Alexis de Tocqueville was convinced that democracy could not survive the loss of Christian faith. Self-government required shared convictions about moral truths. Christian faith drew men outside themselves and taught them that laws must be firmly rooted in a moral order revealed and guaranteed by God. If a democratic nation loses religion, he wrote, then it falls prey to inordinate individualism, materialism, and democratic despotism and inevitably “prepares its citizens for servitude.” Therefore, said Tocqueville, “one must maintain Christianity within the new democracies at all cost.”
