Tag: democracy

The Lewisian View of Democracy

  

My doctorate is in history. My teaching career included seven years in a graduate school of government, showing how history needs to be taken into account when considering the function of government and public policy. And of course the basis for everything I have taught has been Biblical principles. Therefore, it’s not hard to understand why I maintain an active interest in politics and current affairs. I seek to educate others in those principles and hope to see them influence… Read more »

Lewis & the Public Square (Part 3)

  

I’ve been sharing some of the paper I’m going to present at the upcoming C. S. Lewis Foundation summer conference. The theme of the conference is on how Christians can participate in the public square. The last section of my paper draws on Lewis’s insights on that matter. In my previous excerpt, Lewis was writing about some of the pitfalls of democracy. He continues in that vein: Lewis had an exchange on this issue with one of his regular American… Read more »

Lewis & the Public Square (Part 2)

  

Last Saturday, I posted a portion of the paper I’m delivering to the Academic Roundtable at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s summer conference. Today, I’d like to offer another excerpt dealing with how Lewis viewed the Christian’s responsibility to speak to the culture and government in the public square. Lewis called on his fellow Christians to engage the culture in every possible way. Education was certainly a key component for furthering the Biblical worldview; he called it “only the most… Read more »

The Lewis-Chambers Missed Opportunity

  

Another of C. S. Lewis’s regular American correspondents was Mary Van Deusen, someone with whom he shared thoughts on deep theological issues and on current events. One of her chief concerns, in the early 1950s, was the knowledge of how communists had infiltrated the American government. In one response to her, Lewis talked about how that issue showcased one problem with the modern concept of democracy: Your question about Communists-in-government really raises the whole problem of Democracy. If one accepts… Read more »

Lewis: False Equality

  

What could possibly be wrong with the concept of equality? C. S. Lewis shows us that it has its boundaries, and he also reveals its darker underside. Here are his thoughts, taken from two separate essays: When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget but as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. . . . The demand for equality has two sources; one of them is… Read more »

Salt, Light, & Truth

  

I write often about the drift of our culture into acceptance of a type of sex God forbade. For many people, this whole issue is simply a matter of “democracy”—let the people decide what they want. When you introduce the moral element, they tell you that’s irrelevant. All that matters is that we are devoted to popular sovereignty. As a historian, I know that term well. The last time it was front and center in the political debate was prior… Read more »

Representative Government: An Insight from C. S. Lewis

  

C. S. Lewis didn’t write extensively on government, but when he did, he had insight into the basics. He uses the word “democracy” in the following quote, whereas I would prefer “representative government,” but his point is crystal clear and right on the mark: I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau,… Read more »