The Pilgrim Underground: Democracy as a Worldview

24 November 2022

Democracy as a Worldview

https://breakpoint.org/no-mr-president-democracy-isnt-a-worldview-politics-cant-answer-our-deepest-questions/

I am fully aware that many consider John Stonestreet to be something of a lightweight and yet, when I find his commentaries appearing on Calvinistic websites like The Aquila Report, it indicates a growing appreciation for him. As such, I feel compelled to respond, since no one else seems willing to do so. There is much to be learned from his Evangelical-Kuyperian (or Colsonite) errors and the convoluted thinking his commentaries represent.

I'm not sure what that says about the likes of The Aquila Report.

In the second paragraph, Stonestreet states:

Without abandoning the political sphere altogether or downplaying its importance, Christians must push back against the all-consuming nature of politics.

This is kind of a ridiculous statement for him to make because politics is what his so-called ministry is more or less all about. Every issue he raises circles back around to political questions. It's all he talks about and as such he bears no small degree of blame when it comes to present politicised state of the American Church.

And he's not off the hook, as he criticises Biden's recent statements concerning democracy. For the sake of argument I will grant Stonestreet's summation that Biden suggests democracy is a worldview.

Stonestreet takes exception to this. He has to, because otherwise he would be forced to admit the system isn't Christian. Instead he argues that democracy is an exercise or outcome of prior values. But that doesn't say anything.

Democracy is a political and cultural order in which prior values can and are subject to change. This is why the system is dynamic as opposed to static. This is also why it was viewed as liberal as opposed to conservative at the time of its emergence. Conservatism in the context of democracy remains something of a dynamic itself, if not a contradiction. A monarch can embody prior values and guard them. That's not what the Founders wanted. They wanted a dynamic system with regular elections that reflect the will of the people – presupposing that the will of the people is subject to change. Obviously that change has limits and must operate within a coherent framework (as opposed to mob rule), but they very much viewed democracy and its corollaries (the consent of the governed and the social contract) as a new way of living, a worldview.

This is also tied in intimately with their concepts that were expressed in the First Amendment – a point ignored by Stonestreet. The statement was just recently in the news but it echoes a sentiment born of that time period – Vox populi, Vox Dei, the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Biden is right. It is a worldview. It just happens to be an un-Christian one rooted in Deistic Enlightenment political philosophy, not Biblical Christianity. For the New Testament Christian this isn't necessarily a problem. We are not patriotic, but pilgrims living within the American system – living as second class citizens. We can live under a democracy and might even prefer to some of the other options, but we must never confuse it with Christianity. It's just as much a false and idolatrous system. It's less likely to persecute us, which is a nice thing to be sure, but there are dangers. It's a seductive system and history records that it has largely seduced the American Church. As such, it's actually more dangerous than overtly anti-Christian systems – but for hedonistic mammon-driven American Christians that's a too complicated and difficult pill to swallow.

Such a view does not lend itself to flag waving, supporting the troops, and pledging allegiance – the various immoral idolatries regularly espoused by false teachers like Stonestreet. He has a problem. He's trying to live a contradiction and make two ideas compatible which are fundamentally at odds. He cannot shrug off Christ's unequivocal statement – you cannot serve God and mammon. Stonestreet has chosen mammon but fights and struggles to convince himself and his cult that the quest for power is in service to the Kingdom. Church history has seen many a Stonestreet.

The ideas he cites as foundational to the emergence of democracy are in fact part and parcel components of that worldview. He's playing word games and the commentary comes off as weak – accentuated by his lame appeal to The Terror.

Actually Brown v. Board of Education defeats his argument and in a rather stunning fashion. The Constitution assumed the institution of slavery and in the antebellum period that was taken as one of the limiting or foundational concepts to American democracy. You couldn't simply 'vote out' slavery. It took drastic events, a war to end it.

And then out of the new matrix, concepts such as equal protection emerged and that was the context for Brown v. Board of Education. Democratic fundamentals and changing cultural attitudes reshaped the prior assumptions of the Founding generation, and in principle they were fine with that – that's why they instituted amendments. Stonestreet is the one who has it backwards – once again.

