Book Review: Democracy Matters by Cornel West
by Johnny A. Ramirez
This morning I indulged myself for a full hour as I watched a video interview of Princeton Religion Professor Cornel West discussing his book Democracy Matters. Democracy, he says, is a proximate solution to insoluble problems. He ends by saying we're all cracked vessels trying to live together. Look for this Spectrum Podcast at the end of this review.
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by David Larson
This the book my colleagues and I discussed recently at the home of Professor and Mrs. Andy Lampkin.
I am impressed by how intensely " American" it is in its great hopefulness. Like so many of us who are also Americans, West apparently thinks that people can "fix" things, that it is actually within humanity's power to improve life for everybody all around the world. Not everyone is convinced of this.
West's argument is that the United States today is beset by economic, militaristic and religious fundamentalism against which it must rally the resources of its "deep democratic tradition," as seen in the legacies of Greek Socratic questioning, Hebrew prophetic practice and "dark hope."
He claims that we can detect this "tragiccomic hope" in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Herman Melville, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and that we can hear it in the blues, jazz and hip-hop.
West writes with the learning and passion we rightly expect from the foremost public theologian in America today. He uses democracy matters as both a noun and a verb.
As West sees them, the three overlapping fundamentalisms that now threaten those of us who are Americans compel us to face the sad plight of our nation that from its beginnings has proclaimed the ideals of liberty and justice for all while imperialistically denying these rights to millions of people within and beyond our borders.
He pinpoints the issue of race as the clue by which to understand our entire culture.
I admit without pleasure that as a white middle class male American his emphasis upon race sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable. This is what he rightly intends!
West's critiques are actually even-handed. His assessment of the Israeli/Palestinian struggle calls on both sides to act in their common interests without either one losing its identity and security. He criticizes philosophers John Rawls and Richard Rorty as well as theologians Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank for stifling in different ways the public expression of religious moral convictions while acknowledging the positive contributions each is otherwise making. 
His assessments of blues, jazz and hip-hop are more judicious than many.
The examples of this book's decency and fairness are numerous.
West comes across to me as an American who calls upon all of us who are also Americans to live more and more in harmony with our ideals rather than our imperialistic impulses and practices. He does not write as an "outsider," a "former"or "anti" American" ethically speaking, but as one who who lives and moves and finds his being in our culture and in its never-ending moral struggles.
Last night we wondered if his celebration of our "precious democratic experiment" is grounded in an optimistic or pessimistic view of human nature. Probably both. In any case his confidence that we Americans can do better cries aloud from every page.
Some might think that his hopeful conviction that we can make democracy work at home and gently (no shock and awe!) take root and flourish in different cultural soils abroad is altogether too American. I don't.
David R. Larson is a professor at the School of Religion at Loma Linda University and is on the book advisory council for the Association of Adventist Forums. His review was originally published at ponderanew.com.
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You can join us in listening to a Spectrum Podcast, an 8 minute audio recording, of Cornel West discussing the role of faith in his cosmology. Audio excerpt taken from a much longer video interview by the National Constitution Center.
One of the things Cornel West talks about is the Constantinian shift. Christians before Constantine often referred to themselves as simply being of "the way". Lately a lot of people have been advocating for a more "early church" practice. Would that mean we have a truly oppressive state or a revolutionary church? Does the sound criticism by Cornel West speak to the state of the church as much, or more than, the state of democracy?
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