religion and democracy: can islam do it?

Submitted by Peter J. Herz (Taiwan), Jul 22, 2003 at 23:38

The interesting interchange between Daniel Pipes and Muqtedar Khan on Islam and Democracy could have been enhanced by some discussion of theological "first principles". While Pipes is correct to point out that far larger part of the Islamic world has yet to come to terms with "modernity" (elusive thing that it is), Muqtedar Khan is correct to suggest that a politics of the presence of the Abrahamic God (as opposed to a politics of His absence) need not be autocratic. Indeed, the experience of the Western world, especially its English-speaking portion, suggests that the divine presence in politics can inhibit the exercise of power and has actually done so.

While the idea that the authoritarian throne and altar alliance of the Old Regime represents "the" Christian political ideal fits both the secular liberal and radical educational program very nicely, the fact is that republicanism, constitutionalism, and popular consent have very deep roots in Abrahamic religion, as political scientists such as Donald Lutz, Daniel Elazar, Barry Shain, and Antony Black have pointed out. Further, the longstanding role of the church, or churches, as a locus of power separate from that of the state in the Christian West may have had a lot to do with getting Westerners accustomed to divided and dispersed power.

Although counterintuitive to most moderns and post-moderns, the biblicism and belief in original sin that pervaded Reformed Protestantism (Calvinism) are important sources for "modern" politics, as is the medieval conciliar ideal. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the monarchomachs (A Greek neologism coined by William Barclay, meaning "monarch strikers") in both Catholicism and Protestant churches strongly opposed the absolutist claims of the rising dynasties of the time, arguing that even the king is subject to law; government is a compact between God, people, and ruler; and that the people have a voice in choosing who is to be over them. While it is true that the monarchomach ideal promulgated by the school of Salamanca ultimately yielded in Counter-Reformation lands to the royalist ideal, the monarchomach view became virtually orthodoxy wherever the Calvinists were allowed a large influence.

Jean Calvin, that evil demon of modern American public school textbooks, held that the best government combined aristocracy and democracy, since kings could not always be trusted to do what is right for the common good. While his chapters on the civil magistracy in Book IV of his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559) admittedly shows him speaking out of both sides of his mouth on the question of resistance and the powers of monarchs, part of the reason was that his Reformed coreligionists in France, Scotland, and the Netherlands were engaged in a struggle with their rulers. George Buchanan and John Knox in Scotland were powerful proponents of the monarchomach ideal, as were Philip Marnix van St. Aldegonde in the Netherlands, and Theodore Beza and Philippe DuPless-Mornay in France.

The monarchomachs made great use of such texts as Deuteronomy 17 (which subjects the Israelite monarch to Torah), First Samuel 8 (which condemns the Israelites' desire for a king as rejection of God's kingship), and Acts 5:29 ("We must obey God rather than men"). From these and others, the Calvinist monarchomachs derived a doctrine of power as fiduciary and ministerial rather than proprietary and magisterial. To the royalists' argument that kingship devolved from Adam's dominion over creation, the monarchomachs noted that Nimrod was the first to be called a king, and this at a time when Genesis suggests that Noah, or at least Shem, might still have been alive; and that the Psalms speak of the creation as given to the children of men.

Using biblical data and their understanding of power as ministerial, the Reformed churches also replaced the historic episcopacy of the medieval churches with graded councils of ministers and elders elected by the congregations themselves. The Scottish church's struggle to establish this Presbyterian system of church government left such a bad taste in the mouth of James VI and I (who deeply envied his French counsin's prerogatives) that when confronted with the English Puritans in 1604, he declared, "A Scotch Presbytery as well agreeth with monarchy as God with the devil", and promised the Puritans that "I will harry you out of the land" (do they still teach you this up at Harvard?). It is noteworthy that even if most modern Evangelicals have largely jettisoned the predestinarianism and covenantalism of their 16th and 17th century forebears, they have retained presbyterial or congregational systems of ecclesiastical government.

While modern Americans see the Puritans and Calvinists as the epitome of repression, Samuel Rutherford in his Lex Rex (1644) declares that omnipotency in one who can sin is an accursed power. In their exposition of the Fifth Commandment ("Honor thy Father and Mother", from which Christian theologians historically derived submission to lawful authority) the Purian divines who penned the Westminster Larger Cathechism (1645-47) spilled more ink exposing and condemning the sins of superiors than they did on the sins of inferiors.

While the "softening" of the original Reformed doctrine of original sin by the 17th century Arminians is often seen by moderns as a "liberalizing" trend in Protestant Christianity, the Caroline bishops who adopted it were anything but "liberal" in their treatment of opponents and their view of dissent against royal prerogative; while the original Dutch Arminian Remonstrants advocated the subordination of the churches to the civil magistrate. Could Madison's comments in The Federalist that men are not angels possibly be an echo of Dr. Witherspoon from the College of New Jersey, who, back in his native Scotland, had been a champion of the evangelical party in the Kirk, and a merciless satirist of its moderate party?

Here, I beg Dr. Khan to correct me if I misrepresent his religion. Muslim missionaries tell us that their religion denies original sin. If this is so, might this not be a reason why so many Muslims are willing to trust unlimited power to few human hands?

The example of Ummayad Spain raises other questions. The Ummayads ruled a population divided between Muslims, Christians, and Jews; the Muslim component of which may have been no more than a largish ruling minority (I beg enlightenment from scholars of the era re the precise populations figures, if they exist). But, although perhaps better rulers than some of the Christian rulers of northern Spain, did the average subject of the Ummayads have a vote? Did the testimony of a Jew or Christian hold the same weight as that of a Muslim in a court of law? Could a dhimmi ride a horse or camel when a Muslim was on foot or donkey back? If it did not, was there anything in the Qu'ran or Islamic doctrine that might prick a Muslim conscience into protesting such a situation? Nor did the pluralism of the Ummayads' population protect tolerant and humane rule. The Ummayads gave way to the harsher Almohads, and it was under their rule that the family of Moses Maimonides felt obliged to outwardly conform to Islam, prior to their emigration to Egypt.

But I would finally observe that triumphalist secularist modernity doesn't have anything to crow about. In the 20th century alone, ideologues who took their stand on reason and science killed, imprisoned, and exiled more dissidents than suffered for the wrong kind of Christianity or none at all in the 1500 years between Constantine the Great and Ruggles v. New York (1811). Granted, these ideologues were communists and radical nationalists, but they did often try to pass themselves off as "liberals in a hurry".

My best wishes and "fundamentalist" Christian prayers for Drs. Pipes and Khan if they're trying to stave off a civilizational conflict.

Sincerely,

Peter J. Herz, Ph.D., M.Div.
Assistant Professor of English
National Taichung Institute of Technology
Taichung, Taiwan

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