If we think of ‘democracy’ as a political procedure – allowing citizens to vote, and the majority rules – we find little or no support for this in Scripture. We find monarchies, and we find decisions made by casting lots, but we don’t find much voting. In church history, we see theological giants like Augustine and Luther living comfortably in monarchies, with no expression of a desire for democracy. Democracy, in this sense, then has little or no connection with Christianity. Although my political sensibilities might be offended if I lived under the rule of a king in the Middle Ages or Renaissance, my spiritual sensibilities shouldn’t be.
But if we think of ‘democracy’ as an outlook, as a cultural attitude – we often read the phrase ‘democratic society’ - then we might find a closer connection to Scripture: if we define a ‘democratic society’ as one which imputes an equal value to every human life, and demands of me that I respect that value in the sense of acknowledging the dignity of each human, then we are coming close the Scriptural ideas of ‘humans made in the image of God’ and ‘even to the least of these.’ It is in this sense that democracy may have a closer connection to the faith of Scripture.
