I often find myself thinking back to a Commencement Speech during my son Randy’s graduation from Southern New Hampshire University in 2008. The speech delivered by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard University Business School, was on “The Importance of the Right Question.” I reflect on that speech now because of a question Christensen recalled asking a Marxist economist from China who was completing a fellowship in the United States.
Professor Christensen asked his Chinese friend if he had learned anything about democracy and capitalism that surprised him. The economist’s answer surprised Christensen and, I’m certain, most people at that commencement.
“I had no idea how critical religion is to the functioning of democracy and capitalism,” Christensen’s friend replied. He went on to explain that in America’s churches people are taught to voluntarily obey the law, to respect other people’s property, not cheat, steal or lie. Democracy works, he noted, because most people voluntarily obey the laws most of the time. Capitalism works for the same reason and because most people voluntarily keep their promises. Why? Because even if they can break laws, lie, cheat and steal and not get caught, religion teaches them that they are accountable to a higher power.
Christensen’s Marxist friend is not the first foreigner to recognize the importance of religion for the success of a democracy. Back in the 1800 French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville published a book titled Democracy in America. In it he wrote:
"I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
But we Americans now have a problem, and it is a critical one that threatens our democracy. As a number of studies have begun to demonstrate, religion in America is on the decline. !n her article for Psychology Today “The Real Reason Religion Is Declining In America” Jean M. Twenge reveals that “Millennials are the least religious generation in American history.” Her study found that the reason for this is because of our society’s obsessive focus on individualism and the culture of “me” at the expense of social rules and responsibilities.
That’s why I keep recalling the Christensen commencement speech and the response of his Chinese friend about democracy and capitalism. We really are now a democracy at risk.
Without religion which constantly reminds us that we are accountable to a higher power, no amount of laws or societal regulations will save our democracy, or us, from ruin. As C. S. Lewis has pointed out:
"What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behavior, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill-temper and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? …It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft and bullying that goes on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society. That is why we must go on to think of the second thing: of morality inside the individual." [C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity, p. 72]
If democracy in America is to survive, we must, each of us, recognize religion’s critical importance to us—and to our nation.