“The United States is not a democracy! It’s a republic!” my independent Baptist high school government teacher declared over the sound of gunfire and cannons exploding in the Civil War re-enactment across the street. Almost three decades later, the debate still isn’t settled.
And it’s not just my old high school government teacher who seems to care about it. Utah Sen. Mike Lee wrote in 2020, “We are not a democracy.”
Arizona state Rep. Selina Bliss said last year: “We are not a democracy. Nowhere in the Constitution does it use the word ‘democracy.’ I think of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That’s not us.”
Tony Perkins
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, posted last week: “America is not a pure democracy; we are a constitutional republic. There’s a huge difference.”
Perkins linked to a “God and Government Course” where readers can “learn the difference.” According to FRC’s website, “God and Government is a video-driven, Bible-based training course perfect for homeschool parents and students, pastors, future leaders in civil government, and anyone wanting to make an impact for biblical truth.”
It’s obvious from watching the promo video that Perkins’ is caught up in Christian nationalist rhetoric. He says after graduating from Liberty University he set out on his own “to study Scripture for the historical record of America.” (How does one find the “historical record of America” in Scripture that was written long before our nation’s founding?)
Additionally, conservatives today often point to the Pledge of Allegiance, which says, “And to the republic, for which it stands.” (By the way, the Pledge of Allegiance is not a founding document; it dates to 1885.)
These same people who want the United States to be a republic instead of a democracy are the ones who insist on calling the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party.”
“The arguments people use today for which term they emphasize say more about their intentions than the Founding Fathers’ intentions.”
On the other side, President Joe Biden used to talk about how “equality and democracy are under assault.”
And in the world of religion and politics, The Convocation with Kristin Du Mez, Jemar Tisby, Diana Butler Bass and Robert P. Jones have “Faith and Democracy” conversations, not “Faith and the Republic” conversations.
BNG Editor Mark Wingfield has been at a conference this week put on by the legal group Democracy Forward — not Republic Forward.
One thing seems to be clear here — the arguments people use today for which term they emphasize say more about their intentions than the Founding Fathers’ intentions.
According to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: “The United States was neither founded as a pure republic nor as a pure democracy. Rather, the Framers of the Constitution believed that a mixed government, containing both republican and democratic features, would be the most resilient system. While they agreed on this, they did not agree on just how democratic the nation should be. This was deeply controversial during the revolutionary era. It remains so today.”
Rooted in segregation
As one might suspect, this conversation has roots in segregation. In the 1955 book You and Segregation, segregationist and former Georgia governor and eventual senator Herman E. Talmadge asked: “Could it be possible that these Americans, who talk and write so much about ‘our democracy’ do not know that this nation is a republic and not a democracy? Could it be that they desire a gradual overthrow of our republic and the establishment of a ‘democracy’ — as is advocated by the Communists and fellow-travelers? Could it be that these groups desire a ‘democracy’ here in the United States where they will be only one race, one religion and one state?”
Herman E. Talmadge
Then Talmadge concluded, “It is evident that many of this group believe only in one mixed, amalgamated race; the anti-God Marxist religion; and one all-powerful central government not segregated by state lines or Constitutional barriers. This is obviously the ‘true democracy’ they talk, write about and proclaim so brashly.”
Six years later, the Blue Book of the John Birch Society picked up these themes. It says: “We have expected the movement to impeach Earl Warren to serve as an extremely effective medium through which to educate or awaken huge numbers of our fellow citizens to the differences between a democracy and a republic, to the unceasing effort to break our republic down into that footstool of tyrants known as a democracy, to the part this whole process plays in the plans of the Communists, and to the unceasing help Chief Justice Warren has given the Communists in those plans.”
It went on to call democracy “merely a deceptive phrase, a weapon of demagoguery, and a perennial fraud.”
Then it warned, “These same liberals have been working so long and so hard to convert our republic into a democracy, and to make the American people believe that it is supposed to be a democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth than that insidiously planted premise. Our Founding Fathers knew a great deal about history and government, and they had very nearly a clean slate on which to write the blueprint for our own. They gave us a republic because they considered it the best of all forms of government. They visibly spurned a democracy as probably the worst of all forms of government. But our past history and our present danger indicate that they were right in both particulars.”
An activist holds a “Black Lives Matter” signs outside the Minneapolis Police Fourth Precinct building following the officer-involved shooting of Jamar Clark on November 15, 2015. (Photo/Tony Webster/Wikipedia)
‘Our past history and our present danger’
What would 1950s and ’60s white segregationists consider to be their “present danger” when looking back at their history?
Notice their concerns in these quotes. They repeatedly call those who use the term “democracy” Communists and anti-God Marxists.
“During slavery, the rule of law was of white people, by white people and for white people.”
