Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn— Nobel Prize–winning Russian novelist, moral philosopher, and one of the 20th century’s most unflinching critics of totalitarianism—was known for being resolutely opposed to secularism. He was repelled by Marxism, which he viewed as a distinct form of Communism that was fanatically secular and anti-religious, with a hatred of anything spiritual.
One of Solzhenitsyn’s most famous speeches begins with the assertion, “Men have forgotten God…that’s why all this has happened…” referring to the horrors of both Marxism and Communism and all the disasters that followed in their wake.
We have no doubt that if Solzhenitsyn were alive today, he would view the West’s
acceptance of the recent slaughter of innocent men, women, and children in the Middle East as another example of what is unleashed when humans forget God.
When you look at how America has changed, especially over the past 50+ years, Solzhenitsyn’s views on secularism become strikingly relevant. Today, spiritual values
increasingly have ceased to underlie or inform our culture and policies. We’ve written
before about the spiritual understanding of two particular presidents—Eisenhower and
Kennedy—who led in an era radically different from today. Both spoke of God and a higher
power as if these were a given, an unquestioned underpinning of daily life. Eisenhower, as
we’ve quoted before, avowed that:
“America’s greatest weapon in both peace and war is our spirituality.”
That shared spiritual framework for the words and aspirations of Eisenhower and Kennedy
has vanished. The absence of spirituality in our institutions has enabled a darker force to
take control: the greed-propelled drive for profit, wealth, and power. It’s evidenced in the
growing stark inequalities that have left 30% of Americans marooned in a low-income
existence in which they struggle to obtain basic necessities.
Here I want to draw particular attention to an important though little-noted aspect of our
prior more spiritual grounding: It made it more natural to view others as belonging to a
shared human family. Even at the height of the Cold War, Americans saw Russians as
human beings. The sense that we shared a common destiny required both nations to be
willing to cooperate, allowing the world to advance as a whole. Today, in a world facing
enormous existential challenges, it is more critical than ever to remember that we are all children under God and to be willing to move forward with other nations in the interests of
all. That requires us to recast how we view other nations—to shed misguided and inaccurate assumptions and prejudices.
Finding Spirituality In Xi and Putin
That starts with understanding that Russia and China have left behind their Marxist pasts.
Each in its own way has regained its spiritual roots, which were lost during Russia’s
Marxist revolution and the China’s civil war.
But am I really saying that presumed autocrats like Xi or Putin have spiritual values? Yes. I
know it may offend or jar some sensibilities, but I feel that what’s at stake is too important
to shy away from what I believe to be the truth.
While Putin has been accused of murder, drug-trafficking, and spearheading illegal wars in
which millions of Russians lost their lives, to the best of my knowledge and research none
of that appears to be true. Moreover, among world leaders, I know of none this century who has been as consistent as Putin in referring to God in major speeches or to revered
philosophers and historical works that grant God-given dignity to every person. He has
quoted the Sermon on the Mount, the New Testament, and even lesser-known—“deep-
cut”—Bible passages. The fact that U.S. and other Western media like to paint Putin as a
warmongering, totalitarian caricature of himself doesn’t make it so.
For insight into life in Russia as it pertains to political and religious freedom, I was struck
by reading that in the 2010s, a convocation of Jewish rabbis was asked where they thought
was the best, most accepting place for Jewish people to settle down in. Of all the places in
Eurasia, they singled out Putin’s Russia. You have to ask yourself: Would an evil,
totalitarian leader regularly defend the rights of every person to follow their own beliefs?
Xi is similarly dismissed in the West as an autocratic ruler of China. It’s a reductive
caricature that obscures the reality of a figure many consider a kind of spiritual leader.
Do China and Russia Have Democracy Superiority Over the
U.S?
This yawning gap between how Putin and Xi are portrayed here and the reality points to
another gap in our understanding of their countries, one that revolves around the word
“democracy.”
If you google “democracy”, you’ll quickly see that democracies can take many different
forms. But many Americans don’t realize this and think that if a country has a different
system from ours, it can’t be a democracy. This leads to characterizing our system as “good” and China’s as “bad or even “evil.” What we’d say is that they embody different approaches to incorporating democratic goals. Data from Nira supports this view. Nira is a global public-opinion research firm that runs the Democracy Perception Index (DPI). Its mission is to give researchers, policymakers, and civil society information about how people actually feel about democracy around the world.
Specifically, Nira’s DPI measures the degree to which global respondents believe a country
contributes positively to democracy. According to the latest reading, the U.S. fell from a +22% rating in 2022 to a –5% in 2025. Over that same period, China climbed from –5% to
+15% and Russia improved from –32% to –10%. Put differently, the two countries most
often labeled “undemocratic” in Western discourse saw their democratic perceptions rise,
while the U.S. was the only one whose standing collapsed. We hope the above figures shake you out of any inaccurate perceptions you may have about the political and moral
superiority of the U.S. This superiority is commonly presented under the guise of
democratic superiority—a status that appears to be crumbling.
