The Global Picture

Berger, Peter L., 1929-

Journal of Democracy, Volume 15, Number 2, April 2004, pp. 76-80 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/jod.2004.0022

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 Christianity and Democracy

THE GLOBAL PICTURE

Peter L. Berger

Peter L. Berger is professor of sociology and theology, and director of

the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, at Boston Univer-
sity. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Questions of
Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity (2003), The Desecularization
of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (1999), and The
Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967).

Modern democracy originated in one part of the world—Western Eu-

rope—and there only, though of course it has more recently spread
around the globe. In religious terms, it originated in the part of the
world crucially shaped by Christianity, and by Western Christianity at
that. In all likelihood this was not an accident. Modern democracy pre-
supposes two basic assumptions, one anthropological and one
sociological. Anthropologically, it presupposes that every individual,
regardless of birth, must confront God by himself (“there is neither Jew
nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor fe-
male; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” 1). This has often, and correctly,
been identified as a key source of what later came to be understood as
universal human rights. Sociologically, it presupposes that the church
must be differentiated from the state. This idea was present from the
beginning (“render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s;
and unto God the things that are God’s”2), but it was sharpened in West-
ern Christendom by the struggle between the Holy Roman Empire and
the papacy. The outcome of this struggle, which was pretty much a
victory of popes over emperors, laid the groundwork of institutional
pluralism and of what later developed into civil society.
Let me now offer some comments on the three preceding essays, which
explore the relationship to democracy of each of the three major Chris-
tian traditions—Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy, respectively.
Daniel Philpott provides a clear picture of the development of the Ro-
man Catholic attitude toward democracy, from sharp opposition through

Journal of Democracy Volume 15, Number 2 April 2004

Peter L. Berger 77

reluctant accommodation to a theologically justified embrace. The big

turn, of course, came with the Second Vatican Council, and once again it
was no accident that a pivotal figure in that event was an American
Jesuit, John Courtney Murray, who provided a distinctively Catholic
legitimation of religious liberty and democracy. Of the three major
branches of Christianity, Roman Catholicism is the only one with a
central authority exercising global jurisdiction (indeed, one might ar-
gue that the Church of Rome was the first truly global institution).
Philpott is undoubtedly correct in seeing this fact as crucial in the
Church’s rapid shift from opposing democracy to promoting it: Once
Rome had decided that democracy was a good thing, bishops from Peru
to the Philippines became ardent advocates of democratization. Thus
Samuel P. Huntington was correct in identifying the Roman church as a
key factor in the “third wave” of democratization in the 1970s and 1980s.
Yet one must also ask how this Church-endorsed democratization re-
lates to the economic development of the societies in question. There are
sound empirical grounds for understanding democracy and a market
economy as linked phenomena. Historically, Rome had been as opposed
to the market economy as it was to democracy. Vatican II did nothing to
change the former attitude, and the council was followed by a flowering
of various forms of Christian socialism, most powerfully expressed in
“liberation theology.” This changed somewhat under the pontificate of
John Paul II, notably with his encyclical Centesimus Annus (1991), which
cautiously endorsed the market economy (though the encyclical sought
to differentiate it from what the pope called “capitalism”). The resur-
gence of an anticapitalist discourse reminiscent of liberation theology in
the current antiglobalization movement reopens the question of how far
Rome is prepared to legitimate the global capitalist economy. A replay of
liberation theology, this time with papal blessing, cannot be ruled out.
Democracy poses a persistent problem for any religious tradition
committed to a set of binding moral principles, regardless of whether
these are understood to be grounded in revealed scriptures or in a puta-
tive natural law: How can such principles be held hostage to the
vicissitudes of the popular will? After all, the Christian doctrine of
original sin necessarily leads to the expectation that majorities will
vote for laws that are morally unacceptable. This is by no means only a
Catholic problem; it is shared by Orthodox Christians and conservative
Protestants. It is particularly acute for Catholics, however, because of
the claim of the Roman magisterium to make authoritative statements
on specific moral issues. The vigorous stance (aptly called
“countercultural” by some observers) that the Catholic Church has taken
on questions involving abortion and homosexuality clearly illustrates
this problem. One might say, then, that the acceptance of democracy by
any religious authority with such claims will have certain limits—that
is, the outcomes of the democratic process will be accepted only if they
78 Journal of Democracy

