Rites (and Wrongs) of Democracy

I am not sad to be living abroad during this election season.  The Atlantic may not be a complete buffer from all the silliness and vitriol swamping American democracy, but it’s at least a filter.

My diagnosis of our civic decadence is hardly original: the connection between the increasing dysfunction of American public life and a decline in religious belief and practice is hard to overlook.  Religion, after all, provides a horizon of meaning and values capable of transcending partisan conflicts.  Since mailing in my ballot a few weeks ago, however, I’ve been reflecting on one particular dimension of American dysfunction.  I’m a sacramental theologian, so I’ve been thinking about civic rituals.

Some 1600 years ago, St. Augustine argued that visible rites are necessary to hold religious communities together.  Take away such rites, he warned, and societies won’t cohere. (Contra Faustum 19.11)  Today we would call his observation “sociology of religion” rather than theology since he thought that it applied to both true and false religions. Over the past several decades an academic field dedicated to how and why rites work – ritual studies – has emerged, shaking off the anti-ritual biases of much 19th-century religious scholarship.

Augustine was writing specifically about religious communities, but his observations apply to civic life as well.  Robert Bellah’s 1967 article “Civil Religion in America” argued that American political society relies upon a common heritage of religious symbolism that overlaps with the diverse religious commitments of its citizens.  This heritage includes beliefs, rhetoric, narratives, and a stock of civic ceremonies that strike spiritual chords – from singing the National Anthem at baseball games to invocations at the inauguration of presidents.

None of these, of course, are the equivalent of sacraments.  Augustine’s explanation gives one reason religious rituals are necessary, but it’s hardly the most important.  Civil religion can’t promise salvation and, when it comes to ultimate meaning, is at best a supplement to the far richer spiritual life provided by genuine religious confessions.  Part of the promise of the American republic, after all, is to protect the free expression of those confessions.  But civil religion at least fosters common values necessary for a diverse people to live together as a nation.

So even if they’re theologically thin, civil rites are necessary.  Whether royal coronations or election night concession speeches, these rites help to legitimize the power that governments exercise over their people.  For all our democratic rhetoric about the “will of the people,” what exactly this phrase means is hardly self-evident.  Receiving fifty percent of the votes plus one doesn’t guarantee just governance.

Abraham Lincoln won the most consequential election in American history with just 39.8 percent of the popular vote.  In Europe, parliamentary systems often empower losing parties.  The Founding Fathers’ instinct to shield our nation from the brute will of the people through a system of checks and balances – a republic, not pure democracy – seems especially sound today.

Whatever happens on November 5, the result will represent, at most, the grudging will of about half of us.  We need a bit of ceremony to convince ourselves to go along with that.

1860 Presidential Election poster [Library of Congress]

Ceremony helps because ritual works through symbols; it places political actions into a symbolic framework that suggests a larger meaning.  We may not be happy about the results of a particular election, but invoking the flag, sunrise over Fort McHenry, and the Constitution all help us to remember the larger project to which we are committed and of which any particular electoral result is but one moment.

One of our recent problems – neither the greatest nor the least – is that our past several elections have been ritual disasters.  America’s civic rites are rather spare – Habsburgs or Windsors we are not – but that makes the few we have even more essential.

Elections are among the most important.  Even though I have to vote by mail, I’m sad to see voting on Election Day diminish.  Instead of converging on the neighborhood precinct, casting a ballot alone changes what voting means as a symbolic act.  Seeing our neighbors on election day and standing in line together at the polls involves us in a common act, even if we check different boxes.  The extra effort required to go to the balloting place invests one more concretely in the rite.  Voting alone and mailing it in are symbolic of an alienated electorate.

Both early voting and the withering of presidential debates – debating being part of our mythology since Lincoln and Douglas – have also changed our understanding of the type of action elections are.  No longer do voters play the role of jurors hearing both sides make their case.  Instead, they are like Russian infantrymen, simply to be marshaled to overwhelm the other side with numbers.

No electorate, of course, is ever a reasonable and dispassionate jury, but the form that our elections take shapes our understanding of what we’re doing.  As in our legal system, formalities are a reminder to think things through.

Election Night itself is also a kind of liturgy, and departing from its rubrics has come at a cost.  The states lighting up red and blue followed by concession and victory speeches meant we’d go to bed either elated or disappointed – but then get up in the morning to do something else.

The rituality of it helped to channel political passions, so they didn’t get out of hand.  When election disputes drag on into December, our social fabric frays.  The form of trial, deliberation, and decision is replaced by the paradigm of trench warfare.

I write unsure of what will happen in November and, frankly, anxious about how much of our civic life can be stitched back together.  Catholics, at least, can draw wisdom and perspective from a tradition far deeper than that offered by civil religion.  Our sacraments place us within the only narrative that’s true in any ultimate sense, and not to be taken for granted.  As Augustine knew, getting our rites wrong makes a lot of other things fall apart.

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Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky On the Matter of Catholic Voter Guides

Fr. Anthony R. Lusvardi, SJ, teaches sacramental theology at the Gregorian University in Rome. He is the author of Baptism of Desire and Christian Salvation (Catholic University of America Press, 2024) and numerous other essays, short stories, and articles. More on his work and writing can be found at his website tonylusvardisj.com.

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