'Screwtape Proposes a Toast': Why C.S. Lewis Believed Demons Love Democracy
In the modern world, few words carry the bewitching power of “democracy.”
Sixty-four years ago, legendary author C.S. Lewis explained why demons also love “democracy” and why Christians must resist its spell.
In 1959, Lewis published a short satirical piece entitled, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” wherein an imaginary demon named Screwtape spoke to fresh graduates at the annual dinner of the Tempters’ Training College in hell.
By the late 1950s, Lewis’ Screwtape already had an established epistolary history. Indeed, the author had introduced his literary demon in 1942’s “The Screwtape Letters,” an imagined correspondence between Screwtape, an experienced demon who held an administrative position in hell, and his nephew Wormwood, an inexperienced tempter assigned the task of capturing a young Englishman’s soul.
Thus, a 1959 audience could recognize Screwtape as a dispenser of demonic advice. His goal: instruct young demon tempters in how best to turn humans away from God.
Screwtape opened his toast with an introductory address that established Lewis’ satirical tone.
“Mr. Principal, Your Imminence, Your Disgraces, my Thorns, Shadies and Gentledevils,” Screwtape began.
The senior tempter then devoted much of his toast to commentary on the dismal quality of the evening’s meal. They had feasted, he thought, on the damned souls of mediocre sinners.
But he also found the quantity of souls encouraging. And he assured the Tempters’ Training College graduates that the modern world offered them many opportunities for capturing more souls.
Then, he told them how they must approach their task of guiding humans toward hell.
“‘Democracy’ is the word with which you must lead them by the nose,” Screwtape said.
To effect this, the demon added, “they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning.”
Furthermore, “You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate.”
No doubt 21st-century readers will recognize Screwtape’s success.
After all, we hear such a cacophony of lies around that word. “Democracy is on the ballot,” we are told. Or, “we must defend (insert foreign country)’s democracy.”
Lewis also heard such things in his day. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, for instance, piously declared that “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Wilson then sent young Americans to die in World War I, which neither safeguarded nor expanded democracy.
The challenge to faith, moreover, stems from our failure to recognize democracy as simply a system of voting based on political equality. When we imagine it as anything more than this, it becomes an improper object of worship.
Worse yet, demons know how to turn our unchecked democratic attitudes toward hellish sins like dishonesty, envy and resentment.
Indeed, democracy’s great usefulness, according to Screwtape, lay in its ability to make one human say to another, “I’m as good as you.” This serves hell’s purpose nearly as well as all the world’s dictatorships.
“The first and most obvious advantage” in teaching a man to say “I’m as good as you,” Screwtape told the young tempters, “is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the center of his life a good, solid, resounding lie.”
“I mean that he does not believe it himself,” the senior demon added. “No man who says ‘I’m as good as you’ believes it. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain.”
Thus, full-throated claims to equality, rooted in lies, reflect consciousness of actual inferiority in any given sense. Hell finds this exceedingly useful.
“What it expresses,” Screwtape told the graduates, “is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept. And therefore resents.”
Again, this means inferiority in a given sense only, not in the political sense of second-class citizenship.
For instance, no woman ever claims to be every bit as much a woman as the next man. A man who falsely declares himself a woman, on the other hand, does so in the hellish spirit of “I’m as good as you.”
Indeed, Screwtape could barely conceal his glee at democracy’s power to destroy everything good.
“What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, over-all movement toward the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence — moral, cultural, social or intellectual,” he told the young demons.
“And is it not pretty to notice how democracy — in the incantatory sense — is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods?”
Lewis, of course, carefully distinguished between healthy political equality and the “incantatory” democracy that foments sinful dishonesty, envy and resentment.
If modern Christians feel uneasy in this democratic world, Lewis’ Screwtape reminds us that we have good reason.
After all, we cherish free will and believe that the individual soul lives forever.
The broader secular movements that have enthroned “democracy,” however, notwithstanding all the tangible benefits they have produced, carry the seeds of their own destruction — a fatal flaw that the democratic-minded seldom recognize in themselves.
Screwtape called this flaw “a deep hatred of personal freedom.” That means, of course, a deep hatred for the personal freedom of others.
Thus, when impelled by dishonesty, envy and resentment, democratic people careen toward authoritarianism. In fact, some race toward it without causing the least trouble to their consciences.
In short, Christians have reason to value a humbly administered democracy as far superior to other political forms.
We also must understand, however, why Screwtape loved democracy.
When we do this — when we view democracy from Screwtape’s perspective — the view should serve as an antidote. That way, we can support political equality without venerating an undefined “democracy” and thus succumbing to its temptations.
Above all, we can then embrace free will and focus on our individual souls by surrendering our lives to God.
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