Who is entitled to define policy in the churches, why, and under what conditions? On 2 March 2010, Roman Catholic Bishop Huub Ernst of Breda, responding to a series of questions, reflected upon the connections between sociological expertise and episcopal decision-making in the Netherlands in what is referred to as ‘the long 1960s’. Concerning the possible value of the well-known celibacy poll of 1968 for creating a blueprint for ecclesiastical strategies, Bishop Ernst remembered that the poll functioned as a fact-finding technique as well as an instrument of dialogue. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), solidified opinions enabled the bishops to come to know the sensus fidelium, characterised by Ernst as the ability to recognize the truth as provided to the faithful by the Holy Spirit.
The book under review, Democracy and the Christian Churches, by theologian Donald W. Norwood, allows us to relate statements about the intellectual and performative roles of decision-makers in the ecclesiastical context to lines of reasoning which theologians have articulated through the ages. Norwood is a man on a mission. Against the contemporary backdrop of the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America (2016) and Brexit in the making (since 2016), he sets out to prove that “the Jewish-Christian tradition has great resources to draw on as we hope for better ways of reaching decisions together, governing and being governed” (1). Norwood clearly believes that, “given the choice of tyranny or democracy, churches must always opt for democracy” (2).
The author builds his case for democracy in the churches over the course of six chapters. The first part of the book is devoted to Reformed and Catholic convictions about democracy. In the first chapter, Norwood chronologically explores the thinking of no less than twelve Reformed theologians and philosophers: John Calvin, Jean Morély, Johannes Althusius, Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Nathanial Micklem, Ernest Barker, Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, Peter Taylor Forsyth, Jacques Ellul, Jürgen Moltmann, and John De Gruchy. In one way or another, all of them argue in favour of the active participation of churchgoers in collegial leadership and church government. In sharp contrast with Reformed traditions, as Norwood explains in the second chapter on the basis of the work of theologians and commentators such as Alexis De Tocqueville, Jacques Maritain, Leonardo Boff, William Cavanaugh, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and John Courtney Murray, Rome—the Roman Catholic Church—is structured much more in a vertical fashion. It is governed as a hierarchical institute in a socio-religious order designed by God, meaning that power trickles downward from the Pope to bishops, priests, and, ultimately, the laity. In the second part of the book, the topics of accountability, equality, and subsidiarity (Chapter 3), the position of women (Chapter 4), religious pluralism (Chapter 5), and church and theology in the public square (Chapter 6) are examined.
If one has to identify something to be desired in this book, two things in particular spring to mind. Firstly, I would like to have learned more about the way in which historical actors have linked theological reasoning ‘to the ground’ in day-to-day situations by adopting or declining democratic tendencies in the churches. During the Dutch Pastoral Council (1966/68–1970), for instance, which represents the very first follow-up of Vatican II across the globe, laymen and laywomen were able freely to discuss matters such as church authority along with the bishops and, in this way, engage in ecclesiastical policy formation. Secondly, Norwood’s rather one-sided and quite uniform picture of the Roman Catholic Church—unity does not always rule out pluriformity—would have benefited from drawing religious orders and congregations into the analysis. These sometimes extremely powerful and centuries-old institutes, in which democratic elements are much more present than in the Church, have regularly acted as fierce opponents of Roman policies.
Overall, however, Norwood’s scholarly expedition, a valuable contribution par excellence to practical theology, especially demonstrates that religion is politics and that politics is religion, highlights a rich variety of theological thinking concerning democracy, and convincingly claims that theology can (and perhaps must) play a significant role in public debate, particularly in a Western world which seems to become increasingly secular.