An Ecosystem of Democracy

A well-founded premise is that public policy is initiated by self-interest. A group petitions the city to expand public parks for new pickleball courts. Residents living in a neighborhood request that their county install a stoplight at a nearby intersection. Both of these succeed because specific interests bring the concerns to those making public decisions. Democracy is rarely this simple. Often, we are driven to public advocacy because we recognize that our self-interest is at odds with others on the same issue. The stakes are higher when the conflicting public problem ties into our deeply held beliefs. Given the opportunity, should the tools of power be used to make public life mirror our deeply held beliefs? For example, should Christians invoke a state requirement to display the Ten Commandments in public schools, require Christian prayers in school, or mix Christian theology in public school curriculum?

A central problem of democracy is whether and how individuals and groups can simultaneously advocate for personal values, while also recognizing, tolerating, and respecting the public sphere as a shared space of divergent, competing, incommensurable held values. Some resolve this by an agency of dominant power in the public space, overtaking the system with the values they support at the expense of all others that disagree. In other words, some claim that since their values are the truth and the democratic majority is on their side, then what is stopping them from transferring their values into law?

Is this how faith-based institutions should equip students to engage as citizens of our democracy: teaching that faith is a catalyst to overpower and dominate other interests in society? I suggest it is not. Rather, I see faith-based institutions equipping students to understand and promote a healthy ecosystem of democracy. As Romans 3:23 states, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Human beings are flawed, imperfectly conveying God’s truth.

The tools of faith-based civic engagement should lead students to pursue universal values while acknowledging how imperfectly humanity applies them to social, political, economic, and even religious institutions.

Unlike public universities, faith-based institutions should help students embrace their faith with conviction, encouraging them to connect how their faith can guide them in addressing public problems. Faith-based institutions must promote the recognition of humanity’s incomplete grasp of truth. The tools of faith-based civic engagement should lead students to pursue universal values while acknowledging how imperfectly humanity applies them to social, political, economic, and even religious institutions.

Christian citizens should advocate their beliefs with virtue and tolerance, even when other participants are locked in a zero-sum outcome. Faith-based institutions should promote a public space more akin to an ecosystem of interests, with a healthy promotion of the American republic. Transferring religious values directly into political institutions endangers any open society, especially when those values belong to a single religious tradition. The American founders understood this in the First Amendment, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Christian citizens should advocate for public values that can best promote shared aspirations of justice, liberty, equality, and peace among all citizens and non-citizens. Instead of mounting the Ten Commandments on a wall or prayer in public schools, we should ask whether either promotes a healthy ecosystem of democracy. Teaching self-restraint and limits is a critical part of a faith-based education. An ecosystem of democracy provides a more properly understood, respectful approach to promoting self-interest in a community of competing and often incommensurable values. It should be the responsibility of faith-based institutions to cultivate the civic virtues of tolerance, respect for the law, and using reason for public discourse; some of the virtues the American Founders understood as cooperatively unifying a deeply held faith and an active democratic participation, while optimistically encouraging strong citizens for this world, as well as hope in the one to come.