do not violate certain nonnegotiable moral principles. (Interestingly,

this is also a central issue in current debates over the relationship of
Islam to democracy.) Put differently, Roman Catholicism, like any other
religious tradition claiming the authority to legislate moral principles,
will be able to accept popular sovereignty only within certain limits.

Protestantism and Orthodoxy

Robert D. Woodberry and Timothy S. Shah persuasively describe an
inherent affinity between Protestantism and democracy, but they are
also careful to point out that this affinity does not mechanically lead to
democratic outcomes. These outcomes, they argue, depend on “mediat-
ing mechanisms,” notably the development of civil society institutions
and church-state relations. The Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth
century were certainly not interested in political democracy. Yet cer-
tain key features of Protestantism inadvertently laid the cultural
foundations for what, under favorable conditions, could become de-
mocracy. These features were: 1) the emphasis on individual conscience
guided by the scriptures (classically expressed by the image of Luther
refusing to recant before the Imperial Diet); 2) the doctrine of the uni-
versal priesthood of all believers (which, as Max Weber showed, led to
a secular concept of vocation); and 3) the importance ascribed to lit-
eracy and lay education, which naturally followed from the other two.
David Martin, the British sociologist of religion, has recently dis-
cussed a trilogy of types of state-church relations in Western Christianity.3
First, there was the “Counter-Reformation baroque,” characteristic of
Catholic southern Europe and Latin America, in which state and Church
collaborated in maintaining an overarching ideological “dome.” Under
this model, the coming of democracy required that the Church be dis-
lodged from this dome and replaced by the republic, most dramatically
in the French Revolution and its offshoots. Second, there was “Enlight-
ened absolutism,” characteristic of Lutheran Germany and Scandinavia,
with an increasingly relaxed established church permitting a widening
religious pluralism, followed by democratization (especially in
Scandinavia), and eventually an all-embracing welfare state. And third,
there was what Martin calls the “bourgeois Protestant axis”—Amsterdam-
London-Boston—which was pluralist and democratizing almost from
the beginning. Again, one should note the Weberian irony that this was
mostly an unintended outcome: Neither the Church of England nor the
various Calvinist polities were happy with this development, but social
and political realties forced them to accept it, at first reluctantly, but
then with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The basic sociological reality
underpinning this model is the church as a voluntary association—in
Dutch sectarianism, English Nonconformity, and, most dramatically, in
American “denominationalism.” And, of course, it is the principle of
Peter L. Berger 79

