Abstract

James W. Skillen’s paper on Politics In One World raises a question on whether Democracy can be advocated as the ideal universal political system. Skillen’s answer is imbedded in this: “since these political-legal practices and ideals now appear to be almost universally approved or aspired to, we might hypothesize that they transcend, or serve as the ultimate political telos, for all cultures and societies”. Not fully convinced by this assertion, Skillen proffers an ideological question: “the truth might simply be that the call for democracy and human rights around the world represents nothing more than the pressures of western hegemony?” The entire paper of Skillen examined the two answers at length. My response to this paper is not to re-state issues of agreement but to raise fundamental and universal political issues. As a Christian, there is a lot that we have in common, but given our cultural backgrounds we differ in our interpretations of social history and political philosophy and also in our understanding of the concept of democracy and its universal application. Rather, I chose to highlight my differences with Skillen on the subject, Politics In One World