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Christianity and Democratisation: From Pious Subjects to Critical Participants

Online ISBN:
9781781702000
Print ISBN:
9780719077388
Publisher:
Manchester University Press
Book

Christianity and Democratisation: From Pious Subjects to Critical Participants

Published:
1 February 2009
Online ISBN:
9781781702000
Print ISBN:
9780719077388
Publisher:
Manchester University Press

Abstract

This book examines the contribution of different Christian traditions to the waves of democratisation that have swept various parts of the world in recent decades, offering an historical overview of Christianity's engagement with the development of democracy, before focusing in detail on the period since the 1970s. Successive chapters deal with: the Roman Catholic conversion to democracy and the contribution of that church to democratisation; the Eastern Orthodox ‘hesitation’ about democracy; the alleged threat to American democracy posed by the politicisation of conservative Protestantism; and the likely impact on democratic development of the global expansion of Pentecostalism. The author draws out several common themes from the analysis of these case studies, the most important of which is the ‘liberal-democracy paradox’. This ensures that there will always be tensions between faiths which proclaim some notion of absolute truth and political order, and which are also rooted in the ideas of compromise, negotiation and bargaining.

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