Political Cases
November 29, 2007
In considering the recent Federal election in Australia, I wrote an article on the nature of political representation (unsurprisingly, heavily reliant on O’Donovan), which is published in the most recent CASE magazine, and is available on the web, thanks to their generosity, here. If you haven’t seen CASE, take a look: there’s lots of really interesting stuff. In particular, in the latest edition there is a fascinating article by Mike Thompson titled, “Should Western Christians Support the Promotion of Democracy as a Foreign Policy Objective?” In beginning his answer, Mike writes, “Perhaps one task of the Christian church in any age is to interrogate the horizon of obviousness…” I think this is a wonderful, and true, phrase.
And to keep us thinking about political representation, here is another great quote from David Bentley Hart:
…all of us I think, in those secret corners of our souls where we are all monarchists, can appreciate a good despot, if he is sufficiently dashing and mysterious, and able to strike an attractive balance between capricious wrath and serene benevolence. (David Bentley Hart, “Christ and Nothing”, First Things, October 2003).
Hey, thanks for the link. I didn’t realise your article was online.
Interesting article Andrew. I think I agree with your argument but not completely with your conclusion. It seems that you are effectively saying that even in a democracy, we elect people to make wise and just decisions but that we have no right to have a say in those decisions. Surely in a democracy the people do have some say in what the Government should do (e.g. industrial relations at the recent Australian federal election), whether or not that is our understanding of a Biblical framework for the way that God appoints governments.
Hi Tim. Thanks for your comment and your feedback. Part of the trouble with writing a short article is you don’t get to say everything. Yes, I certainly agree that in democracies people do have a say in what their governments do. But I wanted to slightly uncouple this “having a say” from the concept of representation. I think it’s possible for us to view representation simply as the government’s obligation to reflect my view. I’m arguing, however (although it’s all originally O’Donovan), that representation is a more organic reality than this, that it involves our emotions and a kind of basic sense of identification. I think the last election illustrates all this quite well. To say that the election was simply a matter of the electorate choosing preferred policies is, I believe, to grossly oversimplify what actually happened. I think the contest was, and always is, much more instinctual. Yes, policies come into it; but so also do factors like whether we like politicians, whether they appeal to us, etc. I also think the kind of uneasy sense of discontinuity during the transition period, and also the heavy media coverage of events like the formal swearing-in of the ministers reminds us that even in a democracy, there is still “a government” which “rules”. Part of what the stuff in my article helps me to do is to not feel like everything hangs or falls on an election result, but that the more important political task for Christians in a democracy happens in between elections, in helping governments make good judgments.
Please come back at me on any of this. For everyone out there, Tim’s blog is called Christianity in a Democracy and is now in the side-bar, it’s well worth a look.
æ
Thanks for the clarification, Andrew. That makes more sense to me now.