Democracy is Essential
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Imagine…if you believed democracy were essential. Not just a “choice” among variations of how to govern a group of people, but an essential structure. This is the claim authors Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen make in their new book, Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want. They write:
Creating democracies truly accountable to their citizens is essential to our very survival—to the flourishing of societies supporting human life, and now, because of climate change, to the survival of the Earth as we’ve inherited it.
This is a colossal claim, we know. But there’s one point on which human history makes us absolutely certain: it’s not the magnitude of a challenge that crushes the human spirit…. What most defeats us is feeling useless—that we have nothing to say, nothing to contribute, that we don’t count.
Imagine that each of us could play an active, meaningful part in shaping the world we want to live in. Imagine a system in which the people share power. All the people—without limit or ranking according to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or the amount of money in their accounts.
Or, maybe we should imagine instead what it would be like to not live in a democracy. In some ways, it’s not too hard to imagine. Perhaps, like me, you have a fondness for period TV shows and/or for historical fiction. Any other fans of the PBS show Victoria? Over the years, there have been many such shows depicting life under a monarchy. I watch mesmerized by the beauty of palaces and gowns, feasts and gardens. And yet, I wonder—why do such portrayals of inequality of wealth and power have such a draw for me and for so many others in our democratic nation?
On an episode of Victoria, the young queen decides to visit the French king. Although the English prime minister seems wary, Victoria confidently exclaims that she would think that a self-made king should be very pleased to receive a visit from an anointed queen. I know it’s just TV, but think about Victoria’s attitude. What she says reflects the centuries-long belief that the authority to govern came from God, the Universal Ruler. Anointing a ruler was the sign of this divine blessing, this divine choice. So, this offhanded comment of Victoria’s reveals her clear bias that a ruler chosen by God would be better than a self-made ruler.
Yet, what is democracy if not a collective of self-made rulers? At its best, the democratic process allows people to “rule” themselves by sharing the power of governing. Choosing how to share power, how to govern, is of course the purview of politics. And yet, underlying these political choices are assumptions about who or what is the source of authority and power. In other words, underlying the choices of politics are ideas about human nature and the nature of the universe. Such ideas reflect religious commitments about the ultimate nature and purpose of existence.
For example, if the God of your understanding is an all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the Universe, then the source of all power must be understood as coming from that God. God holds the power and can divvy it out to those God chooses. This theological point of view supports the notion of the Divine Right of Kings that Victoria alludes to. Such a view of God as a power over others, who is due allegiance and obedience by “His” creation, generates an acceptance of hierarchal power as the natural order of the universe. When one accepts hierarchy as natural, the application of the same principle among human beings can be vast. Aristocrats with land are better than landless peasants. Men are higher than women. Whiteness is superior to people of color. And so on.
Of course, not all views of God support such a hierarchal understanding of power. For some, God may be all-powerful, but God created humankind as equal to one another. In my own training in feminist Christian theological discourse, I learned to rely heavily on Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In this view, God remains unquestionably superior to humankind, but among humans there is the expectation of equality. Indeed, this kind of just society is the fulfillment of God’s plan for humanity.
And what of us as Unitarian Universalists? As inheritors of a Unitarian legacy, we hold fast to the individual capacity of a person to make moral and religious decisions. We have faith in our reason and in our ability to do good. And, as inheritors of a Universalist legacy, we claim an inclusive vision that values all persons, in a love that embraces people universally. Together these threads of individual capacity and universal inclusion emerge in our fifth principle: “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process in our congregation and in society at large.”
Our commitment to conscience and democracy emerge because of a long religious tradition that values the worth and dignity of every person. When we take these values as foundational to our understanding of how the world is, this is a religious claim.
I believe that religion is bigger than politics. I believe religion is about answering the biggest questions about who we are as fragile, fierce creatures; about where we find ourselves in this complex, beautiful, maddening world; and about how to navigate the ever-shifting dynamics of being who we are in the world in which we find ourselves. I believe religion is making sense of life by naming the landscape of how things are and values that will help us chart a course. I have chosen to be a part of the Unitarian Universalist religious tradition that values the capacity for moral choice as well as the dignity of each life, that promotes equity in human relations and the use of the democratic process in an effort to share power.
And it is from the basis of these moral commitments, these religious commitments, that I then take political action. It is from the basis of my humanity, my effort to craft a meaningful life in a shared world that I engage both my religious life and my political action.
And so I think that as religious persons and as a religious community we can engage in actions that seek to shape the kind of world we want to live in. We can promote and support issues that align with our inclusive values of human worth and dignity, of equity and justice in human relations, of the use of the democratic process in our larger society. We can live our values and religious commitments through our actions—through public social witness and the political process as well as through direct compassionate care to individuals in need.
There are limits to what we can do and to what we should do. By law, engaging in partisan politics endangers our non-profit status. Neither the congregation nor I can endorse or denounce political parties or candidates from the pulpit during an election. Nor do I think we should do this—even if it were legal. As a religious organization, we are exploring a much larger and bigger world than that of politics. We are reaching out to understand the expanses of meaning and the contours of moral action. I would never want who we are and what we do to be reduced to any political party’s platform.
And yet, I also do not want us to be curtailed in our relevance because we fear engaging in issues and actions that seem political. I believe that we can act in a public way as Unitarian Universalists with a religious voice, that we can call any and every political party to uphold certain shared values in their proposals and in their votes. We come together with a commitment to valuing every person—even those from a different political party. And we come together to live out those values in our actions—some of which may be to engage the political process.
We may not always agree on how to live out our values. It is a bold thing for a congregation to take a public position on an issue—to hang a Black Lives Matter banner, to offer sanctuary for a person facing deportation, to fly a rainbow flag on our steps. But, it is something we can choose to do as a religious act. Deciding what we should or should not do as individuals, groups, or as a congregation—that is a matter of conscience and the use of the democratic process.
Democracy is essential not because it is the only possible form of government. Democracy is essential because it is shared power that aligns with valuing the right of conscience and the worth and dignity of every person. Democracy is essential because to live out the fullness of who we are as human beings we need to feel like we can meaningfully shape the world we share.
Imagine what kind of world you would like to live in. Imagine believing, really believing, that you can be a part of making that world come to be. Imagine that democracy is essential.
Stephanie’s interest in religion and politics emerge in part from growing up evangelical Christian in West Michigan and then attending Wheaton College in Chicago. With a front row seat to the interactions of evangelical Christianity with politics, Stephanie became interested in the nuances of religious political engagement. As a MDiv student at Princeton Theological Seminary, Stephanie served as an intern at the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry and was awarded a Fellowship in Religion and Society for her senior thesis.
When not found at work or home, Stephanie can be found on a road trip with her camping gear.
- Democracy is Essential - March 1, 2020
