Opinion

QUAY: It’s True. Christianity Is At War With Our Democracy™

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Grayson Quay News & Opinion Editor
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“The thing that keeps me up at night is that we lose democracy,” one interviewee says in the recently released trailer for “God and Country,” a forthcoming documentary that aims to expose the evils of Christian nationalism.

The important thing to realize here is that she’s not actually concerned about democracy. She’s concerned about Our Democracy™. 

Democracy is simply a way of making decisions. Our Democracy™ is a rival religion. The central tenet of its creed is the sanctity of individual autonomy, and it preaches an eternal jihad against any institution, ideology, person or God that might inhibit someone’s ability to live her own “truth.” 

Sometimes, as with the recent abortion referendums, actual democracy serves the purposes of Our Democracy™. Other times, like when California voted to ban gay marriage and stop supporting illegal immigrants, it opposes those purposes and must be disregarded.

The Christian commentators featured in “God and Country” accuse the deplorables of making an idol of power. That is, of course, an ever-present temptation, and the claim might be taken fruitfully as a rebuke regardless of the ulterior motives behind it. But these high-minded critics never bother to consider that they might have made Our Democracy™ into their own golden calf. (RELATED: Donald Trump’s MASSIVE Problem With Southern Baptist Leaders Isn’t Going Away)

They might ask themselves the following question: “How much evil would have to result from the legal and orderly workings of America’s political system before I would stop defending it?”

Christianity is not incompatible with democracy. Plenty of Christian thinkers have defended some form of democratic governance as the least bad option available. But democracy is not sacred either.

According to Scripture, government is ordained by God and has only one real job: maintaining order by punishing evildoers. It is empowered by God to do so. The Roman Empire, under which Christianity began, didn’t exactly nail it, persecuting innocent Christians while condoning rape and infanticide. And yet, both Peter and Paul taught their followers that they owed Rome their allegiance. (RELATED: Men Who Think About The Roman Empire Are Basically Nazis, Journalist Claims)

Even today, hundreds of millions of Christians live under non-democratic regimes and are no less Christian for it. A believer might equally be citizen or subject, dictator or prime minister, legislative aide to a senator or attaché to some junta colonel. In every case, his task is the same: “seek the welfare of the city.”

Christians are not encouraged to overthrow their governments, but neither are they religiously obligated to work toward the establishment or preservation of democracy, much less Our Democracy™. 

In fact, our earliest examples suggest that, if anything, Christians ought to be laboring to create (or at least envisioning as an ideal) something that might well be described as Christian nationalism. Eastern Orthodox priest and author Fr. Stephen De Young argues that “St. Paul saw the endgame of his mission to the Gentiles as the conversion of the emperor” and the Christianization of society, including in the political sphere. When, 250 years later, the emperor Constantine replaced public pagan sacrifices with the Eucharist and began building churches at public expense, Paul’s efforts were brought to fruition.

“[W]hen all are converted, there must needs be a Christian State,” a bishop observes in Dorothy Sayers’ 1951 play about Constantine.

“True,” the emperor quips in response. “In that happy day, there will be no poor pagan to take the burden and blame of office.” 

Two questions arise: “Should Christians participate in politics?” and “Should they do so as Christians?” The answer to both is obviously yes. 

So, what would a Christian political order look like? A quick sketch will have to suffice.

A thoroughly Christian state would offer some form of preferential treatment for Christianity in the public square. It would not mean forced conversions, which the Church has never condoned, nor would it necessarily mean outlawing other faiths or persecuting their adherents. (Obviously the wide variety of sects within Christianity itself is a major obstacle to establishing such a regime).

It would, however, mean the legal enforcement of certain aspects of “Christian morality.” The total self-determination at the heart of Our Democracy™ is in direct opposition to Christianity, which teaches that human beings were created with a particular nature. Divine commands are not arbitrary — they express a natural law rooted in the kind of beings we are and accessible by reason.

Not all sins would be illegal. Enforcing a ban on masturbation, for example, would mean creating a totalitarian surveillance apparatus that would do far more harm than good. But a Christian state would absolutely recognize the type of union which tends to produce children as the only true marriage and forbid transhumanist horrors like gestational surrogacy.

The state would be obligated to protect the poor from the predations of the rich, but beyond that it’s hard to be specific. Trade deals, taxes, the minimum wage and other policy questions would be decided prudentially based on which course of action best serves the common good. (RELATED: CASS: The Birth Of A Multi-Ethnic, Working-Class Conservatism)

Would people still be allowed to vote? Maybe. There’s nothing in Christian tradition that requires or even favors democracy. The regime might conclude that letting people cast ballots for representatives or to decide particular questions is the best way to secure their wellbeing. But the essentials would not be up for a vote.

In a way, this form of government is not so different from Our Democracy™. In each case, the core beliefs of the state religion — be it Christianity or late-stage liberalism — take precedence over the will of the electorate. Every ideology, whether it calls itself a religion or not, makes claims about the nature of humanity and morality, and such claims are unavoidably religious. 

Neutrality is a myth. If you watch closely, the trailer itself reveals that.

“Christianity at its best is committed to love and truth and justice. If we do this right, what a country we will be,” says black Protestant minister and seminary professor William Barber as archive footage of civil rights marches plays in the background.

Barber is, by any definition, a Christian nationalist. He runs something called the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy. He delivered a speech at the 2016 Democratic Convention. He held a gun control rally in Nashville after the recent mass shooting. He wears vestments while doing all of this. 

Barber is typical of the black church in that he believes strongly in using political power to impose his vision of Christian morality (which represents a syncretic fusion of Christianity’s concern for the downtrodden with Our Democracy™’s relativism). Democratic New York Mayor Eric Adams openly admits that he doesn’t believe in separation of church and state. The highest ranking preacher-politician in America is Democratic Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who called voting “a kind of prayer.” (RELATED: Raphael Warnock Insists ‘Voter Suppression’ Is Still Going On Despite Record Turnout — And His Own Victory)

The message of the film (or at least its trailer) turns out to be not that Christian nationalism is bad, but that it’s bad when you do it and good when we do it. If Christian nationalism means abortion restrictions and parental rights, then it’s literal nazism and must be crushed by any means necessary. But if it means gun confiscation, open borders and handouts to favored minorities, then it’s just good wholesome piety.

In his tweet accompanying the trailer, producer Rob Reiner (who is an atheist) declares that “Christian Nationalism is not only a danger to our Country, it’s a danger to Christianity itself.” In other words, the true Christianity of the Barber-Warnock variety must be saved from the pseudo-Christianity of the Trump supporters. You are a real Christian if you obey the regime and a fake Christian if you defy it. 

It’s time for Christians to stop believing this lie.

Grayson Quay is an editor at the Daily Caller.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.