressing moral problems in their midst. This left the voters of Colorado—and of every state of the Union-no recourse, no possibility of ballot initiative, referendum, or even amendment to the state constitutions. Ergo, “the end of democracy.” We no longer govern ourselves. The Court has seen to that.
The First Things authors feel this pinch keenly, recognizing that, in principle, the judicial branch of the federal government has usurped powers that belong to the people, the Congress, and the executive branch. Their analysis of the Court is cogent. But the Christian’s deeper dispute with such cases as Roe and Casey is not simply that they undemocratically bypassed the legislative process; it is that they undemocratically fail to recognize the moral equality of all persons (including the seriously or terminally ill and the unborn).
A cure worse than the disease?The remedy for all this will require vigorous action: several symposium authors called for increased resistance (sacrificial giving to prolife causes; volunteering at hospices and prolife pregnancy centers; political, legal, and educational activism; more intentional support for adoption). The remedy may also be radical: civil disobedience (refusing to pay state taxes that fund abortions; nonviolently defying unjust restrictions on freedom of speech in front of abortion clinics), and even, potentially, revolution.
Fortunately, Charles Colson made it clear that the time for rebellion is not yet, that “we dare not at present despair of America,” and that God is “in the miracle business.” Colson reviews the historic criteria for justified rebellion according to Protestant lights John Knox and Samuel Rutherford. Our government clearly has not breached the people’s trust to the point that revolution could be justified.
But perhaps talk of revolution should be out of bounds. One lesson of history is that we do not know what a revolution will bring. We can, however, be sure it will not be what we imagine. Take Poland as an example: At almost the same time First Things released its symposium, the Polish Parliament approved a broadly permissive abortion law. This, just three-and-a-half years after the young noncommunist government had passed a church-approved anti-abortion bill. This Polish reversal is about more than abortion: it is the rejection by the pervasively Catholic Polish population of their own church’s influence on their fledgling liberal democracy. A Christian revolt here would just as likely yield “wild grapes” on the other side of the revolution.
The language of civil disobedience and potential revolution, when abstracted from the coolly rational atmosphere of a thought journal like First Things, can produce worse things. When the people feel empowered in the political process, talk of the culture wars is understood metaphorically and serves to enliven debate. But for people who feel deprived of political recourse, the language of war and revolution, combined with calling the United States “the tyrant state” and an “illegitimate regime” (as this symposium did), inflames passions and prepares people for demagoguery.
Democracy, let it be noted, is a relative good. As political scientist Robert George reports in the symposium’s concluding essay, Pope John Paul II has said that democracy is “a means not an end” and its ” ‘moral value’ is not automatic.” The pope’s point is that democracies can err, yea verily, go rotten. But even under rotten regimes, the New Testament tells us, Christians are faithfully to live out their calling. Our attitude is to be one of prayerful respect, not hostility, and our lives a persuasive and self-sacrificing witness.
One Christian goal (we have many) is to maximize the democratic process when it is likely to lead to righteousness (both personal and social). Our allegiance to righteousness is absolute, but our allegiance to democracy is relative. Both Scripture and the witness of the early church testify to our responsibility to foster virtue, feed the hungry, and lift up the oppressed. Democracy, when it recognizes and protects the fundamental equality of every person, is better suited to that goal than any other system. But for the Christian, it must always find its justification in godly ends. To talk of the “End of Democracy” is to announce the arrival of an era in which it will be much more difficult to reach those godly ends. Do not read this symposium as a cloaked call to rebellion, but as a stern statement of where we now stand.
Where we stand is often spoken of as a slippery slope. That image—of an icy hill with no bumps or bushes on which society might catch itself—springs too easily to mind. But social critic Daniel Yankelovich has said that social trends do not move in straight lines of decline or ascent. He speaks rather of a “lurch-and-learn” model. Cultures and communities change by gross and ungainly reactions to new circumstances (“lurching”), and when some prophetic voice points out their overcorrection (“learning”), a new lurching begins in a new direction.
One way American democracy has found new direction in the past is through the renewal of the church. The histories of America’s Great Awakenings are marked not only by personal salvation, but by social reform of the broadest order. The Abolition movement itself owed its energy to one of these revivalist movements.
In the First Things symposium, we may hear a prophetic word that America has gone far toward moral and social chaos. What new lurching awaits us only God knows. Whatever our future, may we, as Colson urges, not despair of America, but pray that discussion of resistance and revolution remain an academic exercise.
Copyright © 1996 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
