democracy

Whether your guy won or lost on Tuesday (mine came in second) you have to marvel at this very exceptional nation called America. And, indeed, the whole world is doing just that. In an editorial, the Times of London described the election as a “Masterclass in Democracy”:

The world has been fascinated and profoundly moved by this election most of all because of what America is — a nation founded on universal aspirations, and thus a mirror to humanity. For two centuries that mirror has seemed irreparably cracked by the legacy of slavery and segregation, a pernicious and enduring racism that remains a factor in the blighted lives of so many of the poor blacks among whom Mr Obama launched his political career. He is not the last role model they will ever need, but he is the most powerful proof his country has produced that it is ready to judge them by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin.

The world watched as 121 million Americans peacefully went to the polls and democratically elected a new leader in Barack Obama. John McCain conceded to Obama in a speech that the Telegraph described as one of “striking grace and generosity.” He will succeed President George W. Bush who immediately and graciously promised a smooth transition.

In his acceptance speech in Chicago, Obama talked about the “values” we share:

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

Of course, as Christians, we are more concerned — or should be — about illumination by the Truth than we are about any competition of “values.” Even atheists have values, don’t they? In the coming weeks and months, we shall have hard evidence about how Obama plans to “heal the divides.”
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The Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute, based in Berkeley, Calif., has released what it is calling “the first national survey based study of the laity, ordinary church members, in the two largest Orthodox Churches in the United States: the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOA) and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).”

To a significant degree, PAOI said, the study reflects the profile of an entire Orthodox community in the United States.

“The Orthodox Church Today” study addressed four broad questions:

— What is the “image” of the Orthodox clergy in the eyes of the “people in the pews?”
— To what extent do the social and religious attitudes of the ordinary parishioners reflect those of their parish priests?
— What do church members think about patterns of Church life in their local parishes?
— What do laity think about various issues dealing with “Democracy and Pluralism in the chirch,” “Changes and Innovations in the Church,” and “religious “Particularism’ and Ecumenism?”

PAOI also compared Orthodox Church life to Roman Catholic and various Protestant Churches in the United States.

From the highlights summary:

1) The common stereotype is that the Orthodox Churches in the USA are “ethnic” Churches of certain immigrant communities. The study shows that this not the case anymore. Nine out of ten parishioners in both GOA and OCA are American-born. Further, today, more than one-quarter (29%) of the GOA and a majority of OCA (51%) members are converts to Orthodoxy – persons born and raised either Protestants or Roman Catholics.

2) Not all Orthodox are equally “Orthodox.” The study found that the gaps between the “left” and the “right” wings in American Orthodoxy are wide and that American Orthodox Christians are deeply divided among themselves in their personal “micro-theologies.” Answering the question “When you think about your theological position and approach to church life, which word best describes where you stand?” the relative majority (41%) of church members preferred to be in the safe “middle” and described their theological stance and approach to church life as “traditional.” At the same time, quite sizeable factions identified themselves as
being either “conservative” (28%) or “moderate-liberal” (31%).
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Russian emigre philosopher Georgy Fedotov (1888-1951) proposed two basic principles for all of the freedoms by which modern democracy lives. First, and most valuable, there are the freedoms of “conviction” — in speech, in print, and in organized social activity. These freedoms, Fedotov asserted, developed out of the freedom of faith. The other principle of freedom “defends the individual from the arbitrary will of the state (which is independent of questions of conscience and thought) — freedom from arbitrary arrest and punishment, from insult, plundering and coercion on the part of the organs of power … ”

In an ideal world, all of these freedoms would be present. But Fedotov also cautioned that “freedom is the late, refined flower of culture.”

For the flower to bloom, the roots need to be watered. A free society, from the ground up, requires a respect for the rule of law, a judiciary and police force that aren’t easily bought, a political culture that knows how to rid itself of corruption, and a vigorous free press to keep the pols and bureaucrats honest. I would also add a liberal measure of economic freedom and property rights that secure wealth from the “arbitrary” plunder of the government.

All of which gets us back to Russia. In a interview this week in the Financial Times, President-elect Dmitry Medvedev pledged to root out the “legal nihilism” that plagues his country. Excerpt:

[Medvedev’s] starting point is his legal background – he is, he says, “perhaps too much of a lawyer”. Meticulous and precise, he sees almost every issue through the prism of legal thinking. But behind the occasionally laboured language lies a deeper goal. Mr Medvedev says he wants to do what no Russian leader has done before: embed the rule of law in Russian society.

“It is a monumental task,” he agrees, switching momentarily to English. “Russia is a country where people don’t like to observe the law. It is, as they say, a country of legal nihilism.”

The pledge to overcome “legal nihilism” became a central part of Mr Medvedev’s low-key election campaign. It seems a restatement of Mr Putin’s own promise eight years ago to establish a “dictatorship of laws”, although critics say Mr Putin delivered too much of the former and not enough of the latter. Even today, Russians quote the 19th-century satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s aphorism that “the severity of Russian laws is alleviated by the lack of obligation to fulfill them”. The result is a society plagued by endemic corruption, arbitrary use of the law by the state against individuals or companies – and by companies against each other – and a judiciary that has never known genuine independence.

To paraphrase, all democracy is local. One of the strengths of the American democratic tradition is its intensely local nature. Most Americans’ experience with democracy happens when they vote for a judge, attend a school board meeting, or run afoul of the local traffic cop. If democracy doesn’t work at this level, it doesn’t work at all. As Medvedev pointed out to his interviewers: “When a citizen gives a bribe to the traffic police, it probably does not enter his head that he is committing a crime … People should think about this.”

But bribing a cop is a moral issue, just as much as it is, if not exactly a political crime, then a seemingly simple act of convenience. Morality cannot be legislated, but it can be taught and for this we need the Church and the family and those other neighborhood groups, charities, and small businesses, that act as civic training grounds and make up a healthy community. Edmund Burke called these “the little platoons” of society.

In a new article on faith and politics, Russian Patriarch Alexy II noted that “building a society or a government without God is doomed to failure. The history of the twentieth century testifies to this.” This is not a call for theocracy, caesaropapism, or imperial symphony. It is a spiritually pragmatic judgment that those who run a government — it is after all a human institution and not an abstraction — cannot function properly and serve the people without getting its bearings, its orientation, to the Truth. Does that sound terribly idealistic? If it seems so, just pay attention to what usually goes on in Washington. Or maybe even Detroit.

Patriarch Alexy raises the issue of faith as a force in political life. But it must not be used as a prop by politicians, nor should religious leaders be complicit in such a degradation:

The secularisation of political consciousness has had quite a negative impact on the relationship between politics and religion. The utilitarian approach to religion is dangerous for politicians. I would like to remind all those who would consider using or have already tried to use the ‘religious resource’ of a comment from the nineteenth-century Russian publicist and philosopher Yuri Samarin, who wrote: “Faith is not a stick, and in the hands of those who use it as a stick to defend themselves or frighten others, it crumbles into splinters.”

Once, after a sermon, representatives of various political trends went up to the priest to thank him for the support he bad shown. Pleasing anyone was the last thing he had had in mind! It is simply that the church has always talked of values close to every human being — love for one’s neighbour and one’s country, charity and justice, decency and responsibility.

Good luck to President-elect Medvedev. In light of the witness of Russian history he is, you might say, ambitious. Perhaps the words of James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, will give him heart:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.