Democracy Matters

by Cornel West

  Most American Christians have little knowledge of many of the most powerful voices in the rich prophetic tradition in American Christianity. They are unfamiliar with the theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, who in his Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) and numerous other influential books was the primary voice of the Social Gospel movement at the turn of the last century. As the industrial engines of the American empire ramped up, leading to the excesses of the Gilded Age, this theological movement perceived that industrial capitalism and its attendant urbanization brought with them inherent social injustices. Its adherents spoke out against the abuse of workers by managements that were not sufficiently constrained by either morality or government regulation. As Rauschenbusch eloquently wrote:

  Individual sympathy and understanding has been our chief reliance in the past for overcoming the differences between the social classes. The feelings and principles implanted by Christianity have been a powerful aid in that direction. But if this sympathy diminishes by the widening of the social chasm, what hope have we?

  With the flourishing of American industrialism, our society was becoming corrupted by capitalist greed, Rauschenbusch warned, and Christians had a duty to combat the consequent injustices.

  Most American Christians have forgotten or have never learned about the pioneering work of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement, which she founded in 1933 during the Great Depression to bring relief to the homeless and the poor. Day set up a House of Hospitality in the slums of New York City and founded the newspaper Catholic Worker because she believed that

  by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor…we can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.

  Some of these prophetic Christians have been branded radicals and faced criminal prosecution. During the national trauma of the Vietnam War, the Jesuit priests and brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan led antiwar activities, with Daniel founding the group Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam. The brothers organized sit-ins and teach-ins against the war and led many protests, notoriously breaking into Selective Service offices twice to remove draft records, the second time dowsing them with napalm and lighting them on fire. “The burning of paper, instead of children,” Daniel wrote in explanation of their action, “when will you say no to this war?” Both brothers served time in prison for those break-ins but went on to engage in civil disobedience protests against later U.S. military interventions and the nuclear arms race.

  After a lifetime of eloquent Christian activism, the Reverend William Sloan Coffin should be better known to Americans today. Chaplain of Yale University during the Vietnam War, he spoke out strongly and early against the injustice of that incursion and went on to become president of SANE/FREEZE, the largest peace and justice organization in the United States, and minister of Riverside Church in Manhattan. The author of many powerful books, including The Courage to Love and A Passion for the Possible, he once said in an interview:

  I wonder if we Americans don’t also have something that we should contribute, as it were, to the burial grounds of the world, something that would make the world a safer place. I think there is something in us. It is an attitude more than an idea. It lives less in the American mind than under the American skin. That is the notion that we are not only the most powerful nation in the world, which we certainly are, but that we are also the most virtuous. I think this pride is our bane and I think it is so deep-seated that it is going to take the sword of Christ’s truth to do the surgical operation.

  He also presciently said, “No nation, ours or any other, is well served by illusions of righteousness. All nations make decisions based on self-interest and then defend them in the name of morality.”

  Although Martin Luther King Jr. is well known, he is often viewed as an isolated icon on a moral pedestal rather than as one grand wave in an ocean of black prophetic Christians who constitute the long tradition that gave birth to him. There is David Walker, the free-born antislavery protester, who in 1829 published his famous Appeal, a blistering call for justice in which, as a devout Christian, he writes:

  I call upon the professing Christians, I call upon the philanthropist, I call upon the very tyrant himself, to show me a page of history, either sacred or profane, on which a verse can be found, which maintains, that the Egyptians heaped the insupportable insult upon the children of Israel, by telling them that they were not of the human family. Can the whites deny this charge? Have they not, after having reduced us to the deplorable condition of slaves under the feet, held us up as descending originally from the tribes of Monkeys or Orang-Outangs? O! my God! I appeal to every man of feeling—is not this insupportable? Is it not heaping the most gross insult upon our miseries, because they have got us under their feet and we cannot help ourselves? Oh! Pity us we pray thee, Lord Jesus, Master.

  There is the deeply religious Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the anti-lynching activist who wrote shockingly of the gruesome truths of that peculiarly American form of terrorism in her pamphlet A Red Record, and who went on to found the women’s club movement, the first civic activist organization for African American women. More Americans should remember Benjamin E. Mays. Ordained into the Baptist ministry, he served as the dean of the School of Religion at Howard University and held the presidency of Morehouse College for twenty-five years, where he inspired Martin Luther King Jr. Mays helped launch the civil rights movement by participating in sit-ins in restaurants in Atlanta and was a leader in the fight against segregated education. There is the towering theologian Howard Thurman, also ordained into the Baptist ministry, dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University and pastor of the first major U.S. interracial congregation in San Francisco, who traveled to India and met with Mahatma Gandhi and whose book Jesus and the Disinherited provided some of the philosophical foundation for the nonviolent civil rights movement.

