Let’s take a break from conflict in the Middle East to have a conversation about events closer to home. Andrew Cuomo conceded in yesterday’s New York City mayoral Democratic primary to Muslim socialist Zohran Mamdani. A Democratic strategist called the former governor’s loss the “biggest upset in modern New York City history.” Mamdani made headlines with his strong support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel.
With five likely candidates, including incumbent mayor Eric Adams running as an independent, the general election in November could be “the strangest local election in at least half a century.”
An election with thirty-nine parties
In America, anyone meeting legal qualifications can run for political office. The same is true in Israel, where any Israeli citizen over the age of twenty-one (with a few exceptions) can form a political party and run for the Knesset, their parliament. In their latest elections, thirty-nine parties participated and fifteen won enough votes for their candidate to be seated.
Contrast these open elections with politics in Iran. Their Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently named three senior clerics as candidates to replace him if he were to die in the conflict with Israel. In that event, he instructed his nation’s Assembly of Experts, the clerical body responsible for appointing the supreme leader, to choose his successor from these names.
The country regularly holds elections for president and other offices, but they have far less power than the Supreme Leader, who rules essentially as an autocratic dictator. In addition, their elections are especially influenced by the Guardian Council, an unelected body that disqualifies any candidate it deems insufficiently loyal to the clerical establishment.
The Assembly of Experts empowered to appoint the Supreme Leader is chosen through elections, but its candidates must also be approved by the Guardian Council. And the Guardian Council’s members are appointed directly or indirectly by the Supreme Leader.
“Iran is not important. Islam is important.”
Iran’s theocracy is built on the belief that the nation should be governed by Sharia law. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, postulated that as the clergy have the greatest understanding of Islamic law, they should be the guardians of state power until the return of the Mahdi, their messiah.
Accordingly, the Supreme Leader holds final religious and political authority over all affairs of the state, ruling essentially by divine right. He can oppress his own people and lie to the world about his intentions in the service of advancing Islam as he understands it, or so he thinks. In Khamenei’s view, “Iran is not important. Islam is important.”
This concept is not new.
The Divine Right of Kings doctrine states that a monarch’s authority is derived from God rather than the people or their elected representatives. It developed during the Middle Ages but accelerated when, as a result of the Protestant Reformation, many religious reformers rejected the authority of the Pope and the Catholic church.
For example, England’s King James I (ruled 1603–25), the monarch to whom the King James Version was dedicated, asserted that “the State of MONARCHIE is the supremest thing upon earth” and stated that kings are “GOD’S Lieutenants upon earth.”
The American Declaration of Independence was therefore revolutionary in claiming that “all men are created equal” with “certain unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Its words catalyzed the American Revolution to institute a government “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Why do you believe in democracy?
Perhaps you believe people are innately good and capable of solving our greatest problems. As President Clinton asserted in his first inaugural address, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
In this view, democracy is the best form of governance since, in contrast to the “divine right of kings” or Iran’s theocracy, we deserve the right to govern ourselves.
Or perhaps you believe that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We sin by commission and by omission: “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17). To deny our sinfulness is itself a sin: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
In this view, we are not good people who sometimes do bad things but fallen people who sometimes do good things. Accordingly, democracy is valuable because none of us can be trusted with autonomous power over others. We cannot discern the mind and will of God so perfectly that we should be empowered to enforce our theocratic beliefs on others. And we cannot rule so justly that we should not be accountable to the voters who elect us and the laws and jurisprudence of the nation we serve.
But maybe not today
Let’s close by making our conversation confessional.
You will not be surprised to learn that I agree with the Bible and therefore see the value of democracy in holding sinful leaders accountable to the people they are intended to serve. I don’t want theocrats or kings to rule over me, since I know them to be as fallen as I am.
Now comes the confession: I do, however, believe all too often that I am capable of governing myself. I want to live in my own personal democracy where I get to vote for what I want and then empower myself to do it. I don’t want others to rule my life because I want to rule it myself.
I know that such self-enthronement is just as foolish as enthroning kings and theocrats—if all other humans are too sinful to rule me, as a human I am too sinful to rule myself.
But maybe not today, I tell myself. Maybe I can handle this temptation, overcome this obstacle, seize this moment, be my own god just this once. And today becomes tomorrow, and how I spend my days is how I spend my life, as Annie Dillard noticed.
So, today is a good day for a dethronement. A. W. Tozer was right:
In every Christian’s heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross; if he refuses the cross, he remains on the throne. Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among gospel believers today. We want to be saved, but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of [ourselves] and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar; but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.
Now we can see why Jesus declared,
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
Will you “come after” Jesus today?
Quote for the day:
“Jesus is not our life coach—he is our Lord.” —Michael Koulianos
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