I for one had never imagined Richard Rorty and George W. Bush in the same political enclave, but there they are, chumming around in the concluding chapter of Patrick J. Deneen's Democratic Faith. It says a lot about the book that by the time this strange pairing appears it's as plausible as Fred and Ginger. The usual Left–Right categories, Deneen is telling us, are far from adequate for the current moment of the nation's history. For the sake of self–understanding, and possibly political survival, we need to move on—or, better, move deeper. And so on this journey we go down.

Getting to the bottom of anything invariably involves religion, Deneen knows, so when he looks at the political culture of our America, it's far from a neatly secularized world that he sees. Rather, he sees—or, better, feels—the abiding presence of Christendom, the moral and cosmological vision of which helped bring the modern democratic imagination into being, and with it a new religion of sorts, what Deneen refers to as "democratic faith"—a phrase with broad currency today but seldom, if ever, given the searching scrutiny it here receives.

"Democratic faith," for Deneen, is a peculiarly modern species of faith, growing steadily in strength only as more traditional forms of faith have weakened. Crucially, he sees its genealogical connection to these older faiths as having endowed it with a sacred aura, imbuing American political aspirations and ideals with a sense of legitimacy that transcends the terrestrial. And this is what makes this book "a study in paradox," for today's most outspoken and eloquent advocates of "democratic faith," especially within the academy, are almost uniformly suspicious of the presence of any self–consciously religious presence in the political sphere (as readers of periodicals like The New Republic are only too aware). Even as they construe religion as the enemy of democracy, those Deneen dubs the "democratic faithful" elevate democracy into a conception of life that has all the earmarks of a bona fide faith. Whether they be "deliberative liberals," whose confidence in rationality, science, and technique inspires their democratic quest, or "agonistic democrats," those animated by a foundational belief in the citizenship–forming capacity of conflict, these true believers insist on the possibility of profound social transformation with a hope that leans far more on faith than on empirical evidence.

Deneen's probing of the origins of this faith is brilliant—an exacting, at times exciting venture into pivotal texts. What he sees in the grand turn to modern democratic governance is not a clean slate so much as a palimpsest, his central metaphor for explaining this truly world–historical shift. "The older sacred writings were never wholly erased or covered over by modern secular signs but remained subtly beneath the surface, radiating divine legitimacy to secular efforts," he writes. "'Desacralization,'" it seems, "was never complete": the break from the Old Regime continued to be underwritten by earlier understandings of the universe and by the attitudes and practices that reflected them.

Deneen describes this dynamic as something of a perennial Western tendency, as new developments and departures gained approval through their linkage to earlier religious affirmations. As far back as ancient Greece, he shows, the great Sophist Protagoras made shrewd rhetorical use of the Prometheus myth to propose a level of human political capacity Socrates thought dubious. Whereas older versions of the myth had depicted Prometheus' storied gifts to humanity as an indivisible mixture of blessing and woe, on Protagoras' re–telling these same gifts simply empowered humans to new moral heights. Prometheus was no longer a complicated divine presence but rather a powerful heavenly friend. This far more pleasant story ensured purchase, and carried with it "the hidden resonances and lessons of the older stories," with their religiously freighted visions of divine–human encounter.

Protagoras wasn't the last Western thinker to make fruitful use of still–resonant vestiges of the divine. Deneen shows how Francis Bacon and Jean–Jacques Rousseu, for example, each made adjustments and appropriations to the Prometheus myth, as they sought both to understand mankind's enlarging powers and commend them to potential partisans. The mood of path–breakers such as these was hopeful, their faith expansive: ordinary people would be morally elevated through democratic government, as well as the other modern gifts—scientific, technological, psychological—that were accompanying it. The stage seemed to have been set by a master playwright for a true transcending of the ancient miseries and difficulties the race had always known.

Little more than two centuries on, we find ourselves bound up in a "system of government that we now call democracy" but that is in reality "rife with apathy, cynicism, corruption, inattention, and dominated by massive yet nearly unperceivable powers that belie claims of popular control." In this moment the democratic faithful, having put their faith in a system and structure that can't possibly bear its weight, tilt between the poles of millenarian hope and apocalyptic despair, as "the people," stiff–necked as ever, can't seem to fulfill their promise—democracy's promise. What's a democrat to do?

The whole point of faith is to enlighten, but "democratic faith" diminishes sight. Tested where all faiths are tested, in history's unsparing crucible, it has proven unable to grasp our disabled condition and so is powerless to provide the succor we need. Deneen traces these failings to its roots in "Pelagian dualism, Gnostic optimism, and humanistic messianism," and in the book's last section seeks to present not the final damnation of democracy but a way to salvage it.

He calls it, simply enough, "democratic realism." It's a realism that denies the hope for perfectibility the democratic faithful, in their quest to transcend this world, are so tempted by. It's a realism that begins with the premise—resonant with the one Alasdair MacIntyre powerfully advances in Rationally Dependent Animals—that to be human is to be weak, to be dependent, and to suffer. On this view, we turn to democracy not because of the grand social prospects such governance holds but because it is the form of government "imperfect humans" require, people "who must, by dint of their equal insufficiency and the permanency of need, inhabit, and govern together, cities of men."

In propounding this stance Deneen undertakes a close, critical reading of texts and figures in the "realist" lineage, ranging from ancient Greece to contemporary America and including surprises like Plato as well as stalwarts like Tocqueville. The presence of the late American social critic Christopher Lasch as one of his heroes should serve notice that Deneen, unlike many of today's political conservatives, is using a classically Christian anthropology to call into question—rather than bless—the political economy of late capitalism. Lasch's fiercely insistent claim that corporate capitalism and democracy are at odds held firm throughout his life. In line with Jefferson, Chesterton, Roepke, and others whose experience of the modern world turned them into decentralists, Lasch judged massive concentrations of power, whether political or economic, to be at odds with, as Deneen nicely puts it, "the local ecology in which democratic life flourishes": the small economies, thick kinship ties, meaningful work, and common submission that help to form "independent yet engaged citizens," folk dedicated to creating and preserving what Lasch simply called "a decent society."

We are far today from this achievement, a fact that leads Deneen to end the book with a call to democrats of all orientations to a season of humble introspection. With our departure from older faiths, our way of living in this world has gone unchecked by the humility of mind and purpose that traditional religions seek to nurture. Unchastened by encounter with that which transcends us, we have ended up being overtaken by our own brand of religious hubris, woefully ill–equipped to forge the kinds of communities that are possible—and that, indeed, our condition demands. What we all need, Deneen implies, is not the absence of faith but a better faith, one that clarifies vision, forges better ties, forces a different reading of our past, and takes us down, down, into the depths of who we, as Americans, as Westerners, and as human beings are.

And so you find yourself winding down a long staircase that takes you into the very heart of this, our strange and restless modern world. The deeper you go, the more clearly you see that power is not at its center after all, but rather a persisting yearning for faith, for an elusive common faith: it is this that has been calling this people, your people, into being, age–in, age–out.

Finally you step off of the last stair, and someone's already there, awaiting your arrival. It is St. Augustine, gentle priest of our wayward city. He rises to offer directions to another city. But before you move on he leans toward you. "Now abide faith, hope, and love," he whispers.

You know what comes next.

Eric Miller is associate professor of history at Geneva College.

Copyright © 2008 Books & Culture.Click for reprint information.