  The righteous fervor of this black prophetic Christian tradition is rich with ironies. When African slaves creatively appropriated the Christian movement under circumstances in which it was illegal to read, write, or worship freely, the schizophrenia of American Christianity was intensified. Some prophetic white Christians became founders of the abolitionist movement in partnership with ex-slaves, while other white Christians resorted to a Constantinian justification of the perpetuation of slavery. One’s stand on slavery became a crucial litmus test to measure prophetic and Constantinian Christianity in America. The sad fact is that on this most glaring hypocrisy within American Christianity and democracy, most white Christians—and their beloved churches—were colossal failures based on prophetic criteria.

  The vast majority of white American Christians supported the evil of slavery—and they did so often in the name of Jesus. When Abraham Lincoln declared in his profound Second Inaugural Address that both sides in the Civil War prayed to the same God—“Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained…. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other”—he captured the horrible irony of this religious schizophrenia for the nation.

  Black prophetic Christians—from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King Jr.—have eloquently reminded us of the radical fissure between prophetic and Constantinian Christianity, and King’s stirring Christian conviction and prophetic rhetoric fueled the democratizing movement that at last confronted the insidious intransigence of the color line. In fact, much of prophetic Christianity in America stems from the prophetic black church tradition. The Socratic questioning of the dogma of white supremacy, the prophetic witness of love and justice, and the hard-earned hope that sustains long-term commitment to the freedom struggle are the rich legacy of the prophetic black church. Yet Constantinian Christianity is so forceful that it is even making inroads into this fervent black prophetic Christianity. The sad truth
is that the black church is losing its prophetic fervor in the age of the American empire. The power of the Constantinian Christian coalition must not be underestimated.

  The rewards and respectability of the American empire that tempt Christians of all colors cannot be overlooked. The free-market fundamentalism that makes an idol of money and a fetish of wealth seduces too many Christians. And when the major example of prophetic Christianity—the black church tradition—succumbs to this temptation and seduction, the very future of American democracy is in peril. The crisis of Christian identity in America is central to democracy matters.

  The separation of church and state is a pillar for any genuine democratic regime. All non-Christian citizens must have the same rights and liberties under the law as Christian citizens. But religion will always play a fundamental role in the shaping of the culture and politics in a democracy. All citizens must be free to speak out of their respective traditions with a sense of tolerance—and even respect—for other traditions. And in a society where Christians are the vast majority, we Christians must never promote a tyranny of this majority over an outnumbered minority in the name of Jesus. Ironically, Jesus was persecuted by a tyrannical majority (Roman imperial rulers in alliance with subjugated Jewish elites) as a prophetic threat to the status quo. Are not our nihilistic imperial rulers and their Constantinian Christian followers leading us on a similar path—the suffocating of prophetic voices and viewpoints that challenge their status quo?

  The battle against Constantinianism cannot be won without a reempowerment of the prophetic Christian movement, because the political might and rhetorical fervor of the Constantinians are too threatening; a purely secular fight won’t be won. As my Princeton colleague Jeffrey Stout has argued in his magisterial book Democracy and Tradition (2003), in order to make the world safe for King’s legacy and reinvigorate the democratic tradition, we must question not only the dogmatic assumptions of the Constantinians but also those of many secular liberals who would banish religious discourse entirely from the public square and admonish disillusioned prophetic Christians not to allow their voices and viewpoints to spill over into the public square. The liberalism of influential philosopher John Rawls and the secularism of philosopher Richard Rorty—the major influences prevailing today in our courts and law schools—are so fearful of Christian tainting that they call for only secular public discourse on democracy matters. This radical secularism puts up a wall to prevent religious language in the public square, to police religious-based arguments and permit only secular ones. They see religious strife leading to social chaos and authoritarianism.

  For John Rawls, religious language in public discourse is divisive and dangerous. It deploys claims of religious faith that can never be settled by appeals to reason. It fuels disagreements that can never be overcome by rational persuasion. So he calls for a public dialogue on fundamental issues that limits our appeals to constitutional and civic ideals that cut across religious and secular Americans and unite us in our loyalty to American democratic practices. There is great wisdom in his proposal but it fails to acknowledge how our loyalty to constitutional and civic ideals may have religious motivations. For prophetic Christians like Martin Luther King Jr., his appeal to democratic ideals was grounded in his Christian convictions. Should he—or we—remain silent about these convictions when we argue for our political views? Does not personal integrity require that we put our cards on the table when we argue for a more free and democratic America? In this way, Rawls’s fear of religion—given its ugly past in dividing citizens—asks the impossible of us. Yet his concern is a crucial warning.