voluntary association that is the foundation of both civil society and

political democracy.
In considering the relationship of Protestantism to democracy, then,
one must ask what kind of Protestantism one is looking at. This will lead
to the conclusion that Protestantism has the most fertile relationship
with democracy where the church is most clearly a voluntary associa-
tion. To the extent that other religious traditions come to accept pluralism
and democracy, it is quite appropriate that this process be perceived as a
sort of “Protestantization”—not, of course, in terms of theology or piety,
but in terms of the social forms of religion. This is precisely how conser-
vative Catholics and Orthodox Christians have (pejoratively) perceived
the process; from their vantage point, they have been quite right.
In recent cases of democratization, both Catholicism and Protestantism
have made important contributions. Thus the role of the Catholic Church
in the collapse of Poland’s communist regime is mirrored by that of the
Lutheran Church in the final days of the German Democratic Republic.
Similarly, one can compare the role of the Catholic Church in the peaceful
overthrow of the Marcos regime in the Philippines with that of the En-
glish-speaking Protestant churches in the ending of apartheid in South
Africa. (One may add that, in the latter case, an important factor was the
shift by the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch Reformed Church from a proponent
to a critic of apartheid.) There continues to be a very significant difference
between the two traditions, however, in their relation to capitalism. While
only a few Protestant churches have come out as overt advocates of capi-
talism, the virtues and habits that Protestantism fosters continue to facilitate
the development of market economies, especially in their early stages.
Max Weber’s famous “Protestant ethic” is as relevant today in many
parts of the developing world as it once was in Europe and North America.
This is especially clear in the case of Pentecostalism, which has under-
gone an astonishingly massive explosion over the past half-century in
Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Asia. Thus in Latin America,
where there are now tens of millions of Pentecostals, one can observe a
cultural revolution that is changing the values and behavior of these new
Protestants—all in the direction of that “inner-worldly asceticism” which
Weber analyzed as helping to engender the “spirit of capitalism.” One
might say that Max Weber is alive and well, and living in Guatemala
(which happens to be the Latin American country with the highest per-
centage of Protestants). Once again, to the extent that democracy and
market economies are linked phenomena, this is an important matter to
consider when looking at the relation of Protestantism and democracy.
Elizabeth Prodromou’s essay draws our attention to the very differ-
ent history of the Orthodox tradition. In terms of Martin’s trilogy,
Orthodoxy fits, if at all, into the category of the baroque “dome” (one
may think here of Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia), but it was constructed
quite differently from the Roman Catholic one. In the East there was no
80 Journal of Democracy

struggle between papacy and empire, and of course there has been nei-
ther a Reformation nor a Counter-Reformation, let alone a Vatican II.
Yet the Byzantine “dome” has persisted as an ideal, resurrected after the
fall of Constantinople in the “caesaropapism” of Holy Russia, and con-
tinuing to haunt the Orthodox imagination in the diaspora as well as in
countries that were or are under Muslim rule (such as, for example, the
former Ottoman lands of Southeastern Europe).
Prodromou focuses on pluralism, as both an antecedent and con-
comitant of democracy. She argues that Orthodox theology provides
resources for an acceptance of pluralism through the theological con-
cept of “unity in diversity.” But so far there have been only sporadic
attempts to deploy these resources for a theological legitimation of
democracy. Orthodoxy still awaits its John Courtney Murray. Pluralism
and democracy have been realities imposed on Orthdoxy from the out-
side, to be either resisted or reluctantly accommodated.
The three cases discussed by Prodromou vividly illustrate this situa-
tion. Developments in Russia (undoubtedly the most important case)
indicate an incipient attempt, by both the Russian Orthodox Church and
the Putin government, to restore a somewhat refurbished “dome.”
Russia’s 1997 law on religion tried to balance a commitment to demo-
cratic liberties with a visceral animus against non-Orthodox groups
(especially evangelical Protestants) seeking adherents in “Orthodox”
territory. The debate in Greece over the listing of religious affiliation on
national identity cards, while seemingly a trivial issue, touches on a
much more basic question: Can one be Greek without being Orthodox?
And, most recently, the lawsuit of a group of Orthodox laypeople in
America against the Greek hierarchy presents what, from a traditionalist
point of view, must appear as an alarming signal of “Protestantization.”
The Orthodox situation is now very much in flux, in Russia and else-
where, and it is premature to predict its future development. It is safe to
say, though, that any attempt to restore a quasi-Byzantine unity of church,
state, and society will face very serious difficulties in the contemporary
world.
Does Christianity today relate positively to democracy? In the
cases of Catholicism and Protestantism, the answer is pretty defi-
nitely yes. In the case of Orthodoxy, it is maybe. On the whole, this
is a far from depressing picture.

NOTES

1. Galatians 3:28. See also Colossians 3:11.

2. Matthew 22:21. See also Mark 12:17 and Luke 20:25.

3. David Martin, “Integration und Fragmentierung: Religionsmuster in Europa,”

Transit 26 (Winter 2003–2004): 120–43.