In class I'm afraid that my knee jerk response to a certain claim that Christianity and democracy are inextricably linked was both unclear and ill thought out, so let me here speak for a moment more cohesively.

My counter assertion is that democracy as a political system, though it does require a certain spiritual/ideological/philosophical backing, does not require specifically Christian morals and values, and that it is an accident of history that modern, Western Christianity (specifically excluding the Eastern Orthodox Church) and democracy evolved parallel to each other. The lack of modern, for example, Buddhist democracies, as Professor Jackson called to the attention of the class, is due to the fact that history simply has not been at work long enough, and has not been fortuitous enough for the concept of democracy, for those ideas to have permeated the rest of the world.

The strongest point I have yet heard for a deep link between Christianity and democracy is the
argument that the Christian focus on personal redemption and the individual's connection with God feed directly into the ideas that all humans are, on some level, of equal worth and, by the same token, deserve a measure of say in the governance of the state, which is indeed a central tenent of democracy. However, I would point out that other belief systems (any number of Western philosophies especially) exist or can be conceived that would work equally well to support a democratic institution. Certainly, one may argue that former British holdings and American occupied Japan have been in large part westernized, but it would be strange to argue that giant India has been Christianized, or strictly governed Singapore converted. Certainly, Singapore's general attidude of disdainful tolerance for conflicting belief structures has not hindered the business of the country or the conduct of it's Westminster style parliament.


On an entirely unrelated note, I disagree with the majority sentiment expressed in class. If only so the devil has an advocate, consider the nature of American expansion as discussed in Manifest Destiny: a force of American culture, both a convenient expression of practical greed for territory (the ironic tone of much of Stephanson's writing precludes the consideration that he takes the rhetoric of destiny and divine right entirely seriously) and of genuine belief (Stephanson likewise would not write a hundred-thirty-odd page book with nothing but ironic condescension). Now, consider what a new and vigorous nation might have been expected to do in the course of a century, given America's position on a resource rich continent unopposed by major powers. With a nerely rational model (such as Bismarck played with late 19th century Germany, or as the British, Spanish and French empires had played for centuries previous), it would have been perfectly reasonable to assume that forceful expansionism would have been the prevailing foreign policy doctrine. However, America has not been nearly so insistent on gaining territories as other modern great powers (witness the world's bemused disbelief turned to eyebrowed raised suprise when the Americans first said they would evacuate Cuba after the Spanish American War, and then actually did). The concept of manifest destiny certainly promoted a certain sense that Americans had the right to all of North America (which our modern sensibilities find distasteful), but it also invoked a certain sense of importance to which America as a whole felt bound to respect: somewhere between 1095 and 1776 Christendom got the idea that slaughter and battle were not the proper way to go about the work of God, and were looked upon less favorably by the men who expanded the American frontier over her first century and a half. Manifest destiny, in my opinion, lead to a slower, less violent expansionist policy during the 1800s and early 1900s in America.