Watching events in Britain following the death of Queen Elizabeth II has given me a new admiration for a country that has practiced an evolution of democracy through centuries of existence. To an outsider, the British form of government is a gigantic hodgepodge of laws and practices and traditions. Yet it works as a democracy.

I’m concerned about my own country of America in comparison. You would think, considering our traditions of self-government and “government by the people” and our Constitution, we would be just as firmly certain of our democratic traditions here.

Yet, we’re the ones who almost lost, if not the republic, something close to it with the storming of the Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots on January 6, 2021.

Writes Adam Russell Taylor: “It’s both alarming and bitterly ironic that false claims of a stolen election continue to be used to make a truly stolen election increasingly possible.” (“Democracy Can Be Easily Taken for Granted,” Sojourners, Sept/Oct 2022)

In that same issue of Sojourners, Rose Marie Berger writes of the recent visit of seventeen international religious leaders to Ukraine. (“Come and See.”) They were answering an appeal from requests on Ukraine social media for religious leaders to visit Ukraine in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

She commented on the false religious teaching of Putin and others seeking to build a country around “a particular ‘race or tribe.’ It’s what happens when religion cloaks ethno-nationalism with a veneer of mortal rectitude.”

The temptation of political power is strong. Some would even use religion as a weapon to gain that power instead of as a path to God.