  For Richard Rorty religious appeals are a conversation stopper. They trump critical dialogue. They foreclose political debate. He wants to do away with any appeal to God in public life, especially since most appeals to God fuel the religious Right. He is a full-fledged secularist who sees little or no common good or public interest in the role of religion in civic discourse. Like Rawls, he supports the rights and liberties of religious citizens, but he wants to limit their public language to secular terms like democracy, equality, and liberty. His secular vision is motivated by a deep fear of the dogmatism and authoritarianism of the religious Right. There is much to learn from his view and many of his fears are warranted. But his secular policing of public life is too rigid and his secular faith is too pure. Ought we not to be concerned with the forms of dogmatism and authoritarianism in secular garb that trump dialogue and foreclose debate? Democratic practices—dialogue and debate in public discourse—are always messy and impure. And secular policing can be as arrogant and coercive as religious policing.

  Prominent religious thinkers have also made impassioned arguments for the distancing of religion from American public discourse. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas’s prophetic ecclesiasticism and John Milbank’s radical orthodoxy—the major influences in seminaries and divinity schools—are so fearful of the tainting of the American empire that they call for a religious flight from the public square. For Hauerwas, Christians should be “resident aliens” in a corrupt American empire whose secular public discourse is but a thin cover for its robust nihilism. His aim is to preserve the integrity of the prophetic church by exposing the idolatry of Constantinian Christianity and bearing witness to the gospel of love and peace. His deep commitment to a prophetic church of compassion and pacifism in a world of cruelty and violence leads him to reject the secular policing of Rawls and Rorty and to highlight the captivity of Constantinian Christians to imperial America. But he finds solace only in a prophetic ecclesiastical refuge that prefigures the coming kingdom of God. His prophetic sensibilities resonate with me and I agree with his critique of Constantinian Christianity and imperial America. Yet he unduly downplays the prophetic Christian commitment to justice and our role as citizens to make America more free and democratic. For him, the pursuit of social justice is a bad idea for Christians because it lures them toward the idols of secular discourse and robs them of their distinctive Christian identity. My defense of King’s legacy requires that we accent justice as a Christian ideal and become even more active as citizens to change America without succumbing to secular idols or imperial fetishes. To be a prophetic Christian is not to be against the world in the name of church purity; it is to be in the world but not of the world’s nihilism, in the name of a loving Christ who proclaims the this-worldly justice of a kingdom to come.

  Hauerwas’s radical imperative of world-denial motivates Milbank’s popular Christian orthodoxy that pits the culprits of commodification and secularism against Christian socialism. His sophisticated wholesale attack on secular liberalism and modern capitalism is a fresh reminder of just how marginal prophetic Christianity has become in the age of the American empire. But, like Hauerwas, he fails to appreciate the moral progress, political breakthroughs, and spiritual freedoms forged by the heroic efforts of modern citizens of religious and secular traditions. It is just as dangerous to overlook the gains of modernity procured by prophetic religious and progressive secular citizens as it is to overlook the blindness of Constantinian Christians and imperial secularists. And these gains cannot be preserved and deepened by reverting to ecclesiastical refuges or sectarian orthodoxies. Instead they require candor about our religious integrity and democratic identity that leads us to critique and resist Constantinian Christianity and imperial America.

  All four towering figures—Rawls, Rorty, Hauerwas, and Milbank—have much to teach us and are forces for good in many ways. Yet they preclude a robust democratic Christian identity that builds on the legacy of prophetic Christian-led social movements. Jeffrey Stout—himself the most religiously musical, theologically learned, and philosophically subtle of all secular writers in America today—has, by contrast, argued that American democrats must join forces with the legacy of Christian protest exemplified by Martin Luther King Jr. He knows that the future of the American democratic experiment may depend on revitalizing this legacy. The legacies of prophetic Christianity put a premium
on the kind of human being one chooses to be rather than the amount of commodities one possesses. They thereby constitute a wholesale onslaught against nihilism—in all of its forms—and strike a blow for decency and integrity. They marshal religious energies for democratic aims, yet are suspicious of all forms of idolatry, including democracy itself as an idol. They preserve their Christian identity and its democratic commitments, without coercing others and conflating church and state spheres.

  There can be a new democratic Christian identity in America only if imperial realities are acknowledged and prophetic legacies are revitalized. And despite the enormous resources of imperial elites to fan and fuel Constantinian Christianity, the underfunded and unpopular efforts of democrats and prophetic Christians must become more visible and vocal. The organizations of prophetic Christianity, such as the World Council of Churches, the civic action group Sojourners, and the black prophetic churches, must fight their way back into prominence in our public discourse. They must recognize that they have been under a kind of siege by the Constantinians and have not lost their dominance by accident.

  Ironically, the powerful political presence of imperial Christians today is inspired by the success of the democratic Christian-led movement of Martin Luther King Jr. The worldly engagement of King’s civil rights movement encouraged Constantinian Christians to become more organized and to partner with the power elites of the American empire. The politicization of Christian fundamentalism was a direct response to King’s prophetic Christian legacy. It began as a white backlash against King’s heritage in American public life, and it has always had a racist undercurrent—as with Bob Jones University, which until recently barred interracial dating.