​Religion and Democratic Political Structures

The drift towards authoritarianism in democratic countries including India and the US appears closely associated with the assertion of religious belief. This blog looks at the relationship between religion and democratic political structures

Background
 
The ideal of representative government finds its modern origin in the eighteenth-century enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, Hume and Adam Smith wanted a system of government based on reason. They looked to the natural sciences for inspiration and particularly to the way Isaac Newton built from first principles. In searching for analogous first principles they looked to human nature. They wanted a system of government that built on human capacity for rational thinking.
 
In making an analogy with the methodology of the natural sciences, enlightenment thinkers deliberately moved away from tying the structures of government to religion. There were two main reasons for this. First, they wanted to get away from the recent historical experience of religious warfare in Europe. Secondly, they wanted to get away from arbitrary forms of power based largely on hereditary monarchs and aristocracies, supported in many cases by religious authority. They were not opposed to religious belief. They were opposed to it as a foundation for a political order based on reason. 
 
The analogy with the methodology of the natural sciences has continued as representative forms of government spread from a limited enfranchisement of the electorate to mass adult voting. At the same time the analogy with science has changed from an account of human nature to one based on hypotheses tested by observation and predictive reliability and always open to question and falsification. The cognitive shortcomings and biases of electors and electorates standing in the way of rational thinking in democratic politics have increasingly been recognised. They have been countered not just by an independent judicial branch that could apply the specialised reasoning of the law to settle disputes but also by specialised agencies such as independent central banks and regulators with their own epistemic reasoning.
 
By contrast, religious belief does not rest on scientific reasoning or any analogy with it. It claims its own revealed truths.
 
Against this background the continuing power of religion in modern politics would no doubt have surprised enlightenment thinkers. By placing political authority on secular foundations, they might have expected religious authority in the political domain to have declined more than it has done. 
 
There appear to be four main reasons why religious belief has persisted as a source of political authority. One class of reason, the value attached to human dignity, is fully consistent with the democratic structuring of politics. The remaining three, the importance of religion in creating and maintaining social bonds, the persistence of patriarchal attitudes and the shared self-interest of those with authority in the state and religious communities to support each other, involve progressively more questionable relationships.
 
Dignity
 
The idea of the dignity to be attached to individual human life is perhaps the main legacy and positive contribution to democratic political thought drawn from medieval religious thought. Dignity can be framed in mainly procedural terms – the need for each individual to be treated as possessing equal worth including for example having equal standing in front of the law. Dignity can also be framed in much more expansive terms – each individual merits collective policies that provide the material and educational resources allowing for the expression of the capabilities of each individual. 
 
Either interpretation of what dignity entails is consistent with democratic theories of government. The difference between the two interpretations is about the role of government in collective provision and how far a broader role should be reflected in the constitutional framework itself. 
 
Associative bonds
 
Underlying the life of political associations, whether expressed in terms of federal unions, or the nation state or devolved regions within a federal or nation state, is a sense of shared location, history, social and political togetherness between citizens that transcends any differences over public policies. There is a two-way interchange. People want forms of government that they feel part of and can be active citizens of. At the same time, systems of government that are answerable to their citizens want to provide people with the sense that the system works to satisfy their individual and collective interests. Concepts such as the sovereignty of the people assume that in the first place there is ‘a people’ with sufficient common ties to want to form and maintain a political association.
 
Shared religious beliefs can help foster this sense of togetherness. However, religious belief as a source of the feelings of association with others becomes problematic when it is used as the defining feature of the association. Used by religious fundamentalists for definitional rather than descriptive purposes it risks becoming exclusionary, or a reason to create divisions in the treatment of the people, or a reason to think of the common good or collective interest in terms of that defining feature. It is used to define ‘the other’. It downplays the contribution of ‘others’ to the other bonds of political association. 
 
In today’s political associations within which people hold different value and belief systems, the use of a particular religious belief as a defining feature works against the pluralism, accommodation and tolerance required of democratic societies. Religious belief is an inescapable part of feelings of association but cannot be used to define political association without damaging consequences for other essential democratic values. 
 
Patriarchy
 
Abrahamic (Judaic, Christian, and Islamic) belief systems are patriarchal. They have struggled to accept equal status for the role of women in the broader social and political setting and continue to struggle within their own systems of religious authority. This establishes a tension with the values of democratic societies where each person, male or female, has equal status. Democracy is gender neutral and gender fluid.
 
There is no easy path to resolve this question about the role of women. It cuts across both the structure of democratic institutions and social policies pursued under them. Democratic institutions require women in senior positions. Democratic societies also have to question patriarchy as they promote educational opportunity for all and tackle abuse within the family.
 
Elitism
 
Church authorities were part of the elite that was being challenged at the time when representative government was being established to replace hereditary and aristocratic forms of government. Nevertheless, it has remained strongly in the interest of the leadership of religious communities to have continued to cultivate close ties with those with political authority. The religious leadership wants to be able to influence public policies that affect their communities. On their side, political leaderships and parties have seen benefits from association with religious authority. Although the self-interest in association among leaderships is understandable, any perception of a shared elitism is arguably damaging to both political and religious leaderships and runs counter to the idea of authority answerable to the people.
 
Conclusion
 
Religious belief is not incompatible with democratic values and structures and has never been so. Concepts of human dignity rooted in religious belief are supportive of democratic values. However, religious belief can become in practice a source of incompatibility. When religion is used to define a democracy, its society, institutions and policies it becomes incompatible. The patriarchy and elitism of religious authority also are sources of incompatibility.