Democracy Matters

by Cornel West

  The last major effort is found in the rich and revolutionary writings of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha (himself murdered by the Nimeiri regime in Sudan for his visionary and courageous works). For example, in his manifesto, The Second Message of Islam, Taha conceives of Islam as a holistic way of life that promotes freedom—the overcoming of fear—in order to pursue a loving and wise life. As in the second effort, he and his disciple Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im discard the Shari‘a and replace it with the Meccan revelation. Taha’s conception of the good society rests upon economic equality (egalitarian sharing of wealth), political equality (political sharing in decisions), and social equality (no discrimination based on color, faith, race, or sex in order to provide equal opportunity for cultural refinement). Similar to the Prophet Muhammad, Taha revels in difference—or promotes diversity—in order to constitute a more fair and equal society. Anouar Majid’s superb text Unveiling Traditions: Postcolonial Islam in a Polycentric World is a must-read. In that book he writes:

  My examination of postcolonial theory and the Arab identity deployed by nationalists to counter imperialism might…help explain why a progressively defined Islam—one that is democratically available to all—may be a desirable option for Muslim peoples…. Islamic cultures—like many of the world’s cultural traditions—could help “provincialize” the West and offer other ways to be in the world….

  More broadly, this book tries to challenge secular academics to include the world’s nonsecular expressions as equally worthy of consideration and valid alternatives, and Muslim scholars to rethink their attachments to texts and canons that have obscured the egalitarian and viable legacies of Islam.

  At the moment, those views are but voices in the wilderness. Yet they are also a delicious foretaste of the new wave of Socratic questioning, prophetic witness, and tragicomic hope ascending within the Islamic world. These prophetic voices constitute a leaven in the Islamic loaf—and much hangs on whether social forces in the Islamic world can enact their democratic visions. And there is more to come—calls to reconfigure institutional structures that jettison the colonial nation-states and establish more cosmopolitan educational systems that highlight the rich links between the Judeo-Christian, Judeo-Islamic, Christian-Islamic, and secular traditions. The future of democracy matters in the world depends in part on these heroic and imaginative efforts—and not only in Islamic regions. Dismantling empire is a multifaceted affair, and our gallant attempts to do so require all the vision and courage we can muster here and abroad.

  Yet the colossal presence of the American empire in the Jewish and Islamic world—especially its dependence on oil—muddies the water. It silently condones autocratic Islamic states and openly green-lights Israeli hard-line colonial policies. And even as it embarks on an imperial-monitored democratization in Iraq, its heavy hand is felt among those who are glad that the dictatorial Hussein is gone, but suspicious of U.S. strategies and goals. The ugly effects of this heavy-handedness were expressed eloquently by the moderate Iraqi cleric Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, who is quoted in an article in the New York Times Magazine: “The U.S. is using excessive power. They round up people in a very humiliating way, by putting bags over their faces in front of their families. In our society, this is like rape. The Americans are using collective punishment by jailing relatives. What is the difference from Saddam?” The recent revelations of U.S. atrocities in Iraqi prisons (especially Abu Ghraib) confirm this heavy-handedness.

  Needless to say, the fall of any nihilistic gangster who rules with an iron hand is salutary. New democratic possibilities arise. But a subtle understanding of the imperial past of the region, a complex grasp of the Islamic and Jewish quests for identity, and a genuine commitment to deep democracy are required for substantive justice and peace for Muslims and Jews.

  The ultimate irony may be that the most fertile seeds for democracy matters in the Islamic world can be found in the civic life of the Palestinians and Kurds—the most subjugated peoples in the region, forced to survive and thrive without a nation-state. Beneath the autocratic rule of Arafat looms a vital network of norms and trust that could give birth to democratic practices in the aftermath of Israeli occupation. Ordinary Palestinians could well be the most democratically inclined Muslims in the world. They have been used by Arab elites to trash Israel and compete for imperial American aid and attention. These same Palestinians may be democratic pioneers who inspire the democratization of the Islamic peoples in the region.

  Similarly, Kurds in northern Iraq and Turkey have sustained democratic practices in the face of atrocious repression and vicious attacks. At the moment, they have proven to be the most democratic Muslims in the world. The American empire has closed its eyes to Kurdish oppression by its ally Turkey and only recently opened its eyes to the long-standing Kurdish democratic practices in northern Iraq. Are there lessons to be learned here? Can the anti-imperial aspirations of Palestinians and Kurds sidestep autocratic forms of secular nationalism and Islamic revitalization? Can they thereby unleash democratic energies if the U.S. imperial presence is lifted, the Israeli occupation ended, and Kurdish self-determination allowed to flourish? And would not pioneering Palestinians and Kurds be inspired by the magnificent democratic achievements of Israel itself if the Jewish state emerged out of the shadow of U.S. imperialism and took its rightful vanguard place among democratic national experiments in the region?

