Christianity and Democracy: The Global Picture

Abstract: It is no accident that democracy first arose within the ambit of Western or Latin Christianity. Looking at Christianity and democracy around the world today, one sees that the Roman Catholic Church has shed its stance of opposition, or at best grudging accommodation, to democracy and in fact become a defender of human rights and government by consent. Protestants affirm democracy as well, and the world of Orthodoxy, while ambivalent, is leaning in a direction that essentially accepts democracy. In their attitudes toward politics and the public sphere at least, all faiths that embrace democracy also tend to undergo a certain “Protestantization.”