Christodemocracy and the Alternative Democratic Theory of America’s Christian Right

Gabriel S. Hudson

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781349706518
  9781137523631
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137523648
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Governo americano

This book evaluates the democratic theory of America's Christian Right (CR). The CR has been examined extensively in academic literature. However, most analyses focus on its origins, policy preferences, or successful mobilization. Hudson instead examines the normative assumptions about governance that inform CR activism. The CR has its own answers to the core questions asked in democratic theory, such as "What legitimizes power?" and "What is the proper relationship between the state and the individual?"   The author outlines ten normative assumptions of the CR and compares each to its counterpoint in liberal democratic theory. Much of what the CR believes about democracy comes from the same authors as modern and postmodern democratic theory but differs in its interpretation and application. The book describes in detail the theory of CR and demonstrates how the CR operates from a different view of governance than is usually associated with the United States.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Gabriel S. HudsonChristodemocracy and the Alternative Democratic Theory of America’s Christian Right10.1057/978-1-137-52364-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Christodemocracy Is the Alternative Normative Framework Assumed by America’s Christian Right

Gabriel S. Hudson¹

(1)

George Mason University, Annandale, Virginia, USA

Abstract

This first chapter introduces the concept of Christodemocracy and defines that term in reference to other works of political theory. It specifies the parameters of the book’s assertions and defines the object of analysis. It places Christodemocracy along the continuum of democratic typologies and explains the utility of naming yet another.

End Abstract

The term “Christodemocracy” is inspired by the similar term “Islamodemocracy” commonly used to describe hypothetical democracies in primarily Islamic countries. In the early aughts, new terms to describe potential democratic states in the Middle East began appearing, first in academic literature and eventually in popular media. Following the beginning of the war in Iraq, the neoconservative belief that liberal democracy could be exported or implanted inspired new ways of describing best-case scenarios. Democracy seemed like a structure that could be delivered to another country, given the correct intervention. There was seemingly no cognizance of the assumptions that undergird democracy and how those gradually develop within a culture. Terms such as Islamodemocracy and Islamo-Democratic became shorthand for the potential new states in a post-Saddam world.

Stephane Lacroix produced the most enthusiastic imaging of an Islamodemocracy in Between Islamists and Liberals: Saudi Arabia’s New “Islamo-Liberal” Reformists arguing that reform in Saudi Arabia was just around the corner and a Muslim version of Western democracy had vigorous support (Lacroix 2004). In an analysis of what an Islamo-democracy might look like, Richard W. Bulliet of the New York Times asked, “Is Islam compatible with democracy? Decidedly so. Does Islam encourage democratic government? No more than does any other religious tradition. But individual Muslim leaders do find in their faith the resources to sustain a commitment to elections and pluralism” (Bulliet 2012). In Liberal Democracy and its Critics in Africa, Lumumba-Kasongo also uses the term to designate the intent of Muslim reformers (Lumumba-Kasongo 2005, 37).

The use of “Islamodemocracy” describes the potential for how democracy will develop outside of the West. There is an entire body of literature devoted to this topic. In The Search for Arab Democracy, Sadiki explains how Western liberal democracy developed out of a European Christian tradition and assumptions such as personal autonomy and individualized morality bear theological roots. He later reasons that those who assert similar democracies cannot develop in the Middle East and elsewhere are essentially chauvinistic. Democracies could develop in primarily Islamic states, he argues, but would develop out of their own religious tradition and would similarly bear Islamic theological roots (Sadiki 2002). Two works built on these assertions, Sohail H. Hashmi’s Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism and Conflict and Michael Cook’s Forbidding Wrong in Islam. Hashmi’s work describes how Islamic teachings can (and, he argues, will) produce something similar to Western liberal democracy with cultural distinctiveness (Hashmi 2002). Cook’s work details how a particular theological tradition would look in an Islamo-Democratic state following internal religious reformation and democratic revolution (Cook 2003).

