Faith in Communication and Faith in Democracy: Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch on Community and Religion

What does democracy entail, especially in pluralistic and divided modern communities? How might religion be summoned as a motivation for democracies commands? This article engages the work of Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch in a rumination on democracy and its religious aspects. Simkhovitch is an under-studied voice in the pragmatist tradition, and her unpublished speeches on religion, love, and care for others gives us the materials with which to construct a notion of democracy that proffers attention to the local community that surrounds us, and that makes up larger senses of community beyond us. Simkhovitch’s Christian-inspired sense of loving one’s neighbor—and living actively among them—helps us see that democracy has a very local sense. It also shows a way that a pragmatic approach to religion can provide a pro-social path of melioration and activism.