Exemplification Essay: Does Religion Form The Foundation Of Democracy

Throughout all of history governments such as a monarchy, an oligarchy, and a dictatorship rose and fell no matter how they were run. The people 's rights under those governments were regulated and controlled by in most cases a single ruler or a small group of elites. In a democratic government the basic human rights were voted upon and are viable to change by the majority. A democratic government therefore is a government that can guarantee human rights so long as the majority uses its power to uphold those human rights. A Democracy guarantees human rights with the use of assembly, religion and speech.

The right of assembly enables society to gather together, providing people with the opportunity to converse and therefore come to a consensus.

The morals of man first took universal hold of mankind with the establishment of religion. Religion doesn’t stand as the sole reason for virtue, but the foundation of democracy stands on the morals of Christianity. The idea of religion fills a void democracy cannot hope to fill, because “[d]emocracy cannot guarantee that its citizens will be happy, prosperous, healthy, wise, peaceful, or just” and without these attributes democracy loses its value (Dahl 107). The freedom of religion also allows people to reflect and determine that “[a]mong the desirable qualities that most of us would want to foster are honesty, fairness, courage, and love” which are all affiliated with most religions (Dahl 105). The choice to act upon the right to a religion is part of a democracy, but a person can’t practice anything that brings harm to another human. In a government “[t]he idea of rights is no more than the concept of virtue applied to the world of politics” therefore without a strong foundation of virtue the idea of rights hold no authority (Tocqueville

The Bill of Rights states that “[c]ongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” it doesn’t however state that democracy isn’t built on religion’s principles (Madison 67). The nature of a democracy does allow for changes and in that can choose to abolish this foundation of religion’s ideals. Society as individuals then must ask themselves “[d]o you not see the decline of religions and the disappearance of the divine conception of rights? Do you not realize that morals are changing and with them the moral notion of rights is being removed” (Tocqueville 86)? If society loses its conception of rights it can be determined that in time a democracy can experience a change in the morals of the people that make up the democracy. This decline in morals can cause a breakdown of virtue and force society to realize that “[n]o great man can exist without virtue; no great nation can exist without respect for rights; one might almost say that there is no society without such respect” (Tocqueville 85). If society itself were to break down in this way, then the democracy would cease functioning resulting in chaos. Society must then use the freedom of speech to let this truth spread across the democracy to let every ear hear its