As we noted, democracy comes in many different forms. They include: direct democracy
(citizens directly participate in decision-making with no intermediaries), representative
democracy (all decisions are made on citizens’ behalf through elected officials),
presidential democracy (the president is head of state and government, making decisions
separate from the legislative body), and cellular democracy (a decentralized form of
government where power is distributed among smaller localized groups). Indeed, there are
easily five to 10 distinct forms of democracy, if not more. But once you look past their
surface differences, something striking emerges: All hinge on one essential defining
principle, an element that determines whether a system is democratic in any meaningful
sense.
That element was defined in the writings of Robert Post, former dean of Yale law school. In
a 2006 article Democracy and Equality he wrote:
“Democratic forms of government are those in which the laws are made by the same people to whom they apply and for that reason they are autonomous norms. While in autocratic forms of government the lawmakers are different from those to whom the laws are addressed.”
In other words, the only necessary condition for a democracy is that the same laws govern both the rulers and the ruled. By this standard, you’d be hard pressed to say the U.S is currently more democratic than China or Russia.In China, if you look at the behavior of Xi, since assuming power in 2013 he has focused relentlessly on uprooting corruption at all levels of government. Throughout his career, he has never been suspected of stepping outside the law.
Russia is more complicated, but its governing system still holds rightful, legal elections.
While corruption likely exists throughout this large system—as it does in the U.S.—Putin
brings a deep legal and historical grounding to his role. He studied under a top constitutional scholar, holds degrees in law and economics, and is well versed in both Russian and biblical history. His mentor, a former mayor of one of Russia’s largest cities, lost an election by less than one percent and accepted defeat without demanding a recount
despite rumors of corruption. Putin maintains a strong bond with the church, which remains autonomous, and there is no public record of him abusing his power.
How Spiritual Foundations Shape National Strength
In the U.S., whose leaders worship wealth and have forsaken any spiritual foundation,
ordinary Americans may have fewer real protections for their rights than citizens in China
or Russia. If this seems a bridge too far, go back to our recent blog on school lunches in
which we compared the U.S. to other developed countries and found our lunches woefully
lacking because of limited funding. If we had included China and Russia in our study, the
comparisons would be comparably stark. In both countries, state-funded school lunches
are provided throughout the entire country, in rural and urban areas alike, with the focus
on nutritious meals that accommodate regional preferences.
Moreover, as they say the proof is in the pudding. Every three years, 15-year-olds
throughout the world are tested on various skills. Despite sharply lower per-capita income,
both China and Russia top the U.S. in the all-important math segment of the test. It’s no
surprise that military weaponry in both China and Russia is as many as five years ahead of
the U.S.
Similar comparisons apply to health care. Since the beginning of the century, both Russia
and China have gained more than five years in life expectancy relative to the U.S. Indeed,
some statistics indicate that life expectancies in China, which in terms of income is still
ranked as a developing country, exceed those in the U.S. To the extent that cognitive
achievement and health care are readily associated with a variety of freedoms, then which
countries should you conclude do a better job of delivering these freedoms? It’s a rhetorical
question.
The interests of America’s legislators and leaders have split off from those of the people
they govern, creating a two-tiered system where power shields itself and the public is left
in the dark about who is actually making the decisions. The one unmistakable thread
linking those at the top is their staggering accumulation of wealth, hoarded as both a buffer
and a weapon against accountability.
All this begs the question of what accounts for Russia and China being able to follow more
democratic ways than the U.S. The answer is their spiritual backbone—a force that has
endured for generations, even during dark periods when democracy faltered. China reveres
its past and its ancestors, grounded in a balance between heaven and earth. Gold symbolizes virtue from the heavens, red represents life on earth, a duality celebrated every
Chinese New Year. Russia, meanwhile, has been shaped around a vision of a God-endowed
culture, a strong church, and an unbroken national identity, even under regimes that
strayed far from democratic ideals.
Their cultures have survived unimaginable trials. In World War II, two million Russians
died at Stalingrad, some as human shields, all in defense of “Mother Russia.” Even under
Stalin’s terror, and a war death toll estimated at more than 20 million, their cultural resilience held firm. America, by contrast, has yet to show that kind of toughness—our
institutions, our ideals, even our shared identity, have proven far more fragile in the face of
crises.
In future blogs we’ll explore the compelling case for spirituality—why it is the essential
element that would get us back on track as a nation, redirecting us onto a path of
cooperation with others and well-being at home. It will reaffirm Jefferson’s wisdom when
he distinguished between “nature’s laws” and “nature’s God.”
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