CHRISTIANITY AND DEMOCRACY

In previous chapters, we explored the history of Christian realism and ways of thinking about a society made up of differentiated contexts in which people create and maintain goods important for human living. Whether in Protestant language of “orders,” “spheres,” and “mandates,” or in Catholic social teaching regarding “subsidiary” institutions, Christian theology has called attention to the concrete, local responsibilities that bind people to their neighbors in these contexts. Participation in contexts sets the terms in which much of the moral life is lived, and sustaining the more general social and political conditions under which all of the contexts of human life can flourish is an important standard by which the governments of modern states are judged.

Concern for these contexts and the human goods they provide brought Christianity and liberal democracy into close connection during the twentieth century. Against promises of new orders in which human life would be remade and human goods redefined, both Christianity and democracy rediscovered the value of goods already available in the institutions of work, family, faith, and culture, and they renewed the collaboration of religion and politics to sustain those goods and the pluralistic society that created them.

This collaboration did not make Christian realists into uncritical apologists for democracy, but it did make them important political allies and conversation partners in developing the intellectual framework for the renewed democracies which would emerge from this time of crisis.