Table Of ContentRELIGION AND THE RISE OF
DEMOCRACY
‘The breadth of reading is admirable. . . . A valuable text.’
Diarmaid MacCulloch, University of Bristol
Political democracy is a secular affair, but Graham Maddox argues that its
foundations are religious. Democratic ideals – freedom, equality, community spirit,
oppositional politics and justice – while nursed in the arms of Athens and Jerusalem,
were first transmitted to the modern world by religious teachings.
Graham Maddox’s analysis of the role of religion in the formation of democracy
is wide-ranging, interdisciplinary and original. He begins with a consideration of
the ancient tribes of Israel and carries his thesis through early Christianity to the
Reformation before considering democracy in the modern world.
While the older contemporary democracies drown out their origins with rationalist
praise of capitalism, recent liberation movements, like the abolition of apartheid
in South Africa and the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe, demonstrate
the galvanizing impetus of prophetic religion as a force for democratic progress.
Religion and the Rise of Democracy offers original and controversial arguments that
will be of interest to political scientists, religious historians and theologians.
Graham Maddox is Professor of Politics and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the
University of New England, Australia. He is the author of Australian Democracy in
Theory and Practice (1985) and The Hawke Government and Labor Tradition (1989) as
well as many articles and chapters on constitutionalism, republicanism and
democracy.
RELIGION AND THE
RISE OF DEMOCRACY
Graham Maddox
London and New York
In Memoriam
RJM
duorum
patris fratrisque
First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
© 1996 Graham Maddox
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0–415–02603–2 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-203-19312-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-19315-6 (Glassbook Format)
CONTENTS
Preface vii
INTRODUCTION 1
1 ANCIENT ISRAEL: THE PROPHETIC CHALLENGE 21
2 EARLY CHRISTIANITY: A KINGDOM NOT OF THIS
WORLD 46
3 THE TWO CITIES: SOJOURNERS IN THE WORLD 69
4 THE TWO KINGDOMS: REFORMATION SEPARATISM 92
5 CALVINISM AND DEMOCRACY: THE GROWTH OF
OPPOSITIONAL POLITICS 121
6 PURITAN DEMOCRACY: THE RISE OF POPULAR
CONSCIOUSNESS 144
7 MODERN DEMOCRACY: FROM TWO KINGDOMS TO
DIALECTICAL POLITICS 170
CONCLUSION 200
Notes 220
Select bibliography 283
Index 291
v
PREFACE
Whereas the religious influences upon emerging democratic communities were
once taken for granted, the very process of secularization required for the preserva-
tion of religious liberties has in turn produced a climate in which the secular
foundations are assumed to be the only ones important to modern democracy.
This book attempts to reaffirm the essential nature of the religious background to
democratic theory. In so doing, it may seem to discover prototype democracy in
some surprising places, but all such examples, I believe, are sustainable. It does not
purport to be a comprehensive history of religion and politics, but alights upon
some ‘analytical moments’ in the history of the West that demonstrate the force of
religious challenges to illegitimate power and illustrate the quality of religious
fellowship in binding communities to a democratic purpose.
Except where otherwise stated in the text, biblical quotations are from the Re-
vised English Bible, Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, 1989.
In the few other cases where a translator is not acknowledged, the translations are
my own.
In producing a book of this scope one inevitably incurs many debts of grati-
tude. I have been greatly influenced by former teachers, especially the late Profes-
sors Leonard Schapiro and Walter Ullmann, and also Professor J. J. Nicholls and
Dr John B. Morrall. I am grateful to those who encouraged this project, including
Professor James W. Flanagan, Professor Bernard Crick, Rev. Dr Allan W. Loy,
Professor Dorothy Emmet, Rev. Professor John A. Moses, Professor John Bishop
and the late Professor Robert Berki. During the period of writing, the University
of New England granted me two terms of leave, both spent at Clare Hall, Cam-
bridge, a most hospitable home away from home. I thank the respective Presidents,
and my sponsoring fellow, Dr Geoffrey Hawthorn. To other friends who made
Cambridge an even more congenial place to be for my family and me – especially
Jim Flanagan, Ann Johnston, Graham and Barbara Miles, Maggie Heywood, Dor-
othy Hurst, Kathleen Fowle, Chris McLeod and Mark Goldie – we are very grate-
ful.
Some patient friends and colleagues read parts of the manuscript and supplied
helpful comments: Dr Minor M. Markle, Professor Dorothy A. Lee, Professor
vii
PREFACE
John Tonkin, Dr Majella Franzmann, Rev. Jim Douglass and Professors Crick and
Flanagan. My good colleague, Professor Fred D’Agostino and, for the publishers,
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, read the manuscript in its entirety, saving me
from many errors, and I am deeply thankful for their generosity.
For points of specific help I wish to thank Jenny Post, Dorothy Cordingley,
David Hartley, Tim Battin, Tom Hillard, and Professors Alan Sandison and Greg
Stanton. Some of the work for this book was supported by a grant from the
Australian Research Council, and it has been a very happy circumstance that has
enabled me to work with the invaluable assistance of my colleague, Tod Moore.
We have both been much assisted by the helpful staff of the Dixson Library.
The manuscript proceeded through several drafts, and I have benefited greatly
from the word-processing skills of Yve Richards, Janet Batchler, Cathy Coleman
and, at greatest length, Cheryl Chant and Jonathan Maddox. The publishers have
been very patient with me; I am grateful for the early encouragement of Nancy
Marten and Claire L’Enfant, and for the courteous dealings of commissioning
editor Heather McCallum and production editor Sarah Foulkes, together with
their text editor, Jennifer Fellows. My companion and wife, Carol, continues to be
my greatest source of friendly criticism, encouragement and sustenance. We are
both immensely thankful for the love and support of the next generation: Eliza-
beth, Horst and Hannah, James and Lisa, Jonathan, and Susan.
GM
Armidale
August 1995
viii
INTRODUCTION
ATHENS AND JERUSALEM
To say that the roots of modern democracy intertwine somewhere deep between
Jerusalem and Athens is to invite a charge of heresy from both directions. The
Christian Father Tertullian thrust the two cities worlds apart: ‘What has Athens to
do with Jerusalem? Or the Academy with the Church?’1 What could Christian
revelation learn from all the speculations of Greek philosophy? On the other
hand, what help, asked the rationalist, could human institutions derive from
intimations of another, divine, plane of existence?
In all its essentials, democracy began with the Greeks; they bequeathed us a term,
attached to a specific form of government, which in the twentieth century has
caught the imaginations of the Western world in an irresistible grip. Most modern
books on democracy acknowledge a semantic, and in some ways a historical, debt
to ancient Athens. The 2500th anniversary of democracy – in 1992–3 – was cel-
ebrated in a widespread festival of seminars, radio broadcasts, books and articles.2
All are prepared to acknowledge the Athenians’ demonstration that a people (how-
ever narrowly that term may be construed) can govern itself. Their experiment was
confined to two extraordinary centuries following the reforms of Cleisthenes in
508 BCE. For most of the years between their time and ours democracy became a
historical curiosity, observed only as one element of the so-called mixed constitu-
tion. The Roman republicans, for example, would admit to democratic aspects of
their constitution allowing for tribal assemblies, tribunicial action and some popular
voting, but under no circumstance would their senatorial oligarchy contemplate
the people governing themselves. The coming of empire would plunge the demo-
cratic idea further into the recesses of the Western subconscious, whence it would be
brought to light by the flickering candles of a few independent acolytes.
1
