Are we a democracy or a republic? Why words matter

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on February 27, 2025.

“The United States is not a democracy! It’s a republic!” my independent Baptist high school government teacher declared over the sound of gunfire and cannons exploding in the Civil War re-enactment across the street. Almost three decades later, the debate still isn’t settled.

And it’s not just my old high school government teacher who seems to care about it. Utah Sen. Mike Lee wrote in 2020, “We are not a democracy.”

Arizona state Rep. Selina Bliss said last year: “We are not a democracy. Nowhere in the Constitution does it use the word ‘democracy.’ I think of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That’s not us.”

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, posted last week: “America is not a pure democracy; we are a constitutional republic. There’s a huge difference.”

Perkins linked to a “God and Government Course” where readers can “learn the difference.” According to FRC’s website, “God and Government is a video-driven, Bible-based training course perfect for homeschool parents and students, pastors, future leaders in civil government, and anyone wanting to make an impact for biblical truth.”

It’s obvious from watching the promo video that Perkins’ is caught up in Christian nationalist rhetoric. He says after graduating from Liberty University he set out on his own “to study Scripture for the historical record of America.” (How does one find the “historical record of America” in Scripture that was written long before our nation’s founding?)

Additionally, conservatives today often point to the Pledge of Allegiance, which says, “And to the republic, for which it stands.” (By the way, the Pledge of Allegiance is not a founding document; it dates to 1885.)

These same people who want the United States to be a republic instead of a democracy are the ones who insist on calling the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party.”

“The arguments people use today for which term they emphasize say more about their intentions than the Founding Fathers’ intentions.”

On the other side, President Joe Biden used to talk about how “equality and democracy are under assault.”

And in the world of religion and politics, The Convocation with Kristin Du Mez, Jemar Tisby, Diana Butler Bass and Robert P. Jones have “Faith and Democracy” conversations, not “Faith and the Republic” conversations.

BNG Editor Mark Wingfield has been at a conference this week put on by the legal group Democracy Forward — not Republic Forward.

One thing seems to be clear here — the arguments people use today for which term they emphasize say more about their intentions than the Founding Fathers’ intentions.

According to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: “The United States was neither founded as a pure republic nor as a pure democracy. Rather, the Framers of the Constitution believed that a mixed government, containing both republican and democratic features, would be the most resilient system. While they agreed on this, they did not agree on just how democratic the nation should be. This was deeply controversial during the revolutionary era. It remains so today.”

Rooted in segregation

As one might suspect, this conversation has roots in segregation. In the 1955 book You and Segregation, segregationist and former Georgia governor and eventual senator Herman E. Talmadge asked: “Could it be possible that these Americans, who talk and write so much about ‘our democracy’ do not know that this nation is a republic and not a democracy? Could it be that they desire a gradual overthrow of our republic and the establishment of a ‘democracy’ — as is advocated by the Communists and fellow-travelers? Could it be that these groups desire a ‘democracy’ here in the United States where they will be only one race, one religion and one state?”

Herman E. Talmadge

Then Talmadge concluded, “It is evident that many of this group believe only in one mixed, amalgamated race; the anti-God Marxist religion; and one all-powerful central government not segregated by state lines or Constitutional barriers. This is obviously the ‘true democracy’ they talk, write about and proclaim so brashly.”

Six years later, the Blue Book of the John Birch Society picked up these themes. It says: “We have expected the movement to impeach Earl Warren to serve as an extremely effective medium through which to educate or awaken huge numbers of our fellow citizens to the differences between a democracy and a republic, to the unceasing effort to break our republic down into that footstool of tyrants known as a democracy, to the part this whole process plays in the plans of the Communists, and to the unceasing help Chief Justice Warren has given the Communists in those plans.”

It went on to call democracy “merely a deceptive phrase, a weapon of demagoguery, and a perennial fraud.”

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