Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 36

MODERN AGE

What of the possible retort that the quest
for global citizenship amounts to a proper
human desire to bring into alignment the
City of Man and the City of God, as inspired
by some influences within Western phi-
losophy and Christian theology? Would the
movement toward an earthly universal city
amount to a healthy, providential departure
from tribalism, barbarism, and ignorance? In
other words, would we do well to celebrate
the human yearning for universal political
homogeneity? Tocqueville exhibited a simi-
lar generosity in welcoming the advance of
the equality of conditions in his Democracy
in America two centuries ago:
If long observation and sincere medi-
tation led men in our day to recognize
that the gradual and progressive devel-
opment of equality is at the same time
the past and the future of their history,
this discovery alone would give that
development the sacred character of the
sovereign master's will. To wish to stop
democracy would then appear to be to
struggle against God himself, and it
would only remain for nations to accom-
modate themselves to the social state
that Providence imposes on them.5

Tocqueville, in part, welcomes the "pro-
gressive development of equality"-to the
degree that it promises to give more men the
opportunity to exercise their intellectual and
moral faculties in a democratic age than in an
aristocratic age. While there were no guaran-
tees that those liberated would employ their
faculties in the energetic pursuit of philo-
sophic truth and moral righteousness, the
example of the early Americans offered hope:
Before them fall the barriers that impris-
oned the society in whose bosom they
were born; old opinions that have been
36

FALL 2014

directing the world for centuries van-
ish; an almost boundless course, a field
without horizon, are discovered: the
human mind rushes toward them; it tra-
verses them in all directions; but, when
it arrives at the limits of the political
world, it halts; trembling, it leaves off
the use of its most formidable faculties;
it abjures doubt; it renounces the need to
innovate; it even abstains from sweeping
away the veil of the sanctuary; it bows
with respect before truths that it accepts
without discussion.6

In his portrait of early Americans, Tocque-
ville displays a cautious optimism that
democratic peoples could actively participate
in political affairs while at the same time
retaining their moral and religious obliga-
tions. The coming political equality deriva-
tive of the biblical principle that men are all
made in God's image needn't be corrupted
by the belief that we believe we are His
equals. Independence within the political
sphere could coincide with continued adher-
ence to God within the moral sphere.
When we apply these parameters to the
idea of global citizenship, though, it is
much more difficult to consider this politi-
cal development as a working out of God's
providence. It is possible that a human
being simultaneously could commit to the
idea of participating in a global community
of believers in this changing world and look
forward to worshiping God as a citizen in
the unchanging world of the eternal City of
God. But one just as easily could miscon-
strue one's adherence to political universal-
ism (global citizenship) in a changing world
as identical to an adherence to heavenly
universals in an unchanging world. There is
nothing in thinking of oneself as a global
citizen that necessarily tempts one to "strug-
gle against God," but it would be tempting
Modern Age - Fall 2014

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