  5

  THE CRISIS OF CHRISTIAN IDENTITY IN AMERICA

  Our solutions and decisions are relative, because they are related to the fragmentary and frail measure of our faith. We have not found and shall not find—until Christ comes again—a Christian in history whose faith so ruled his life that every thought was brought into subjection to it and every moment and place was for him in the kingdom of God. Each one has encountered the mountain he could not move, the demon he could not exorcise…. All our faith is fragmentary, though we do not all have the same fragments of faith.

  —H. RICHARD NIEBUHR, Christ and Culture (1951)

  I must take the responsibility for how, mark my word, how I react to the forces that impinge upon my life, forces that are not responsive to my will, my desire, my ambition, my dream, my hope—forces that don’t know that I’m here. But I know I’m here. And I decide whether I will say yes, or no, and make it hold. This indeed is the free man, and this is anticipated in the genius of the dogma of freedom as a manifestation of the soul of America, born in what to me is one of the greatest of the great experiments in human relations.

  —HOWARD THURMAN, America in Search of a Soul (1976)

  The religious threats to democratic practices abroad are much easier to talk about than those at home. Just as demagogic and antidemocratic fundamentalisms have gained too much prominence in both Israel and the Islamic world, so too has a fundamentalist strain of Christianity gained far too much power in our political system, and in the hearts and minds of citizens. This Christian fundamentalism is exercising an undue influence over our government policies, both in the Middle East crisis and in the domestic sphere, and is violating fundamental principles enshrined in the Constitution; it is also providing support and “cover” for the imperialist aims of empire. The three dogmas that are leading to the imperial devouring of democracy in America—free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism—are often justified by the religious rhetoric of this Christian fundamentalism. And perhaps most ironically—and sadly—this fundamentalism is subverting the most profound, seminal teachings of Christianity, those being that we should live with humility, love our neighbors, and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Therefore, even as we turn a critical eye on the fundamentalisms at play in the Middle East, the genuine democrats and democratic Christians among us must unite in opposition to this hypocritical, antidemocratic fundamentalism at home. The battle for the soul of American democracy is, in large part, a battle for the soul of American Christianity, because the dominant forms of Christian fundamentalism are a threat
to the tolerance and openness necessary for sustaining any democracy. Yet the best of American Christianity has contributed greatly to preserving and expanding American democracy. The basic distinction between Constantinian Christianity and prophetic Christianity is crucial for the future of American democracy.

  Surveys have shown that 80 percent of Americans call themselves Christians, 72 percent expect the Second Coming of Christ, and 40 percent say they speak to the Christian God on intimate terms at least twice a week. America is undeniably a highly religious country, and the dominant religion by far is Christianity, and much of American Christianity is a form of Constantinian Christianity. In American Christendom, the fundamental battle between democracy and empire is echoed in the struggle between this Constantinian Christianity and prophetic Christianity.

  This battle between prophetic Christians and Constantinian Christians goes back to the first centuries of the Christian movement that emerged out of Judaism. The Roman emperor Constantine’s incorporation of Christianity within the empire gave Christianity legitimacy and respectability but robbed it of the prophetic fervor of Jesus and the apocalyptic fire of that other Jew-turned-Christian named Paul. Until Constantine converted to Christianity in AD 312 and decriminalized it with the Edict of Milan in 313, and his successor Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the empire, the Christian movement had been viciously persecuted by the imperial Romans, primarily because the growing popularity of the Christian message of humility, and of equality among men, was understood as a threat to Roman imperial rule.

  Jesus was so brutally executed by the Roman empire—crucifixion being the empire’s most horrific and terrifying tactic of punishing offenders to its rule—precisely because his preaching of the coming of the kingdom of God was seen by the Romans as dangerously subversive of the authoritarianism and militarism of the Roman state. Ironically, Jesus’s message of love and justice promoted a separation of his prophetic witness from Caesar’s authority—“render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Christ said. Yet the nihilistic imperialism of the Romans was so power-hungry that it couldn’t tolerate the growing popularity of the Christian sects. When the growth of the religion couldn’t be stopped, the Roman empire co-opted it. With Constantine’s conversion, a terrible co-joining of church and state was institutionalized from which the religion and many of its victims, especially Jews, have suffered ever since. Constantinian Christianity has always been at odds with the prophetic legacy of Jesus Christ. Constantine himself seems to have converted to Christianity partly out of political strategy and imperial exigency, and then proceeded to use the cloak of Christianity for his own purposes of maintaining power.

  As the Christian church became increasingly corrupted by state power, religious rhetoric was often used to justify imperial aims and conceal the prophetic heritage of Christianity. Immediately after his conversion, Constantine targeted numerous Christian sects for annihilation—such as the Gnostics and other groups that questioned the books of the Old Testament—as he consolidated power by creating one imperial version of Christianity. The corruption of a faith fundamentally based on tolerance and compassion by the strong arm of imperial authoritarianism invested Christianity with an insidious schizophrenia with which it has been battling ever since. This terrible merger of church and state has been behind so many of the church’s worst violations of Christian love and justice—from the barbaric crusades against Jews and Muslims, to the horrors of the Inquisition and the ugly bigotry against women, people of color, and gays and lesbians.

