The Separation of Church and State: A Pillar of Democracy

Democracy is not just in crisis in the United States; it is an international crisis. The core problem is the concentration of power in the executive or in a single political party without checks and balances. These checks and balance must not only come from the separation of powers between the three branches of government in a republic (the executive, legislative, and judicial), but between the state and other institutions (the press or mass media, religious institutions, and civic institutions or civil society). It relies on the decentralization of power. The decline of democracy or the absence of it entirely is a phenomenon common both to secular and religious regimes. It is marked by the consolidation of political power and the suppression or elimination of an opposition. In the United States, one of the main enablers of the drive toward authoritarianism is Christian Nationalism.

In discussing the crisis of democracy, we need to distinguish between countries that have had strong democratic institutions and those which never had them to begin with. Prime examples of the later include the other two contending superpowers: China and Russia. We also need to distinguish between direct democracy such as existed in ancient Athens or the New England town meeting and indirect representative democracy (i.e., a republic) such as that which existed in ancient Rome before it devolved into a dictatorship first under Julius Caesar. The crisis of democracy in the US is of the American republic—that is the consolidation of power in the executive branch under Trump and the failure of both the legislative and judicial branches to act as a check on it. But it has gone further than that with an attack on other independent institutions such as the mass media or press (which has been referred to as the Fourth Estate), universities, and even corporate law firms.

Western democracy (republican forms of government) has its roots in the opposition to absolute power on the part of a monarchy, first embodied in the American War of Independence (i.e., the American Revolution) and the Great French Revolution of 1789 which followed shortly thereafter. It was inspired by both the English and French Enlightenments, in particular by the writings of John Locke’s 2nd Treatise on Government, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Origins of Inequality and Social Contract, and Baron de Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Lawswho argued for a separation of powers. Under the absolute monarchies, there was an alliance of church and state (a state religion) and kings claimed to rule by divine right. Locke’s essay on religious tolerance was written while he was in exile in Holland and was a response to the privileging of the Anglican church in its alliance with the restored English monarchy after the Puritan Revolution. The French Revolution was anti-clerical; despite its “Cult of the Supreme Being,” it was a secular revolution.

While the early socialist and communist movements had democratic impulses, once factions of them seized the power of the state, they devolved into authoritarianism. Engel’s dictatorship of the proletariat was meant to be democratic since the proletariat was the presumed majority, but it degenerated into authoritarianism with Lenin’s vanguard party, which paved the way for Stalin. In authoritarian socialist regimes it has involved one party rule and the elimination of opposition parties and an independent press. This is what has occurred in countries like China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba where the secular ideology of Marxism has acted as a form of state religion.

Whereas European countries had an entrenched aristocracy with a monarch at its helm, the US did not have these vestiges. Rather the impulse towards a republic came from the landed gentry and merchant class. Since there were a number of different Protestant denominations during the formation of the US republic, there was a common agreement in both the state and US constitutions that there should be no established religion or state church, that there should be a separation of church and state. However, the US was far from a perfect democracy. The franchise was confined to white propertied males but was only extended to African Americans at the end of the Civil War and to women as a result of the Suffragette Movement.

The most recent threats to democracy come from two sources which are often aligned with each other: the far right and religious fundamentalists. The extreme right in Europe (Le Pen in France and the AFD in Germany) are xenophobic. Although they work within the democratic system, they ultimately seek to destroy it (much as Hitler did in Germany after he was elected Chancellor in 1932). Viktor Orbán’s reign in Hungary was marked by Christian nationalism (anti LGBTQ+) and democratic backsliding.

 Religious fundamentalism seeks to impose their religion on everyone else through the state. Most Muslim majority countries never had strong democratic traditions to begin with. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Supreme Leader, who is chosen by a group of clerics (the Assembly of Experts) has power over the Majiles (the Parliament). Candidates are vetted by the Guardian Council. Erdoğan’s softer form of Islamism in Turkey has suppressed his political opposition. In India, Modi’s Hindu nationalism, has persecuted the minority Muslims which is 14 percent of the population. Israel which proclaims to be the only democracy in the Middle East is not. It has artificially created a Jewish majority by engaging in a repeated ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population (the Palestinians). It continues to occupy the West Bank and Gaza whose Muslim populations are denied basic human rights. Most Palestinians living in the occupied territories are stateless and denied the right to vote in Israeli elections. Israel has chosen being Jewish state over being a democratic one.

One of the problems of democracy is what de Tocqueville referred to as tyranny of the majority, in which the majority privileges itself and tramples upon the rights of minorities. If democratic countries wish to be truly democratic, that is upholding certain fundamental rights for all of its citizens, they need to respect the rights of minorities. This is what religious regimes (those with strong state religions) fail to do. Whether Islamism, Chrisian nationalism, Zionism, Hindu nationalism, etc., they all trample up the rights of minorities. It is only when there is a strong separation of church and state, when there is the absence of a state religion, can the rights of religious/ethnic minorities be respected and thus democracy allowed to flourish.