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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 14, No. 4. April 26, 1951

Democracy in New Zealand — No Democracy Without Christianity

Democracy in New Zealand

No Democracy Without Christianity

For see your calling brethren, how not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world .... the weak things .... the base things .... the things which are despised.

(1 Cor. 126-7-8.)

You will see the relevance of the text when I say that I want to think out with you some elementary thoughts about the relationship between Christianity and Democracy. And it seems so true of democratic government that not many wise, or mighty, or noble men are called to it, but that it has to work through the foolish, through the weak, the base and the despised. That surely is where many of the problems peculiar to democracy arise—that ordinary folk govern, and that therefore it's terribly important what kind of person the ordinary man is.

Where, then, stands democracy in our culture to-day, and what has Christianity to say about it?

Democracy is Difficult

1. Now do you recognise what an extraordinarily difficult system of government democracy is? It makes tremendous demands on all of us. In a dictatorship the ordinary man has no responsibility, and if things go wrong, at least he is not responsible for them, and in an emergency he can cut off the heads of the powers that be, as he did in the case of Charles I, Louis XVI, and the last Czar. But when you have government by the people you have great difficulties. There is the obvious one—decisions can be intolerably slow in being reached and in being acted upon. But others are more fundamental. The people are not ipso facto protected for doing wrong—in an election they may be swayed by passion, by selfishness, by fear, by anything except the highest good of all. Selfish class interests are just as possible in a democratic government as they are in a dictatorship. Just to have a democracy is by no means the panacea that some of our American friends would have us believe, because in democracy we are dealing with people, and immediately we come up against the age old Christian teaching, shown in our generation to be a fact, that man is unredeemed and shows himself by his action to be sinful. And it is this sinful human being that democracy turns into a ruler.

In times past, this was not always recognised. From the days of Tom Paine and Rousseau, democracy seemed to have a chance. Men believed in men, and felt they were good enough to be trusted with government. The development of the scientific era at first seems to substantiate this belief. Man was evolving so satisfactorily that soon he would have everything under his control: with the power that science was giving him, he would soon be able to govern the universe. It was left to our generation to realise the truth of Christian Teaching, that man with all his knowledge, with all his progress, is simply not good enough to be trusted with the power that science and technology have given him. But we can see clearly enough now at the beginning of this century there was a secular philosophical basis for democracy, in the belief that scientific discovery would not only make men more comfortable, but also better. We know now that this is not the case.

Self Interest—not Democracy

2. I said that democracy makes great demands on us. Two of the greatest arc probably these—that we must take the responsibility of government seriously; and that we must be able to trust each other and work out this trust in a deliberate attempt to seek the greatest good of all. I want to sec now whether these demands are being accepted here in democratic New Zealand.

Very briefly, about the first—we do not accept our responsibilities. Within the last six months there have been two very important elections in Wellington—the City Council election and the Brooklyn by-election. In both, only about fifty per cent of the electors voted. That speaks for itself, and one can only add that it is of such apathy that dictatorships are born.

Now for the question of trust and seeking the highest good of all. The Librarian of this College has written a very good and fresh history of New Zealand. One of the interesting points he makes bears on our subject. It is that every government in New Zealand has governed in the interests of one class. For the first 40 years, the government used the whole economy of the country on behalf of the squatters. The Maori Wars were just one of the results! Under Massey and Ward, government was in the interests of the small farmers. From 1935-49 the Labour government used the economy of the country on behalf of the working people. And perhaps we can add to Mr. Miller's findings and say that now it is used for the benefit of those uneasy bedmates—big business and the farm.

There is here an example of selfish class interests by all groups: and certainly it is difficult to find many seeking the highest good of all.

We have an even more striking example in the industrial disputes of to-day. On the one side we see a union, which by the very nature of the work, encourages into its ranks not always the best of working men: a union which seems to have quite a good claim for better wages and conditions, and yet which, in the quality of work done in the past, has little to justify them: a union which has always seemed to fly to direct action. On the other side, the ship-owners, notorious the world over for being ultra conservative and for being difficult to get on with. All this is complicated by a government which has introduced the most iniquitous code of regulations yet seen in Western [unclear: democracy] regulations which limit any attempt to put the union's case and result in any public criticism being stifled.

