Political Theology and Democracy in 19th Century Latin America

• In Event: Political Theology and Democracy in Modern Political Thought

Abstract

Often, scholars present the 18th and 19th century European republican revolutions and their ensuing constitutional eras in two ways: either as a secularization story in which religion is erased or decentered, or as an era in which religion and theology function only as a reactionary, anti-revolutionary force. In either case, theology and demands for democracy do not mix.
This narrative is challenged if we widen our scope of study to include 19th century Latin American political theorists. Historians of political thought have shown that the incorporation of these often-understudied revolutionary and republican thinkers reveals the deployment of theology in favor of republican revolutions. I will argue that theology and metaphysics also serve as an engine for some of the most radical democratic politics of the mid-19th century.
This essay focuses on the recovery of the political theory of the radical Chilean, Francisco Bilbao (1823 – 1865). Co-founder of one of the first political parties in Latin America and early theorist of “latinoamericano” identity, Bilbao argued for universal suffrage, disestablishment of church and state, freedom of the press and religion, and even direct democracy. Scholarship on Bilbao has appreciated his role as a radical democrat, anti-colonial thinker, political activist, and fierce critic of the Catholic Church.
Nevertheless, perhaps because of his anti-Catholic rhetoric, scholars have largely ignored the theological dimension of Bilbao’s political work and the ways that he transforms and deploys Catholic theological categories to usher in a new age of democracy. Bilbao’s lectures, newspaper articles, essays, and speeches are often irreducibly theological, drawing political principles directly from theologies of God and creation. Indeed, Bilbao understood himself as providing a new “American metaphysics” to undergird the politics of a post-revolutionary, republican age of global fraternity, popular sovereignty, and liberty. For Bilbao, the social is the divine, and the “unity of God,” reflected in the unity of the human race, is the “secret principle” behind “political regeneration.”
I will argue that the anti-Catholic democrat, Francisco Bilbao, deployed theological concepts throughout his entire political career to undergird a new democratic politics for Latin America. Thus, the history of democracy in Latin America does not find in theology only an opponent, but also a rich resource.
Bilbao was a globally connected, 19th century Latin American voice at the avant-garde of democratic political movements. Recovering Bilbao’s work is significant historically and theoretically. Historically speaking, this paper shines new light on the story of the emergence of democracy and arguments for popular sovereignty in Latin America. On a theoretical level, it explores the plurality of outcomes yielded by the methodology of political theology. In the texts of Bilbao, political theology does not yield monarchy and papal ultramontanism (Joseph de Maistre) or a voluntaristic sovereign (Carl Schmitt), but democracy and liberal rights. Bilbao uses theological resources supplied by his Catholic milieux to confront the political dilemmas of his day, including how to define the relationship between popular sovereignty and democracy and also how to negotiate the tensions between liberal, individual rights and democratic rule. Bilbao is a theologian of the democratic age, urging political regeneration and the fulfillment of the promises of Latin American republican revolutions.

Author

• Michael Scott Thomas, Stanford University