Contrary to the notions of some conservatives, the development of Democracy didn't stop 1776 – nor was it in that context conservative. As an ideology it has progressed and evolved with many theorists coming to the realization that a disenfranchised second class doesn't have real choices, and as such participation becomes meaningless. The events of 1776 and the drafting of the Constitution a decade later all took place before the industrial revolution and the sweeping changes to society that it wrought. These fundamental changes to the nature of life and economy also marked changes in conceptions of government and its role. Though in many respects (and by many estimations) the US system has ossified, even the US Constitution reflects some evolutionary changes in its post-1865 series of amendments which marked (in some respects) a fundamental shift to what came before. Wars have consequences and in many respects the Civil War was a referendum, a sign of a failed system. The political forms were retained but a new order emerged. Once again poorly outlined and cast in nebulous terms the result would be a legal and political contest accompanied by social strife – all of which would be largely suppressed until after World War II. At that point the tensions finally erupted and yet many conservatives continue to deny this history and these realities, pretending they don't exist.

Democracy as a worldview is also wed to the idea of human progress, something the Founder's generation held to as did much of the Christian population at that time, which helps to explain why the syncretism was easily formed. Postmillennialism and the adherence to the false concept of Christendom opened the doors wide to such influences – even if in many respects the American Experiment marked a sharp break with Christendom. Once again, I would argue that all of this, all of these notions, values, and frameworks, are incompatible with the New Testament. Stonestreet for his part cannot come up with a coherent stance on this point as he is a Dominionist.

He's right on one point – politics cannot bring salvation, but Dominionism functionally teaches that it does. It brings in the Kingdom through coercive cultural change, legislation, and pedagogical leadership. He can say it all he wants but the proof is in the pudding. For Dominionism, power and thus politics are more or less everything. And this always includes mammon as well. Again, it's not Scriptural but it is a somewhat coherent philosophical construct that also tickles ears and as such it has (seemingly) won the day in American Christianity.

Modern democracy (republican or otherwise) was born in the context of the Enlightenment. That was the intellectual and philosophical milieu of the Founders – even of the New Testament-hating wretch Witherspoon, the champion of modern Evangelicals. Democracy is one of its fruits and yes, they believed it was a worldview and that through progress, societal and cultural understandings of issues like morality could evolve. After all, these new ideas convinced them to take up arms against the king and murder their fellow men. That's pretty moral, don't you think? It was certainly novel – at least on the basis of the arguments they employed. Democracy was tied to progress and as such they were discovering new rights and frameworks for politics, culture, and living.

Did they think it touched on ultimate meaning? Actually I think that for many of them it did – which is why they (rightly or wrongly) gave their lives for that violent un-Christian cause.

A 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people' delineates it source of authority, its means of utility, and its purpose. One has to laugh when commentators like Stonestreet use quotes that don't buttress their argument, but are evidence against it. The statement demonstrates the democracy is a worldview. It's a religion.

And as such for Biblical Christians that's a problem. Given that Stonestreet isn't one, we'll leave it to him to suss out.

His commentary is also ironic given his evident love and appreciation for Catholic writers and theologians. He might probe that a bit further and he would come to understand that just a century ago Catholics understood the point I'm making all too well. They were alarmed by 'Americanism' and viewed the ideology as incompatible with Christianity. What's changed? American Catholicism has changed. Does Stonestreet not know this? Kuyperian Dominionism was bad enough, but the Evangelical Colsonite variety (given its ecumenism) seems particularly incapable of navigating these waters and parsing these questions.

Once again, what he calls Christian Worldview is not a view of life based on the Christ of the New Testament (which elucidates the Old Covenant writings). Rather, it's a philosophical construct, borrowing in part from some Christian concepts, but is in all respects a syncretism, a hybrid, and as such it falls prey to alien concepts like Americanism. And yet such philosophical experiments and productions will inevitably be fraught with internal contradictions, as evidenced by Stonestreet's feckless commentary.

The Pilgrim Underground

24 November 2022

Democracy as a Worldview

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