Universal Theocracy

Democratic Republic, Constitutional Monarchy, Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Tyranny (e.g. Dictatorship) – Constitutional Theocracy doesn’t make the cut, at least not according to most 21st century textbooks. Perhaps that’s because every form of government is a Constitutional Theocracy! 

Whether acknowledged or not, every government, regardless of its form, has built into it certain guardrails…and an escape hatch. These extra-constitutional devices base their claim to legitimacy on a power higher than any mere political process.  

Existentialist theologian Paul Tillich defined Faith as ‘ultimate concern’. Whatever your ‘ultimate concern’, that is the Good as you conceive it, that is where you place your trust, and therefore that is your higher power, your God. It is everyone’s court of last resort; it is the common venue for every final appeal. 

Applying Tillich geo-politically, every ‘state’ grounds its claim to authority on something beyond itself. For example, consider how King James I of England (VI of Scotland), articulated the doctrine known as the Divine Right of Kings:

“Kings are justly called Gods, for they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth. For if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king…God hath power to create, or destroy, make or unmake at his pleasure, to give life or send death, to judge all, and to be judged nor accountable to none…And the like power have Kings...(to) make of their subjects like men at the chess, pawn to take a bishop or a knight…” 

Closer to home, consider the United States today. There is a complex system of checks and balances in place, a tri-partite separation of powers, a federal system of shared sovereignty with states, and a Bill of Rights bolted onto the Constitution itself. 

Even so, one wonders what would happen if these democratic processes produced a result that was perceived to be an existential threat to the nation itself or a radical and irredeemable violation of objective standards of Justice. 

Farfetched? Not at all! Turns out, the founders anticipated just such an eventuality…and provided several escape hatches: 

• Private citizens have the right to bear arms; and

• They have the right to participate in well-regulated militias.

• Juries have the (much contested) right to nullify unjust laws at the time of their application. 

In fact, the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s birth certificate, confirms the right of people to take up arms against a government whose policies abridge divine principles:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men (sic), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…”

According to this doctrine, the ‘King’ (ruler) is responsible only to the people and the people are responsible only to God! MMA Headliner: Jefferson takes on James for the soul of the millennium. (Catch it live on ESPN and ABC.)

Speaking of the UK, a similar function is served by Common Law, the Magna Carta, the parliamentary system, and the constitutional monarch. Even so, freedom of speech was substantially curtailed during the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and political participation by certain extremist political groups has recently been prohibited. 

In Iran, the secular authorities are subservient to the clerics. In Algeria, elections were cancelled when it appeared that a fundamentalist party (FIS) was poised for victory. In Germany, certain political parties have been outlawed and use of symbols and rhetoric invoking the Nazi era is considered a crime. 

In some countries, the military serves as the final court of appeal. Plus there is a trend, snowballing around the world, to bring legal actions, criminal and civil, against one’s political opponents. In some cases (e.g. France, Italy) certain politicians have been barred from participating in the electoral process as a result. 

Finally, during the death throes of the Soviet Union several ‘constitutional’ Eastern European governments simply stepped aside to allow a new wave of Western looking leaders to take charge.

I pass no judgment, pro or con, on any of these arrangements. I cite them simply to demonstrate that all states, regardless of titular form, recognize some sort of ‘higher power’ to which their constitutional institutions are based and to which they are subject.

In the perpetual shunting of the loom from process to policy and from function back to form, the space reserved for society’s constitutional organs varies…but it always exists within limits imposed by a transcendent standard from which they derive their ‘limited and contingent’ legitimacy. 

We all live in a Constitutional Theocracy. Acknowledge it!

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The Triumph of Marat by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1794) depicts the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat being carried triumphantly through a cheering crowd after his acquittal by the Revolutionary Tribunal. Painted during the height of the French Revolution, it captures the fervent idolization of Marat as a hero of the people and symbol of resistance against tyranny. Boilly’s composition, with its dense crowd and celebratory energy, reflects both the passion and the volatility of revolutionary zeal in a society on the brink of chaos.