Western Christianity on the whole has been marked by a distinction first enunciated by the Lord, the distinction between the sacral and secular spheres: “Give to Caesar, what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” This opened up the possibility for the first time in the history of humanity of treating the life in this world – the spheres of politics and economics – as autonomous spheres, namely secular (worldly) or “profane” in the literal sense of that word: pro-fanum = “before or outside the temple”.

In addition, from the outset, Christians refused to accept claims of the State to absolute power, a claim that is religious in nature. It has been claimed by some writers that it was the early martyrs, who, by affirming the primacy of conscience, pitted themselves against the false claims of the State to absolute obedience (that is the meaning of totalitarianism), and thus sowed the first seeds of democracy.

It must be admitted that the Church did not always resist the temptation to theocracy. And yet, on the whole, the creative tension in Medieval Christendom between the temporal and the spiritual powers (the terminology is purely Western in provenance) symbolised by Emperor and Pope at the universal level, bishop and prince at the local level, paved the way for the eventual separation of Church and State. Both the Trinitarian faith and the dual authorities of Church and State provided the conditions for the emergence in the West of the primacy of conscience (correctly understood) in the political sphere.

According to the great English historian of ideas, Christopher Dawson, what distinguishes Christianity from the other world religions, is that it affirms “the conscience of the individual person as an independent power which tends to weaken the omnipotence of social custom and to open social progress to new individual initiatives”.

Democracy is the most significant political implication of Christianity, but it took centuries to emerge. Up to the Reformation, Catholic Christianity struggled to hold on to the distinction between Church and State, symbolised in the Middle Ages by Pope and Emperor respectively. The Protestant Reformation effectively made the national Church one with – and so subservient to – the State (as seen in the claims of Henry VIII). In reaction to what happened in the Protestant countries, Catholic countries like France and Austria showed similar tendencies and so adopted the same model of the unity of throne and altar, much to the detriment of the Church.

It is to the credit of the Enlightenment that it restored the former distinction between Church and State, which is more in tune with the New Testament. Unfortunately the Enlightenment went too far. It made what was originally a distinction into a separation, if not an outright opposition. Then it introduced new “faiths”, such as faith in progress, human improvement, the perfection of society, etc., and made them politically potent, often ending in the destruction of democracy and the triumph of totalitarianism (as in Nazism and Marxism).

With the foundation of America, modern liberal democracy first emerged in the spirit of the Enlightenment and so based on the separation of Church and State. In his classical study of democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that it was the presence of strong Christian communities (primarily Protestant, though he also admired the Catholic Church in America, mostly Irish in character) that gave to the young nation the moral values it needed to flourish as a democracy.

A German supreme court judge recently pointed to a similar truth regarding Europe, namely that modern liberal democracy lives off moral values which they themselves cannot produce. In Europe and North America, these moral values (such as justice, human rights, respect for truth, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, primacy of the family, etc.) are the product of Christianity and have to be renewed in each generation in faith communities or Churches.

The most important value is the recognition of the primacy of God, who, transcending all human effort, is the basis for all morality and the sure foundation for human rights, thus placing them beyond the tyranny of the majority (Ratzinger). A living faith enlivens conscience and personal responsibility, which are the bedrock of democracy. Faith also indicates the limits to the power of the State, namely the moral order that echoes God’s plan for humanity.

The Church’s role in democracy is mostly indirect – enlightening consciences, promoting moral responsibility and virtue, giving people an ultimate meaning in life – though, when the State’s laws tend to transgress the moral order, then the Church must intervene directly by raising its public voice in protest, irrespective of the consequences. When she fails to intervene at the right moment – as she has failed in the past – then history tends to judge her severely.

D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, is the author of Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age (Ignatius Press 2007) and The End of Irish Catholicism? (Veritas 2003).

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