Religious Egalitarianism Sustains Democracy

Revisiting Tocqueville, the essay suggests that a religion that inculcates equality before God can supply moral ballast for democratic self‑government by normalizing equal duties and resisting despotism. The piece raises the contemporary question of whether secular pluralism can replicate that stabilizing function or whether organized religion remains uniquely positioned to perform it. — This matters because it reframes debates over church‑state balance, civic education, and the role of religion in liberal institutions as questions about democracy’s structural resilience, not only private belief.