Monarchy, Anyone? - Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in the Fallen World - book review

Commonweal, Oct 26, 2001 by Patrick J. Deneen

Christian Faith and Modern Democracy
God and Politics in the Fallen World
Robert P. Kraynak
University of Notre Dame Press,
$24.95, 307 pp.

Alexis de Tocqueville begins Democracy in America with what seem to be contradictory observations. Tocqueville considers the modern emergence of democracy to be "a providential fact," and argues that the attempt to halt it would require one "to struggle against God himself." On the other hand, Tocqueville regards this heaven-sent political development with "a sort of religious terror" that is "produced by the sight of this irresistible revolution...that one sees still advancing today amid the ruins it has made." Democracy is inevitable and terrible, something to be embraced and feared.

Robert Kraynak, a professor of political philosophy at Colgate University, shares Tocqueville's religiously inspired terror of democracy, but breaks with Tocqueville over democracy's inevitability. In his important and controversial new book, Kraynak argues that democracy is the result of several historical and political developments that were not in themselves the inevitable result of either Providence or the secular course of history.

Like Tocqueville, Kraynak views democracy with deep misgivings. He is skeptical about liberal democracy's tendency to encourage the belief in a human-centered universe, its inculcation of materialism, rights-based individualism, growth-oriented capitalism, dissolute mass culture, and, above all, Kantian-inspired claims to human autonomy that leave questions of ultimate human good to the untutored judgment of the individual. The modern esteem for democracy, as well as the modern disdain for aristocracy and monarchy, should be reconsidered, he says.

Writing explicitly as a Catholic thinker, Kraynak directs his critique at two audiences, namely "secularists" and "committed [Christian] believers." To the former he contends that "modern liberal democracy needs the Christian religion to support its institutions and to provide a grounding for its deepest moral claims." He seeks to persuade the latter that "Christianity is not necessarily a liberal or democratic religion, nor does it make support of a political order its highest priority." Committed secular thinkers will summarily and too quickly dismiss Kraynak's deeply antiliberal arguments. Christians, particularly conservative believers, will find Kraynak's arguments more challenging and potentially persuasive, particularly his contention that modern Christianity has too readily accepted the idea that democratic equality is a reflection of Christian doctrine. Although it has been incorporated in official Catholic teaching in no less than the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, the modern interpretation concerning democracy's Christian roots departs radically from the biblical and canonical tradition. According to Kraynak, that tradition allows for, even appears to demand, ranked political orders that reflect hierarchies in the divine order.

In that context, Kraynak calls for a revival of the Augustinian doctrine of the Two Cities. Augustine understood the two realms--the City of God and the City of Man--to be radically divided. The City of Man is a world of profound imperfection, peopled by fallen, sinful beings who can only hope for ultimate citizenship in the City of God through an earthly life of piety. We exist in the City of Man as pilgrims whose sight should remain fixed on the ultimate destination, and it behooves us not to be distracted by thoughts of perfecting or even too ambitiously seeking improvement of the fallen human city. We prudentially accept political arrangements that secure peace without overly emphasizing temporal justice, as perfect justice is possible only in heaven. Governments are judged by the standards of the divine, not the earthly; hence, while no polity is good in itself, those regimes that ensure domestic tranquillity--point us toward a moral life, limit our ambitions and craven desires, and most important, do not interfere in our ultimate aim of participating in the world to come--are praiseworthy from a Christian standpoint. Inasmuch as modern democracy emphasizes temporal satisfaction and social justice, in Kraynak's view it fails the crucial Augustinian test of legitimacy.

Kraynak's neo-Augustinianism has many virtues. It encourages a conception of government that attends to the moral character of its citizens while strenuously opposing modern totalitarianisms that attempt to absorb civil society or theocratic regimes that try to absorb the state. Kraynak continually points out the morally corrosive tendencies of modern liberal democracy, suggesting at each turn the need to correct purely material conceptions of human flourishing. Unlike many conservatives, he gives equal time to a critique of capitalism--its ravages on human communities, its promotion of a thoroughgoing materialism, and its pervasive inculcation of relativism.

Kraynak is correct to remind Christians that they should grant only provisional allegiance to any regime. However, his attempt to revive a "mixed" model of Christian constitutionalism that includes elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and popular sovereignty is unacceptable by non-Christian standards, and finally dubious according to the same Christian standard that he invokes. In the first and most obvious instance, Kraynak at no point discusses whether a Christian standard can be shared in a religiously heterogeneous society. At least Augustine and Aquinas discussed the manner by which Christian princes should deal with non-Christians (to oversimplify, grudging tolerance and sometimes forced conversion) and apostates (death). Kraynak altogether avoids this essential topic.