democracy

Democracy is having a moment, which is another reason why Christians must be the moral people upon which a free and representative government depends.

The future of our democracy depends on the moral transformation of our people. As the only light in a dark world (Matthew 5:14-16), this process starts with us. But we must be changed to be the change we need to see. We must settle for nothing less than holistic holiness and then ask the Spirit to make us more like Christ than we have ever been as we submit daily to his lordship and obey his word and will.

Jacob Wolf, a government professor at Regent University who formerly taught at Princeton, writes in Public Discourse that "Democracy, like many good things, is destroyed if it is elevated above all else. Democracy is valuable to the extent that it is placed in its proper position and context—bounded and balanced by other elements. As Edmund Burke wisely noted, one does not obtain liberty, equality, and self-government by merely letting go of the reins; these things require a complex system of incentives, punishments, and checks and balances that parallel the complexities of human nature. Our Founders understood this far better than do the democratists.

He concludes that “democracy is ineradicably religious; the question that remains is whether religion can bolster democracy without being swallowed up by it.”

I consider this question to be the foundational issue of our time.

Every day’s news brings more examples of our society’s rejection of biblical morality. But like a river that erodes the shoreline we can see and the underwater banks we cannot, the cultural currents of our day are undermining our democracy in ways that are less apparent but no less foundation

In other words, democracy (“the power of the people”) requires that the people be worthy of the power entrusted to them. But the “will to power,” the perennial temptation to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5), is ever with us. And it undermines our democracy at every turn.

The American variety of democracy assumes that there are inalienable rights that cannot be infringed by popular vote. That assumption is behind the Bill of Rights, as well as Supreme Court decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, which ended segregation. If we don’t assume and commit to certain truths about the world prior to democracy, it will devolve into mob rule, something both unsustainable and unjust. If you don’t believe that, the French have a guillotine or two to sell you.

 We do not abandon our principles because the fight has gotten dirty. We must continue to uphold the value of personal liberty and responsible self-government even when the people around us aren’t. If we put aside our principles to fight a temporary political battle, we may find when the dust clears that our principles are gone.

Over libraries and other public buildings across Christendom we find Jesus’ declaration, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). However, such inscriptions omit Jesus’ necessary precondition: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples” (v. 31).

Congressional inaction is a great danger that places stress on our system of government. When Congress twiddles its thumbs, the Supreme Court exercises growing power in American life, and the president issues executive orders, which get immediately overturned when a new party comes into power. Meanwhile, the bloated federal bureaucracy enacts onerous regulation after onerous regulation with little pushback from Congress.

An international democratic think tank has added the United States to its list of “backsliding democracies” for the first time. The group says that the United States has succumbed to “authoritarian tendencies” in recent years.