On the one hand we see a democratically elected government seeking to gain its own ends by undemocratic action: on the other, a democratically elected union executive seeking to gain its own ends at the expense of the rest of the community. Here is a vivid example of democracy going wrong. In fact, it is not too much to say that it seems obvious that such an impasse is the natural outcome of democracy in an unconverted world. We have moved a long way from Tom Paine and Rousseau.

Does this mean that democracy has failed and must fail?

Secular Failure!

3. There have been various secular attempts to find a way out. They all agree with Christianity that to improve matters you must change men. Communism claims that the redemptive act is the Communist Revolution—by means of which men will change from selfish beings into those desiring the highest good of all. We have not seen this result yet and as we look at countries who are experimenting on these lines, we see no signs of success. Non-Christian Socialism has felt much the same, but with different emphasis—that the process of lifting men up from the level of beasts to that of human beings by political and social action will change men and cause men to work for the common good. There is little in the history of our country in the last fifteen years to substantiate this claim. The Christian will always feel that there is much good in socialism—security of employment, an adequate wage, labour and capital sharing, the control of industry, security in old age, are merely laudible objectives—but as the Christian looks at the New Zealand scene, he will be forced to deny that so far it has succeeded in changing selfish human nature and that, in fact, without some other factor, the Welfare State, necessary though it is in this unredeemed world, will actually increase the sin of selfishness in man.

Christian Answer?

4. Well, has Christianity an answer? Yes it has; but there is no short cut to it, Christianity starts with God and His relationship with men. God has made man to do His will in this world. Because man is God's highest creation he has personality and with that, as an essential part of his being, free will either to co-operate with God and do His will in the the world or to reject that will. He has used his free will consistently against God's will. This has shown itself primarily in the sin of selfishness, so that man, instead of living a God-centred life of service to his fellow men, has chosen the jungle way of existence.

So Christianity says that first and foremost a man's life must be changed, so that he no longer lives a selfish life, selfish either for himself or for his class or group. Christianity claims that the redemptive act is through the action of God displayed in the Incarnation—the life, work, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the extension of that work in the Christian church.

We claim that this changed life lived in the redeemed society, the Church, will show itself not in selfishness but in love. This love is directed primarily to good and displays itself in the worship of God, the desire to please God, and the desire for the best possible good for our fellow men. This will lead us into all kinds of action. It will lead us primarily to go out and vigorously proclaim the Gospel of Salvation; and at the same time (because the Christian is a realist) it will lead us to try and work out Christian principles in the unconverted world around us. This will, in the context of our subject to-day, lead us to be unpopular with many groups and camps, because we will be striving for the Christian principles of unself-fishness, of community rather than group interests, of liberty and of sacrifice for the common good and you will find, if you pursue this course honestly, that one group will hail you as the willing tool of the navy-blue reactionaries, and that another group will denounce you as red revolutionaries. If that happens, never mind—there is hope for the Church if she becomes unpopular!

The Courage of God

There, as I see it, is the dual role that you and I as Christians are called upon to play to-day. On the one hand, and primarily, proclaiming again and again that human nature must change, and that God in Christ can change it. On the other hand, and at the same time seeing that as far as is possible in this unconverted world Christian principles are applied as between man and man.

The urgency is great. Christianity does not maintain that democracy is the only possible form of government. But I think that most Christians would agree that it is the highest form so far attained. We feel that it is so high that without Christianity it must fail, because by itself it cannot change the ordinary man; and democracy is government by the ordinary man.

Without the change that Christianity brings, men will not accept full responsibility, will not trust each other, will not seek the highest good of all and in disgust men will allow tyranny to govern, whether the Fascist form we knew in Italy and Germany, the Communist behind the Iron Curtain, or that of the Big Business and Party Boss that we see in the U.S.A.

We Christians have our task, and we must get to it. But I would like to close with this warning. Let us get to it as Christians—as people who have turned to their God through Christ, who are continually and regularly returning to Him in worship, and who, with the indwelling spirit of God in their hearts will take the inspiration, the clear thinking, the courage, they have found in their worship out into the world to tackle problems like those we have been discussing.

This sermon was preached by the Rev. Allan Pyatt, M.A., at an S.C.M. University Service held at Victoria College on 8th April, 1951.