My new book out in 2025 is published by Wipf and Stock in the Cascade After Christendom series

Democracy After Christendom

In 1863, in the midst of America's civil war, President Abraham Lincoln spoke at the opening of the Gettysburg cemetery. He said:

 "From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

In these words, President Lincoln defined the purpose for which the United States of America must survive: Democracy -  not just its continuation in America, but on the whole planet.

Now. over a third of the world’s population lives in recognized democracies. But democracy’s advance is faltering. Three-quarters of Americans think their democracy is under threat.

No one now shares Lincoln’s fear that the fall of democracy in the USA will mean its end in the world. But America’s hesitation brings comfort to those, in such places as Russia, China, and Iran, who expect their authoritarian systems to outlast democracy.

My book proposes that, in advancing the case for a democratic revival, we face three problems. We do not know where democracy started. Related to that, we do not know what it is. Consequently, we do not know where it is going.

Why "Democracy after Christendom"?

The first modern self-declared "democracy "was established in 1647, in these words:

"The form of government established…is Democratical, that is to say, a government held by the free and voluntary consent of all, or the greater part of the free inhabitants"

Code of laws of Providence Plantations, New England, 1647

This so-called "democracy" was based on a new principle. Up to that time, "democracy" meant a majority ruling over a minority.

Providence's democracy "held by consent" aimed instead to give “as good and hopeful assurance as we are able” of “each man’s peaceable and quiet enjoyment of his lawful right and Libertie” despite different “consciences.”

Individuals were free to govern their own lives, as far as possible, according to “conscience.”

Here, in rudimentary form, was the first liberal  democracy.  Democracy was a new legitimizing principle of state power. It replaced  Christendom, which held that the state was legitimized by enforcing God's law.

The founders of Providence Plantations (in the colony later called Rhode Island) were refugees from the Massachusetts theocracy, which enforced its own version of Christianity. Rhode Islanders saw that to be truly free to worship God, they needed a form of state that granted complete freedom to all.  It was an idea crafted by Roger Williams, who wrote:

"It is the will and command of God that, since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish or anti-Christian consciences and worships, be granted, to all men in all nations and countries."

Williams' words were published in England in 1644. in the midst of the war between Parliament and Throne. His ideas were published by "Anabaptists" and developed into the idea of the liberal state that emerged after the Glorious Revolution of 1689. These ideas circulated into American revolutionary thought. Williams himself was forgotten in America, then discovered in the nineteenth century as a national hero. He then returned to obscurity after 1950, dismissed as an unenlightened  Puritan. The notion of democracy "held by consent" has been engulfed by "cultural war". This has shaped American politics since the 1980s.

My book analyzes this history. I explain the modern origins of "democracy" and the coming of cultural war.

Democracy must now be reinvented for our times. To do this, we need first to understand what "politics" means and what is the "state".  What has gone wrong with democracy in its two major homelands of the USA and the United Kingdom? What can we learn from successes in Switzerland and Australia?  What are the ideas for reforming democracy, and what obstacles do we face it we wish to restore its vitality?

Next: more about democracy's modern origins and what it means.