As the US presidential election approaches, more than 200 Christian leaders, including the outgoing Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Revd Michael Curry, have signed an open letter, which warns that democracy is under threat, and argues that defending democracy is a “test of faith”.
They write: “The rise of anti-democratic sentiment and nationalist ideologies imperils our common life and threatens the cultivation of communal and global peace.”
But they also acknowledge that the Church’s own relationship with democracy has been varied. “Christianity has had an ambivalent and at times hostile relationship with democracy, as evidenced in colonial domination and the dispossession of indigenous peoples, the brutal enslavement of Africans, and the denial of women’s rights.”
Their concern now is that the Christian faith is being distorted by authoritarian leaders for their own political ends: “In recent years, in the United States and around the world, the Christian faith has been distorted and leveraged in defence of authoritarian leaders who seek to erode freedoms essential to a thriving democracy.”
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