Proclaimdem/rel101925
Rev. Art McDonald Oct 19, 2025
I’m one of those dinosaurs who still gets the daily newspaper, the Boston Globe, delivered 7 days a week. As a Latin American historian once wrote, I eat the newspaper for breakfast. A few months back, an article in the IDEAS section of the Sunday Globe especially got my attention: “Does American Democracy need more religion?” I’m guessing most liberals, including many of you, would answer emphatically, NO! The article was written by an associate editor of the Globe, a former Catholic now a UU, Christine Mehta. The piece is a reflection on a recent book entitled: Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy, written by a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, Jonathan Rauch. Noting that “ … the crisis of democracy and the crisis in Christianity have come about at the same time, and {furthermore} they seem to be fueling each other,” Rauch, a self-described secular Jew and an atheist, suggests “ … that we need religion, and Christianity in particular, for public life in America to function.” He actually describes Christianity as “the load-bearing wall” that supports our democracy. The problem is, Rauch argues, Christianity, like our democracy is broken, splintered, and specifically in the case of the U.S., which is his entire focus, without Christianity, our democracy is failing. Just to repeat, Rauch is a secular, not religious Jew, and an atheist – still with me? So just what is it about religion, in this case Christianity in the U.S. that is so necessary for democracy in his view? “It’s the communal aspect of religion that does the heavy lifting in terms of the social benefit … the connectedness and charitable work and shared identity,” responds Rauch.
So what’s this guy smoking, you may ask? Where did such a thesis come from? As you may have guessed, given that I’ve spent most of my adult life committed to the proposition that religion can and, at times, does have a significant role to play in politics and society, I really wanted to explore his ideas with you this morning.
Historically, religion actually has played a significant role in advocating for democracy. Interestingly, when he was writing a document about religious freedom in Virginia in the 1780s, Thomas Jefferson actually read the constitution of the medieval Dominican religious order founded in 1216 because of its use of democratic principles in choosing its own leaders.
Going back further, the left wing of the Protestant Reformation, out of which came Baptists, Mennonites, Quakers, Congregationalists, and which constitutes our UU roots, the so-called free church movement or dissenting churches, developed as democratic institutions with power in the laity, not the clergy. Everyone has a voice in church governance, what we call congregational polity, an anti-authoritarian movement of believers, what UU theologian, James Luther Adams called the priesthood and prophethood of all believers.
Referring specifically to our own country, sociologist Robert Bellah reminds us that while serving as our first vice-president, John Adams said: “ We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” And, in his farewell address, Washington wrote: “Of all the suppositions and habits which lead to political prosperity religion and morality are indispensable supports.”
Many of you may remember the famous Frenchman, Alexis deTocqueville, who wrote about his experiences of democracy in the U.S. in the 1830s and suggested that the real school of republican virtue was the church and that religion was the first of our political institutions. The church not only gave us values but our first lessons in participation in public life, which helped make our democracy successful, according to Robert Bellah. Tocqueville worried that the “commercial tendencies” of the people could lead to the “unrestrained pursuit of self-interest.” Religion, for deTocqueville, could turn “naked self-interest” into “self-interest rightly understood,” that is “public – spirited and capable of self-sacrifice.”
So having tried to lay the groundwork for making a case for the importance of religion in democracy, and for Rauch, specifically, the importance of Christianity in our U.S. context, where is our democracy at today? Based on yesterday’s no kings’ rallies across the country and all of our acts of resistance since the inauguration of President Trump, I’d say it’s endangered. But this is not a new concern. In 1830 deTocqueville worried about democracy’s future in this country. And more recently, there have been a number of books about the failure of liberalism, a word we UUs often used to describe ourselves, and a perspective we deeply aspire to and appreciate as a product of the liberation of the Enlightenment period in our history, which, in many ways freed us from tyranny and authoritarianism – and some of the worse forms of religious intolerance – and promoted the importance of reason. This was a great advance for freedom. But there are many who are now suggesting liberalism has flaws, perhaps, fatal flaws. And, the Enlightenment greatly diminished the role of religion.
For theologian David Gushee, our liberal democratic system has been greatly influenced by English philosopher, John Locke. Although Locke’s ideas of liberal democracy were a great advance for individual freedom and rights, his ideas, focused on freedom from tyranny and domination, were very individualist and libertarian, without a broader, shared vision for society. It purposely limited government’s role, maximizing individual liberty. He calls this a thin tradition, with very little in the way of a shared communal vision. He would argue that our declaration of Independence, our constitution and our Bill of Rights pretty much have the same flaws, that is, very little about the common good, justice or the general welfare. Agreeing, theologian Ron Sanders writes: “our democracy is a thin tradition, because it rests on a negative ethic of noninterference and avoiding harm to the liberty of others. It needs a complementary tradition with virtues to carry it forward. At its best, Christianity (religion) has those virtues. Rauch, the secular Jew, atheist, agrees?! He writes: “In today’s U.S. , we see evidence everywhere of the inadequacy of secular liberalism to provide meaning, exaltation, spirituality, transcendence, and morality anchored in more than the self. As the U.S. has secularized over the past 50 years, cynicism about politics, disdain for institutions, and discontent with public life have risen.” He cites a recent poll about what people suggest has the most value for them in this period. The frequent answer: MAKING MONEY.
At a family gathering of 4 generations last year, I got talking with a grand nephew of 14 years old. I asked him about life, about school, about his interests, so what are you most interested in, I asked: MONEY, he said! 14 years’old!