The uprisings of the Arab Spring again led to hypothetical imagining about what new institutions might replace ousted tyrants. Pundits trumpeted the potential for democratization while some analysts, such as Cory Ellis, warned that existing oligarchies and religious authority would inhibit true democracies from forming. “New political parties are sprouting up in Egypt, meeting the call to lead their country into the future. I’ve mentioned my willingness to accept and even embrace Islamic political parties into the new Middle East and it is because the responsibilities of governance generally have a moderating effect on any extremist parties” (Ellis 2011). Inglehart and Baker find that, as nation-states modernize, common political and economic changes occur worldwide. There are less defined gender roles and better education, for example. However, historical values still pervade interpersonal relations, which then shape new political institutions. They identify eight cultural zones that produce similar values upon democratization: Western Christianity, The Orthodox World, The Islamic World, Confucian hierarchy, Japanese Shinto, Hindu, African, and Latin American Catholics (Inglehart and Baker 2000). In each of these cultural zones, as democracy has developed it has taken on a unique regional character that reflects its history prior to democratization. Like Sadiki, they explain what an Islamic derived democracy would look like and how it would differ from Western democracies.

As with any term, Islamodemocracy is used differently in different contexts. However, in analyzing its general usage, it becomes clear that it broadly references a state in the Middle East that transitions or could transition from being a Muslim theocracy to a democratic state. These new democratic states function as republics with free elections choosing representatives, but with Muslim people, Muslim religious leaders, and Islamic teachings having precedent culturally and politically. Diversity is tolerated in these imagined states, but Islamic religious leaders retain a formal role in government or have greater influence on political outcomes. All or most citizens are assumed to be Muslim with religious pluralism limited to various Muslim sects.

These examples are referenced to draw a parallel with the focus of this project. Discussions of whether Islamic states can be democracies or what kind of democracy develops from Islam are ubiquitous. Most articles contemplating Islamodemocracy reference previous works covering similar topics. Parens’ Whose Liberalism? Which Islam? is the most comprehensive detailing of how democracy might develop from an Islamic tradition. In it, he specifies different theological strains within Islam and predicts some will lead to democracy and others will not. To Parens, it is a question of intra-faith struggle: which tradition of Islam will win out. Parens sees liberalism as contrary to many religious beliefs, claiming it “stands the revealed religions on their heads” (Parens 1994, 215). Because each faith offers a comprehensive worldview and corresponding metanarrative while forbidding the acceptance, and sometimes the presence, of other faiths, it stands in contrast to liberal requirement for tolerance and pluralism. Parens does not claim that devotion and democracy cannot coexist, only that “The tolerant liberal will not tolerate those who are adherents in the traditional sense of the term of one of the revealed religions” (Parens 1994, 215).

Variations of “Can Islamic countries be democracies?” appear frequently, but few ask similar questions about Western Christendom. It is held as an axiom that we already have. There’s an implied, “We did it. Why can’t you?” Liberalism is assumed to have already triumphed over revealed faith, creating modern democracies in the West. Or has it? Is it equally worthwhile to question whether cultures with a strong Christian tradition similarly struggle to be liberal and democratic?

It is not difficult to imagine doubts about the possibility of liberal democracy applied to the USA. As with Perens’ parsing of Islamic theological strains, there are Christian traditions that enable and hinder democratic thought. There’s an intra-faith Christian struggle that preceded democratic revolutions and reverberates still. So, similar to the way Islamodemocracy has been used in projections of democracy’s potential in the Islamic world, Christodemocracy can be used in a critique of liberal democracy in the West.

A Christodemocratic state is, then, a democracy in which a majority of citizens are assumed to be Christian and Christian theological traditions are assumed to have more influence culturally and politically. Christian religious leaders are expected to hold formal positions or have greater influence on political outcomes than representatives of other faiths. And, Christian theological arguments are more heavily weighted in political discourse. The influence of other religions or the absence of religion in political outcomes is automatically suspect because it threatens an ontological assumption of what the USA is. Non-Christian or perceived anti-Christian identities are tolerated but “otherized” as internal outsiders. And, “Christian” is considered the most legitimate American identity. What is meant by a more legitimate identity in a democracy is explained in greater detail later during the analyses of assumptions and specific examples of rhetoric. For now, it suffices to say that some argue that ideas connected to Christian theology should carry more weight in law because America is supposedly a Christian nation, founded for and by Christians, in a covenant relationship with the Christian God. Arguments that violate Christian theology or fail to perpetuate Christian privilege are often labeled “anti-American” because the religious and national signifiers are conflated. Rhetoric in which the country is “taken back” often refer to an imagined past of Christian supremacy that was a more “real” America than some current example of religious neutrality.

