Enchanted democracy: Religion and democratic thought in nineteenth-century Latin America

The forthcoming article “Enchanted democracy: Religion and democratic thought in nineteenth-century Latin America” by Michael S. Thomas is summarized by the author below.

The persistence of religion has forced political theorists and political scientists to grapple with how religious reasons, practices, and beliefs relate to democratic politics. Often, theorists ask how and where religion or religious reasons should “fit” within already-existing democratic societies of equality, reciprocity, and civility. In contrast to this approach, this article examines an overlooked strand of nineteenth-century Latin American democratic thought that I call enchanted democracy, epitomized in the work of the Chilean radical thinker, Francisco Bilbao (1823-1865). Rather than banishing metaphysics to clear the ground for democratic politics, Bilbao deployed theology to construct and justify equality, reciprocity, and civility where it did not yet exist: at the dawn of the democratic age in Latin America. One of the most radical democrats of his century, Bilbao saw in theology an important theoretical tool to instantiate a deeply controversial politics: mass democracy. Unlike more well-known, state-centric theories of civil religion meant to stabilize the political (Rousseau) or the theorization of religion as a corrective for what democracy might deform in citizens’ hearts (Tocqueville), Bilbao saw in democracy itself a sacred politics, the eschatological destination of humanity. This vision is what I call enchanted democracy, melting divine presence directly into the realm of politics. Even as he fiercely critcized the Catholic Church, Bilbao deployed the lives of saints, sacraments, and scripture to justify mass expansion of suffrage, direct democracy, and social equality.

But why would an anti-clerical, radical democrat rely upon theology to make his case for democracy? Religious practice and theological resources contained elements that allowed citizens to grasp a democratic politics of equality yet to be instantiated. This article traces three ways that Bilbao’s enchantment of democracy served to justify democratic politics. The first task was to justify mass political inclusion. Against liberals of the day who used “reason” and “capacity” as a means of political exclusion, Bilbao theorized the human person as a sharer in God’s essence, who is sovereign reason. Secondly, Bilbao aimed to harmonize class conflict and overcome the tension between the good of the whole and individual rights. To this end, Bilbao produced a theory of solidarismo (solidarity). This account of solidarity was explicitly cosmopolitan, invoking the Trinity as a model of unity, aspiring for humanity to “be one as God is one.” Finally, Bilbao’s enchanted democracy constructed an ideal of sacrificial love embodied in the life of the seventeenth-century Peruvian Saint, Rose of Lima. This theory of love, grounded in the saint’s example and in cultic devotion to the saint, sacralized the revolutionary value of fraternité but without sentimentality, theorizing democratic love as a tether that binds and a costly duty of sacrifice.

Recovering enchanted democracy signals the importance of religious thought in the construction of modern democratic politics. It also signals the importance of Latin America as a site of democratic theory and theorization of the relationship between religion and politics. Religion has not disappeared from the public realm and remains salient in the world’s democracies. Theorists have begun to explore conceptualizations of democratic politics and religion that are alternatives to US-style separation of Church and state. This article suggests that both Bilbao and modern Latin American thought more broadly have something to offer to this discussion. Features of Latin American political modernity – constitutionalism, popular sovereignty, democracy, human rights, even Marxism – were theorized by many Latin American actors who were sensitive to the place of religion, and many who argued that religious ideas and spirituality were essential to their political projects.

About the Author: Michael S. Thomas is a Ph.D candidate at Stanford University. Their research “Enchanted democracy: Religion and democratic thought in nineteenth-century Latin America” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.