  This same religious schizophrenia has been a constant feature of American Christianity. The early American branch of the Christian movement—the Puritans—consisted of persecuted victims of the British empire in search of liberty and security. On the one hand, they laid the foundations for America’s noble anti-imperialist struggle against the British empire. On the other hand, they enacted the imperialist subordination of Amerindians. Their democratic sensibilities were intertwined with their authoritarian sentiments. The American democratic experiment would have been inconceivable without the fervor of Christians, yet strains of Constantinianism were woven into the fabric of America’s Christian identity from the start. Constantinian strains of American Christianity have been on the wrong side of so many of our social troubles, such as the dogmatic justification of slavery and the parochial defense of women’s inequality. It has been the prophetic Christian tradition, by contrast, that has so often pushed for social justice.

  When conservative Christians argue today for state-sponsored religious schools, when they throw their tacit or more overt support behind antiabortion zealots or homophobic crusaders who preach hatred (a few have even killed in the name of their belief), they are being Constantinian Christians. These Constantinian Christians fail to appreciate their violation of Christian love and justice because Constantinian Christianity in America places such a strong emphasis on personal conversion, individual piety, and philanthropic service and has lost its fervor for the suspicion of worldly authorities and for doing justice in the service of the most vulnerable among us, which are central to the faith. These energies are rendered marginal to their Christian identity.

  Most American Constantinian Christians are unaware of their imperialistic identity because they do not see the parallel between the Roman empire that put Jesus to death and the American empire that they celebrate. As long as they can worship freely and pursue the American dream, they see the American government as a force for good and American imperialism as a desirable force for spreading that good. They proudly profess their allegiance to the flag and the cross not realizing that just as the cross was a bloody indictment of the Roman empire, it is a powerful critique of the American empire, and they fail to acknowledge that the cozy relation between their Christian leaders and imperial American rulers may mirror the intimate ties between the religious leaders and imperial Roman rulers who crucified their Savior.

  I have no doubt that most of these American Constantinian Christians are sincere in their faith and pious in their actions. But they are relatively ignorant of the crucial role they play in sponsoring American imperial ends. Their understanding of American history is thin and their grasp of Christian history is spotty, which leaves them vulnerable to manipulation by Christian leaders and misinformation by imperial rulers. The Constantinian Christian support of the pervasive disinvestment in urban centers and cut-backs in public education and health care, as well as their emphatic defense of the hard-line policies of the Israeli government, has much to do with the cozy alliance of Constantinian Christian leaders with the political elites beholden to corporate interests who provide shelter for cronyism. In short, they sell their precious souls for a mess of imperial pottage based on the false belief that they are simply being true to the flag and the cross. The very notion that the prophetic legacy of the grand victim of the Roman empire—Jesus Christ—requires critique of and resistance to American imperial power hardly occurs to them.

  These American Constantinian Christians must ask themselves, Does not the vast concentration of so much power and might breed arrogance and hubris? Do not the Old Testament prophets and teachings of Jesus suggest, at the least, a suspicion of such unrivaled and unaccountable wealth and status? Are not empires the occasion of idolatry run amok? Most Christians, including Constantinian ones, are appalled by the ugly AIDS epidemic in Africa—thirty million now—and around the world (forty million). Why has the response of the American empire to this crisis been abysmal? Doesn’t the interest of drug companies and their influence on the U.S. government hamper our ability to discover or make available cheap drugs for our ailing fellow human beings? Is it not obvious that the U.S. response would be much different if AIDS victims were white heterosexual upper-middle-class men in Europe or America? Must Christians respond solely through private charities in this disastrous emergency? The response to the AIDS crisis is but one example of the moral callousness of imperial rulers that should upset any Christian. Were not
subjugated Jews and later persecuted Christians in the early Roman empire treated in such inhumane and unacceptable ways?

  In criticizing the Constantinianism in American Christianity, however, we must not lose sight of the crucial role of prophetic Christianity as a force for democratic good in our history. The values engendered by Christian belief were crucial in fueling first the democratic energy out of which the early religious settlers founded nascent democratic projects and then the indignation with the abuses of the British empire that drove the American Revolution. And the Founders took great pains to establish guarantees of religious freedom in the Constitution out of a deep conviction about the indispensable role of religion in civic life. The most influential social movements for justice in America have been led by prophetic Christians: the abolitionist, women’s suffrage, and trade-union movements in the nineteenth century and the civil rights movement in the twentieth century. Though the Constantinian Christianity that has gained so much influence today is undermining the fundamental principles of our democracy regarding the proper role of religion in the public life of a democracy, the prophetic strains in American Christianity have done battle with imperialism and social injustice all along and represent the democratic ideal of religion in public life. This prophetic Christianity adds a moral fervor to our democracy that is a very good thing. It also holds that we must embrace those outside of the Christian faith and act with empathy toward them. This prophetic Christianity is an ecumenical force for good, and if we are to revitalize the democratic energies of the country, we must reassert the vital legitimacy of this prophetic Christianity in our public life, such as the principles of public service, care for the poor, and separation of church and state that this Christianity demands. And we must oppose the intrusions of the fundamentalist Christianity that has so flagrantly violated those same democratic principles.