This is a very accurate and perceptive review of my book; I thank Michael Kessler for it. As Kessler observes, the book is a “pushback” against the fashion, current among many Christian intellectuals, of bemoaning the liberal democratic state. I hold that the liberal democratic state is a pearl of great price and that we, who are Christians, should acknowledge it as such and speak up in its defense against its detractors.
The liberal democratic state did not emerge from somewhere beyond the pale of Christianity; it was not imposed upon us by invaders from Mars, by Hindus from India, by Muslims from Persia. It was not an alien import. It emerged in the Christian West as a solution to the strife that ensued upon the breakup of ecclesiastical unity in the early sixteenth century. It was deeply religious reformers and dissenters who argued most vigorously for the religious freedom that is definitive of liberal democracy.
Add to this that the concept of natural rights that was employed by thinkers in the eighteenth century to articulate the foundations of this new form of state was not invented by individualist philosophers of the so-called secular Enlightenment; as we now know from the work of Brian Tierney, the concept was first employed by canon lawyers of the twelfth century. It was subsequently employed by Spanish theologians of the sixteenth century, de las Casas prominent among them, and by second generation Calvinist theologians and their successors.
That said, I nonetheless share the complaints against present-day American and European society and culture that Kessler lists; it's a point that I did not sufficiently emphasize in my book. Here is Kessler's list: “declining moral values, fetishized modes of individualism, technological domination, unbridled markets, and unconstrained consumption; an ever-expanding field of state authority over life; and a decreasing tolerance of conscientious variances and religious communities.”
How can I share these complaints and still defend the liberal democratic state? Because I hold that these evils are not to be laid at the door of that form of polity which is the liberal democratic state; the liberal democratic polity existed for well more than a century before these evils took root. Most of them are to be laid at the door of late modern capitalism and at the door of the amoralism and libertarianism that late modern capitalism encourages. The liberal democratic polity is fully compatible with bankers and entrepreneurs regarding it as their calling to provide worthwhile services to the public and meaningful and appropriately rewarded work for their employees. It is late modern capitalism that encourages them to aim, instead, at making money for themselves and gaining power.
It is often said that the core idea behind the liberal democratic polity is the autonomy of the individual – or, since it is obvious that no one can be completely autonomous and still live alongside others, maximal compatible freedom. I have argued elsewhere (in Understanding Liberal Democracy 2012) that the governing idea is instead the right to equal political voice of all adult citizens, the exercise of this voice to be conducted within the framework of a constitution that protects citizens from the passage of laws that require or permit the state to violate their fundamental natural rights. What people say with their political voice, and how they say it, is then their responsibility.
In The Mighty and the Almighty I develop the claim that, for Christians, the fundamental consideration in exercising their political voice should be what justice requires, and beyond that, the flourishing of the community. It appears to me that, for many of my fellow American Christians, individual liberty rather than justice is the first consideration and often the only. Libertarianism has invaded the church. Rather than struggling to counteract the tendencies and effects of late modern capitalism, large segments of the church abet those tendencies and effects.
In my book I also suggest that, in exercising their political voice, citizens should listen to the concerns and convictions of their fellow citizens and should always honor their dignity. It appears to me that a good many Christians today are like others in feeling no compunction whatsoever in dismissing out of hand the concerns and convictions of their political opponents and in demeaning them. In our society today there is a serious breakdown of moral education by families, groups, and institutions; the church is not exempt from culpability in that breakdown.