Their concern is that these supposed Communists and Marxists will overthrow, break down and convert our republic.
What is a republic, according to conservatives? Conservatives often define a republic as “rule of law.”
During slavery, the rule of law was of white people, by white people and for white people. When the slaves were freed, of course the law didn’t go far enough to help them. But white people lost some of their privilege. Through segregation, however, they were able to maintain some of that power. So any talks about civil rights would have been considered a present danger of repeating the past by giving a voice to those whom white people wanted to keep separate and subservient.
As we look back at our past history in light of our present dangers in 2025, we can notice some similar patterns of panic on the right. Just to name a few, when Black Lives Matter started, white conservatives responded by calling them Communists and Marxists and by saying, “All Lives Matter.” Then conservatives started labeling everything under the sun that mentioned race as “Critical Race Theory” or “woke” or “Marxist.” They’ve started a war, not just on democracy, but on empathy. And they’re currently promoting a movement to fire anybody who is not a white man who they suspect of being a DEI hire.
They’re using the same tactics and language about the same racial minority groups as the segregationists in the 1950s and ’60s.
So perhaps their panic over the word “democracy” has less to do with their understanding of the Constitution and more to do with their fear of losing power.
In 2023 U.S. Rep. Greg Steube posted this photo on Facebook with this description: “In January, @RepMikeJohnson joined me on the House floor while we were in a deadlock over who our next Speaker would be. We lifted up the speaker’s race to the Lord and asked for his divine guidance. Immediately after the prayer, 14 members changed their votes, ultimately leading to Speaker McCarthy securing the gavel by the end of the day. Mike Johnson is a strong conservative, but above all else, he is a strong Christian. He’s not afraid to look to his faith for guidance. America needs that more than ever in the U.S. House. I look forward to voting for Mike Johnson as our next Speaker.”
Authority and Christian supremacy
In an interview with Politico about House Speaker Mike Johnson, historian Kristin Du Mez said: “I’ve noticed also in listening to his speeches that he is explicit about describing this country as a republic and not as a democracy. Inside these conservative Christian nationalist spaces, that is par for the course: that this is a republic, and it is a republic, again, founded in this biblical worldview, and that it’s not a democratic free-for-all. And so again, this is Christian supremacy.”
For those on the right who insist on dismissing the term “democracy,” the argument is ultimately about authority, not so much a Constitutional authority, but a particular conservative Christian authority. And that’s ultimately connected to Christian supremacy.
Matthew Taylor
In The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy, Matthew D. Taylor defines a Christian supremacist as “someone who thinks that Christians should occupy authoritative and privileged positions in culture, politics and other domains of public life. In other words, Christian supremacists believe that Christians — by dint of being Christians — are morally elevated above the rest of humanity and are empowered by God to govern civil society.”
“For Christian nationalists, this is God’s country, and all authority comes through God. And the only legitimate use of that authority is to further God’s plan for this country,” Du Mez adds. “So what that means is any of their political enemies are illegitimate in a sense, and those enemies’ power is illegitimate, and they need to be stripped of that power. And it’s really been kind of shocking for me to have observed these spaces in the last handful of years, where conservative evangelicals are much more comfortable in just making that plain and no longer feeling a need to pay lip service to democracy or voting rights or those sorts of things.”
A democratic, constitutional republic
In a 2020 piece for The Atlantic, George Thomas wrote that the insistence from the right in calling the United States a republic is dangerous, wrong and “mostly disingenuous.” He clarified, “The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule.”
The challenge faced by white conservative Christians today is that they are increasingly not in the majority. So Du Mez says the rhetoric and ruthlessness against democracy picked up during the Obama presidency.
“Because they could see this kind of sea change on LGBTQ rights, they could see the demographic changes, and inside their spaces, they have really played up this language of fear that liberals are out to get you, and you cannot raise your children anymore,” she told Politico.
Kristin Du Mez
According to Du Mez, we live in a democratic, constitutional republic. Of course, we’re guided by the laws of the Constitution. But everyone has voice. And we don’t allow a minority of people — namely conservative white Christians — to silence the voices of others and create discriminatory, theocratic laws to serve their own self-interest to the detriment of their neighbors.
The idea that both Republican and Democratic values are present in a complex way in our nation is not merely the opinion of modern scholars such as Thomas or Du Mez. Thomas Jefferson said it this way in 1816: “We may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition.”
So rather than asking who is right, perhaps we should reflect on why the conversation is happening to begin with. The fact that it’s a conversation that took off during segregation should be a red flag. When white Christian nationalists dismiss and belittle democracy today, it’s likely part of the same conversation with the same arguments and concerns they’ve been having for decades.
They’re afraid of losing power. So they refuse to listen to their neighbors and wield the Constitution toward their own authoritarian ends.
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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