When you look up the definition of “democracy” in the dictionary, it shows a) a government by the people, especially by the principle of majority rule, b) a government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.
The United Nations has designated September 15 as the International Day of Democracy, and each year it releases an appropriate message for that day. The message varies slightly from year to year, but I think the basic idea and spirit is the same: to defend and develop democracy. In Asia, we often see that democracy is regressing rather than maturing. In South Korea, for instance, the current administration has been running a “civilian dictatorship” by appointing prosecutors to nearly all the key government positions and neutralizing the principle of separation of powers between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, as the phrase “prosecutorial dictatorship” suggests. More closely, South Korea’s democracy, which has been built up piece by piece since the democratization struggle in the 1970s, has been rapidly dismantled over the past three years under the current president.
According to “Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot”, South Korea’s democracy has taken a sharp turn backward since the current administration took office. In its annual report, the Democracy Report 2024, released in March 2024, the Institute for Democracy and Diversity, based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, found that “South Korea’s democracy indicators, which had been on the upswing, have returned to a downward spiral.” According to the report, South Korea ranked 47th out of 179 countries in the Index of Liberal Democracy, a measure of the rule of law, checks and balances, and civil liberties. This is a significant drop from 18th place in 2019 and 17th place from 2020 to 2022. The institute collects data on electoral fairness, civil and media freedoms, judicial independence, gender equality, and more from around the world and publishes the Democracy Index annually in terms of elections, freedom, participation, and equality.
In South Korea and many other countries in Asia, we often see democracy going backwards rather than forwards. Whether it is the military dictatorship in Myanmar, which has been waging war against its own people for three years since a military coup; the military’s seizure of political power in neighboring Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos; the return to power and extreme corruption of the son of Philippine military dictator Ferdinand Marcos; China’s suppression and destruction of civil society in Hong Kong; the re-emergence of the Narendra Modi regime based on Hindu nationalism in the recent elections; or the fear of democratic retreat in Indonesia following the election of a conservative president.
What can Christianity in Asia, and more specifically the Catholic Church and its people, do in this political and economic context? Can the “Triple Dialogue” that has been the theological and pastoral guiding principle of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) for the past 50 years give voice to those who suffer the most? While the triple dialogue includes a “dialogue with the poor,” it is not clear that it has given them the power to represent their interests and overcome oppressive situations. This is because the institutional church is still rich and much hierarchical even hardly accessible by ordinary lay Catholics like me, and the poor still remains poor and marginalized. It is time for theology to be renewed in a way that brings it closer to them. This is the same as the question of why theology has remained a discourse within the church, even though it has spoken out and intervened in various events and problems in the world. The reason for this isolation is that theology is the exclusive domain of the clergy, especially in Asia, where it is used for the training and education of clergy alone, and is controlled within the church, making it difficult to communicate freely with the world. To overcome this, a process of de-clericalization and a view of the Kingdom of God is needed, and in the process, theological work must be done in a language that the world can understand and find meaningful.
For this we could and should learn from Pope Francis’ worldview and theological insights. Pope Francis’ theological orientation is one in which the Church, as a part of civil society, reads the signs of the times and engages with them, but also prioritizes the public good of the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. In this sense he acknowledges ‘Theology of Liberation’ from Latin America but his theology is more open and inclusive than liberation theology, so it could embrace ordinary people not losing the focus on the poor and marginalized. This is what we call ‘Theology of People’ originated from an Argentine theological group and much developed by Pope Francis. It is also a theology in which people of faith are not practiced as a religious practice to be a good person of faith and eventually return to the Church, but as a ‘good person of faith and a good citizen’ at the same time. It is based in the theological ground that there is no dualistic splitting: something sacred vs profane, earth vs heaven, body vs soul, and many others. The believer-citizens mature their faith and religious beliefs by overcoming various social issues in solidarity with other religious and non-religious people to develop social democracy.*
