The Divided States of America

Danny McDonald has a thorough review of Dr Richard Land’s book called The Divided States of America. He summarizes the books by quoting these words.

What’s God got to do with America? Well, not everything
but far more than liberals think,
and a lot less than conservatives may assume,
in much different ways than either side acknowledges,
and for far more important reasons than you might imagine.

The book sounds interesting, but it does not seem to get to the real issues. Richard Land recognizes the struggle between liberals and conservatives, but does not come up with a realistic solution.

The problem is that in a democratic and pluralistic society, one group will end up imposing its views on the rest of society.

If the secularists win power, they will impose their views on Christians. A world view devoid of God will be taught in the schools. Christians will hate this situation.

If Christians win at the ballot box, they will impose their values on the secular part of society. This will make the liberals unhappy and God quite uncomfortable.

The real issue is that democracy is a tool for the majority to impose its values on the minority. We need to be asking if we want a system where that can happen. We need to be asking about what is the role of the state. For example, should the state be involved in education, because as soon as the state takes on this role, it starts imposing the values of the majority onto the children of the minority? Democracy then becomes a tool for making sure that my values win out in that struggle.

Pluralism and Democracy do not mix. You can only have one or the other.

If God has a choice between pluralism and democracy, I think that he would prefer pluralism. I can find no support in the scriptures for democracy, but by putting the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden, he opened up the way for pluralism. I realise that his first choice is for the earth to be filled with his glory as the waters cover the sea, but his people have not really got hold of that one.

So if pluralism is preferred, then any political system that allows a majority (whether Christian or secular)to impose its values on the rest of society does not cut the mustard. That means that political activity must be limited to things which almost everyone agrees on, which rules out education and social welfare. It probably limits government to limited defence and the punishment of theft and violence, because as soon as the political activity goes beyond these, it gets into the business of imposing values on unwilling people.