Truth be told, according to a number of commentators, Christian dissenters and Enlightenment liberals together created modern democracy, but the religious component has been often overlooked. But it is religion that can help us overcome the limitedness and weaknesses/flaws of liberalism. But is it too late? As you all know, mainline Christian churches are emptying out.

Reflecting on the state of Christianity in this country, Rauch develops three categories, what he calls thin Christianity, sharp Christianity and Thick Christianity. He suggests that, for the most part, liberal Christian churches are pretty thin, they merely reflect liberal thinking in the wider culture, that is, they have no serious theology with which to counter the limits of liberalism. UUs can fall into this trip when we over emphasis individualism and individual liberties vs community and the common good.
His second category, what he calls sharp Christianity, is faith based on fear and its worst example is what we are now experiencing in our culture that is often referred to as white Christian nationalism, a call for the nation to declare Christianity as a state religion, a total violation of our history of church-state separation. One theologian prefers to call this sharp Christianity, authoritarian reactionary Christianity, a very right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, white nationalist ideology, unfortunately embodied in Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA movement. Let’s be clear, what happened to Charlie Kirk is horrible and to be condemned unequivocally. However, despite his image as a loving Christian, who Catholic Cardinal Dolan of NY suggested reminds him of St. Paul, Kirk’s message was laced with hate and division, and, I would suggest, much more a political movement than a religious one. And this sharp Christianity seems to have been energized by Kirk’s assassination, even making it into the front page of the Boston Globe Friday, seemingly attracting more and more young conservatives to its cause.
Lastly, Rauch identifies what is really needed from Christianity in these days, what he calls thick Christianity, referring to the witness of the Jewish prophets of the older testament, who challenged kings for neglecting the poor, and the prophet Jesus, who was the victim of capital punishment for his preaching of a different kind of kingdom, God’s kingdom of love, justice and compassion, and the Christianity of Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, jr, who challenged our democracy to live up to its ideals, using the thick Christianity of the early church and the dissenting church of the Reformation, to march and witness to the Gospel of equality, peace, love and justice.
As a UU minister, as best I can when preaching on contentious social issues like immigration and universal health care and anti-war, I always try to ground my views in thick theology, based on scripture or more recent UU social teaching. But it can be a tough sell for folks in the congregation who differ on these views. The problem is, I believe, that we haven’t done a good job of teaching thick religion. In writing his book, Rauch interviewed some pastors, one of whom said that we are lacking in the spiritual-theological formation of our people. More and more, pastors told him their congregants are formed by a political or cultural view, not by church teachings. Or, they react negatively by saying that politics doesn’t belong in the pulpit, articulating a sharp distinction between faith and politics, as if one’s faith or religious values should have no role in forming political judgments.
One congregant in Essex, after having been a member of the church for many years, said to me after a sermon that she has to leave the church because everyone in the church is a Democrat and I’m Republican. Even though I shaped the sermon based on theology, the bible and recent UU social declarations, she attributed my views to being Democratic. No, my views are based on our theology, I protested. She was not buying. Her lens, as the one pastoral suggested, was wholly political, Democrat vs Republican. She did leave. I felt I and the church failed her. She was a wonderful person with great personal values that she showed others in the congregation all the time. But her social values were quite different than most. We failed to make the right connections between our social, religious, theological values and society; Our/my bad.
At a workshop I did recently on political holiness, one participant said to the group, she has a friend who is wonderful and loving, who would do anything for her, but they have widely divergent political views. We share values, she said, but we can’t talk about what’s going on around us. My response was that you clearly share personal values and your friend would be there for you when needed but you don’t share social values, that is, understandings of what is going on in society. They are not the same. A key part of being in a religious community is to have our social values influenced by our thick theology. While serving a UU church in Pittsburgh, I had a congregant who said to me one day that she was quite capable of forming her own social-political views, but she always wanted to hear what I had to say about biblical and UU theology and values, which would help her shape her own vision.
In the turbulent, divisive, violent times in which we are living, it’s crucial, in my view, to get our theology, our values straight, in Rauchian terms, act from a thick theology. We have plenty of recent examples of thick theological-faith-based movements, Civil Rights in the sixties, led by Dr. King’s thick theology, the religious solidarity movement and sanctuary churches and synagogues in the 1980s, Rev William Barber’s current poor peoples’ movement and his moral Mondays witness. And, locally, but also across the country, faith-based community organizing groups like ECCO, whose thick theology is now working on housing issues and rent control, as well as solidarity with immigrants.
As theologian David Gushee writes, we need to reconnect with the five-hundred-year-old democratic strands of the Christian tradition, based on congregational polity with its lay-led focus, as is our UU tradition. What we now need is what he calls “robust church participation and training in virtue, knowing that our societies need mature citizens trained in compassion, responsibility, service, honesty and wisdom, promoting democracy and civic participation,” as demonstrated by yesterday’s massive no kings’ rallies.
Our own UU theologian, James Luther Adams, who was greatly shaped by his experiences in pre-Nazi Germany, where he was studying thick theology, writes: “The living democratic society requires the disciplines of discussion and common action for the determination of policy.” Participation is central to our faith. In referring to the Newer Testament words about the early Christians, “By their fruits shall you know them,” Adams adds the admonition “by their groups shall you know them.” So, we ask, what are your groups? /.