Christianity and Democracy

Most Americans today assume that we live in a democracy. Our political leaders and most commentators in the elite media usually refer to American civil government as a democracy, but A democracy is not the system of government that the founders intended to give us. Democracy is not the form of government we were given at either the state or federal level.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said this about democracy in his famous Federalist #10:

Hence it is, that Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; an have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

The federal government is supposed to be a confederated republic of independent states, and the states too are supposed to have republican forms of government and not a democratic style of government. Madison and the founders were living at a time when the Christian view of the fall (i.e. Adam's) was still believed, and they understood that human nature was, at its core, corrupted by sin. In their view a pure democracy would imply that people, were by nature, basically good.

A belief in the basic goodness of man is an alien idea to the Bible, which teaches that we all inherit original sin, and we compound this sinful nature by our own sinful thoughts, words and deeds. Because of this we are all in need of a saviour and Christ alone is the means of forgiveness for our sin and reconciliation with God the Father.

The Americans back then believed that everyone with political power needed to have that power checked. The understood that the people to needed to have their power checked. "Vox populi vox dei" can never exist where the Christian worldview prevails.

A biblical view of human depravity, from a Calvinistic vantage point, was held by early Americans. This Calvinistic/Christian understanding made a checks and balance system a politically necessity. The founders did see that a limited aspect of the democratic process was useful in a republic, because it gives the people a check on their leaders.

Deo Vindice,
Kenith