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Podcast
Democracy And Religion
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Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dave DeWitt, and today I want to talk a little bit about democracy and religion.
0:11
First I want to read a quote from a Harvard professor called Clay Christensen.
0:17
It's a little bit long, but I found it very interesting.
0:21
Here's the quote.
0:23
Some time ago, I had a conversation with a Marxist communist from China.
0:29
He was coming to the end of a Fulbright scholarship here in Boston.
0:34
I asked him if he had learned anything which was surprising or unexpected, and without
0:40
any hesitation he said, yeah.
0:43
I had no idea how critical religion is to functioning of democracy.
0:49
The reason why democracy works, he said, is not because the government was designed to
0:58
oversee what everybody else does, but rather democracy works because most people, most
1:06
of the time, voluntarily choose to keep the law.
1:11
And in your past, most Americans attended a church or a synagogue every week, and they
1:17
were taught there by people they respected.
1:22
Americans followed these rules because they had come to believe that they were not just
1:28
accountable to society, but they were accountable to God.
1:34
Then Professor Christensen added this, my Chinese friend heightened a nagging concern
1:41
I have harbored inside that as religion loses its influence over the lives of Americans,
1:50
what will happen to our democracy?
1:53
Where are the institutions that are going to teach the next generation?
1:59
Americans, they too need to voluntarily choose the abase of the law because if they take
2:06
away religion, you can't hire enough police.
2:12
That's the end of Professor Christensen's quote.
2:16
I'd like to make a few observations.
2:20
I suspect the point of the Chinese Marxist communist was that democracy won't work in
2:26
China or anywhere in the future because religion is fading away.
2:32
The professor's point, and that of the company making the recording, I guess, is that we
2:39
need more churches and religious institutions.
2:45
The Marxist economist from China made three mistakes.
2:50
Number one, he makes the mistake of thinking America is a democracy.
2:55
I find that most foreigners and many Americans make that mistake.
3:00
That's why they think Hillary Clinton actually won the 2016 election.
3:05
But America is not a democracy, it's a democratic republic.
3:11
Democracies only work when you have good people, such as in a club or a local chapter
3:17
of some organization.
3:20
But usually a democracy can be described as the lunatics running the asylum, which fails
3:27
when people figure out that they can vote themselves free access to other people's money.
3:36
In a democracy, republics, lunatics, may elect a lunatic to represent them, but more
3:44
knowledgeable people will elect a more knowledgeable representative who, even if they represent
3:49
less people, can offset the lunatic.
3:53
So America is not a democracy, it's a republic.
3:58
Second, the Marxist economist from China makes the mistake of thinking religion is critical
4:05
to functioning of democracy.
4:08
He ignores his own illustrations of churches and synagogues, which are basically just churches
4:15
and synagogues are a minute part of the American history.
4:20
The early immigrants who came to America were primarily Bible believers who worked hard
4:26
and were morally and financially responsible because they were following the Bible.
4:34
The Chinese Marxist ignores the fact that religion did not help people keep the law
4:41
at all when Muslim countries became democracies.
4:45
The remaking of Iraq into a democracy and the spread of democracy throughout the Arab
4:53
Spring brought radicalization and chaos.
4:58
It's those who followed the Judeo-Christian Bible that allowed for what he mistakenly
5:04
called democracy.
5:07
Religion does not generate people who voluntarily choose to keep the law in Muslim, Hindu, and
5:15
any other religious country.
5:17
The best functioning, most sane government in the East Middle East is Israel because
5:24
they at least has a distinct memory of the biblical morality and its economic values.
5:31
Number three, the Marxist economist from China makes the mistake of confusing democracy with
5:37
freedom.
5:39
What he is observing that works because of the Judeo-Christian Bible is freedom.
5:47
If you decrease the belief in the Bible, you will increase the need for government.
5:54
That's why the decrease of belief in the Bible is followed by an increase in government control,
6:00
say with the American Democratic Party, socialism in Europe, and Marxist communism in the old
6:08
Soviet Union and in China.
6:12
But the Marxist economist was right about two important things.
6:17
Number one, early on, America worked with legitimate government because people believed,
6:23
quote, that they were not just accountable to society, but were accountable to God, quote,
6:30
unquote.
6:31
A belief in and fear of the God of the Bible is the only thing that limits the need for
6:39
government.
6:41
What the Marxist economies called democracy, which is actually freedom, works because people
6:49
most of the time voluntarily chose to obey the law.
6:54
I've seen this in aviation community.
6:57
There's no way the FAA and the air traffic controllers could sufficiently police aviation.
7:05
Aviation works because most pilots most of the time voluntarily choose to obey the laws
7:10
of aviation.
7:13
There's one time in history where this worked perfectly, where people required no government
7:19
at all.
7:21
The one group of people who were brought together without any governing structure was the church,
7:28
started by Jesus and the apostles.
7:31
Jesus said, the world's leaders have authority, but it's not that way among you.
7:36
Whoever wishes to become great shall be your servant.
7:41
The greatest leaders being the greatest servants.
7:45
The only authority in the church they started was Jesus himself and the apostles who brought
7:53
the revelation of God to his church in what we call the New Testament, which included
8:00
a belief in the inspiration of the Old Testament.
8:06
But the apostles appointed no apostolic representatives.
8:10
They only appointed elders and overseers and deacons and leaders and all who were to be
8:17
servants and responsible, not officers in authority.
8:21
They taught, encouraged, and served.
8:25
They did not control, punish, and legislate.
8:28
The church was a band of brothers and sisters where the more mature served, the less mature.
8:35
There was absolutely no government in the church they started because people believed,
8:41
quote, that they were not just accountable to society, but were accountable to God, close
8:48
quote.
8:49
They required no government because Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
8:55
And most people most of the time voluntarily chose to obey him because they loved him.
9:03
Those who didn't and strayed from the path were brought back to the path by the discipline
9:09
of loving brothers and sisters, not punishment of authorities.
9:16
Bad news is as soon as the apostles left the scene, the church began to be defined not
9:21
just as believers, but as an entity, an assembly, an organization, some structure where anybody
9:29
could come.
9:31
Instead of it being a band of believers and brothers and sisters who, among other things,
9:37
gathered themselves together, the gathering itself was called the church.
9:42
They became a society, a social entity, which included unbelievers.
9:49
So it required a governing structure.
9:51
It required bishops and pastors and metropolitan bishops and cardinals and popes and patriarchs.
9:59
What now required government, because it was no longer a band of believers, but a social
10:04
structure, they invalidated the word of God for the sake of their tradition.
10:11
And that required government.
10:14
Those who loved to be first among them warped the church of apostles and started by creating
10:22
the social structure.
10:24
The good news is the original church, the real band of believers and sisters, the more
10:30
mature, the less mature, still exists.
10:34
Some are involved in the social structures we have set up, some are not.
10:40
But they're not identified before God by those structures.
10:44
They're identified by the fact that they see themselves as not just accountable to
10:49
society, but accountable to God.
10:53
And most of them, most of the time, voluntarily choose to obey the law.
11:00
They also tend to find each other and assemble themselves together.
11:05
Thank you for listening.
11:06
A longer paper on the subject with footnotes for the quotes and scriptures available on
11:12
our website, relationalconcepts.org.