The point is not to analyze democracy’s prospects in Islamic states per se, but to show that similar critiques of the West are warranted, and less common. When examining the rhetoric and stated goals of America’s Christian Right (CR), a similarly comprehensive view of the state compared to descriptions of Islamodemocracy becomes apparent. Only, America was never a Christian theocracy and the story of Christianity’s influence on the development of liberal democracy does not really produce the outcomes leaders of the CR would like to see implemented. So, to better present their idealized view of the state, a sort of parallel history has been invented. To promulgate an alternative American historical narrative, academic and professional experts must be generalized as part of an anti-Christian or anti-American agenda. Alternative sources of expertise and history must supplant academic consensus to create a vision of a Christian democracy that is historically derived.

The resulting view is a USA that could be but never was. It is, itself, a normative view of democracy built on a framework of assumptions. Those assumptions can be revealed and deconstructed using qualitative methods such as discourse analysis, then compared to other normative assumptions associated with the USA. The result, then, reveals how this set of assumptions and their subsequent value judgments amount to a different normative framework. This frame of analysis has more explanatory power than other examinations of the CR’s activism and longevity because it uses a foundational rather than behavioral critique.

The Object of Analysis

Both academic and popular literature have examined the CR. There are numerous efforts to describe exactly what the CR is, what it hopes to achieve, and how it engages in its pursuits. Usually these focus on a particular aspect of the CR, such as its ability to mobilize the faithful during elections or the demographics that make up its supporters. There is a significant difference between how the CR is viewed by outsiders and how it describes itself. Usually leaders of the CR view the movement as a ministry, engaging in politics as an extension of their faith. In the Manhattan Declaration, one of numerous mass statements that seek to solidify and consolidate CR activism, CR leaders describe themselves and the document’s signatories as:

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season (“Manhattan Declaration” n.d.).

The CR frequently self-identifies as more beholden to its faith practice than any civil institution and is compelled by a spiritual obligation to engage politically. Merely acting on its faith to engage politically or “bring religious transformation of the political” (Klemp 2007, 531) is a far cry from how the CR is seen by many of its critics. The CR’s reliance on scripture to justify policy preferences, often at the expense of members of other faiths and sexual minorities, can make its ends seem theocratic. Many CR materials contain dominionist ideas that suggest hegemonic intent. Alan Dershowitz opens his book Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence by saying:

Lest anyone be fooled into believing that the ultimate goal of the religious right is merely to introduce some generic religion into the public square, rather than convert America into a Christian theocracy, just listen to the words of their leaders, especially those spoken to the “faithful” rather than more general audiences (Dershowitz 2007, 1).

This book follows Dershowitz’s suggestion. It examines the words of the movement’s leaders, paying specific attention to messages intended primarily for supporters. Unlike Dershowitz’s assertions, however, this analysis reveals a consistent respect for democracy. That is not to say there aren’t theocratic sentiments present within CR rhetoric, but the messaging from elites in the movement appears to endorse some vision of democracy, albeit illiberal. For one thing, the CR extends beyond politics to form a complicated subculture. For every component of political and popular culture, there is a CR counter-version. Rosenblum describes the CR as “rooted in white, Southern Protestant fundamentalist churches” with a “veritable subculture of schools and home schooling associations, colleges, local associations, newspapers and magazines, publishing houses for music and books, radio and television stations, think tanks and missionary movements” (Rosenblum 2003, 29). Any definition of the CR should acknowledge the political and apolitical aspects of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Christodemocracy Is the Alternative Normative Framework Assumed by America’s Christian Right
• 2. Christodemocracy Is One of Many Normative Frameworks Used for Understanding the Behavior of Democratic States
• 3. Christodemocratic Theory Is Based on Ten Core Assumptions
• 4. Discourse Analysis Provides a Qualitative Means for Recognizing Christodemocratic Assumptions Behind Political Activism
• 5. Christodemocracy Assumes That the Role of Any Government Is to Enact Christian Morality
• 6. In Christodemocracy, Positive Religious Identity Supersedes Liberty of Conscience in a Competition of Rights
• 7. Christodemocracy Relies on a Provincial Historical Narrative to Justify Christian Primacy
• 8. Christodemocratic Rhetoric Equates Political Leveling with Persecution
• 9. Christodemocracy Does Not Recognize Rights That Contradict the Will of the Author of Rights
• 10. Christodemocracy Assumes a Fixed, Metaphysical Epistemology as the Measure of Agency and Expertise
• 11. Christodemocracy Paradoxically Embraces Populist Faith and Strict Hierarchical Authority
• 12. Christodemocracy Is Illiberal Because It Assumes Collective Consequences for Individual Behavior
• 13. Christodemocracy Rejects Political Outcomes Thought to Be the Product of an Illegitimate Identity
• 14. Conclusion
• Backmatter