The beauty of everyday democracy

Institute convenes scholars, practitioners, Luke Bretherton for democracy conference

September 17, 2025

Moral theologian Luke Bretherton is not naive about how politics can often be “messy, complicated, and full of tension, agitation, and brash noise.” And, yet, he finds in democratic participation a certain kind of beauty. 

For Bretherton, there’s beauty in building relationships and trust “across difference in a world that tells us to be suspicious and fearful of others not like us.” There’s beauty in enabling people “to discover their leadership and voice when they thought they had none.” And there’s beauty in putting “people before program” and “strengthening local institutions.”

The Regius Professor of Moral & Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, and author of numerous publications on Christianity and democracy—including Resurrecting Democracy and Christ and the Common Life—Bretherton shared his theological vision for participatory democracy in the opening keynote of the Everyday Democracy conference planned and hosted by the Institute for Social Concerns on September 4–6. 

“I could not have imagined a more perfect person to kick off this conference,” said Suzanne Shanahan, the Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the Institute for Social Concerns. “Not only does his work address contemporary moral and political questions, particularly as these relate to the relationship between religion and democracy, but he is also one of those rare individuals who brings together the life of a practitioner with the life of a scholar in everything he does.”

In his talk, Bretherton described how “democracy is often confused with its mechanisms,” such as elections, political parties, and balances of power. In contrast, he argued that “democracy is not first and foremost about elections, party politics, and rage tweets” but “is first and foremost a commons sustained through social practices through which people have a say and agency in shaping their living and working conditions.”

Viewed as the practice of “commoning”—the social practice that produces a commons—democratic participation is not just about politics but is, more fundamentally, a theological enterprise. Drawing from the writings of Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis, Bretherton proposed “the need to proclaim a democratic vision of a common life that restores human agency, one born out of the call and command of God who summons us to take responsibility for creation and for each other.” As an expression of Catholic social tradition, commoning “points towards new, creative forms of solidarity and subsidiarity that enhance human agency and ecological mutuality rather than diminish, enclose, or exploit them.”

“Humans are created and redeemed to fulfill their personhood within and through a just and generous common life with each other and with creation,” Bretherton reflected. Participating in the democratic process thus enables humans “to realize their true natures as those created in the image of God”—an image that is most fully revealed in and through Christ.

When so much of our shared, common life is becoming enclosed, extracted, and exploited by nation-states and multinational corporations, Bretherton called on Christians to be at the vanguard of movements to disenclose the commons. And as the AI revolution threatens to enclose the commons of knowledge, language, art, and social life, Bretherton believes universities like Notre Dame play a special role as a “defender and tender of the commons.”

“We often hear calls to be part of the change, to be part of the solution,” he stated, “but the real question is: What kind of change do you want to be part of? My invitation to you is to be part of the kind of change that generates more love and real beauty as the fruit of its work.”

In addition to Bretherton’s keynote address, the conference featured two days of panels, listening sessions, and roundtable discussions where academics and practitioners shared from their respective expertise about what everyday democracy looks like on the ground in our local communities. 

“The idea of this conference is that scholars learn from practitioners, and practitioners learn from scholars,” said Dan Graff, director of the Higgins Labor Program at the institute and principal investigator for the Everyday Democracy project. “We need to be in the same space more often, especially as there’s a sense that democracy is fragile right now, both in the United States and globally.”

The conference coincided with the release of the fourth volume of the institute’s Enacting Catholic Social Tradition book series, Empowering People through Encounter: Catholic Social Teaching and Community Organizing, by Erin Brigman and Maureen H. O’Connell. As the authors state in the introduction, relational organizing “has been critical in the development of the Catholic Social Tradition and embodies core principles of Catholic Social Teaching, including human dignity, solidarity, the common good, and subsidiarity.”

For their book, Brigman and O’Connell draw direct inspiration from Pope Francis, who proclaimed at the 2015 World Meeting of Popular Movements in Bolivia that “the future of humanity does not lie solely in the hands of great leaders, the great powers and the elites. It is fundamentally in the hands of peoples and in their ability to organize.”

During his visit Bretherton added specificity to this charge for the institute and University. “The role of an institute like the Institute for Social Concerns,” he reflected, “is acting as a catalyst within the broader University—almost like a lung, which is reoxygenating its broader commitments and vocations to serve the common good. The University is not just there for itself; it is there to serve society.”

The conference was the first of three annual Everyday Democracy conferences by the institute, supported by a Democracy Catalyst Grant from Notre Dame’s Democracy Initiative, with further support from the Cushwa Center. The purpose of the conferences is to bring together University faculty with community members to deepen understandings of political participation and social change, connecting academic insights with practical experience and expertise.

To learn more about the Everyday Democracy conferences, contact Mike Hebbeler, assistant director of community partnerships and programs. The first four volumes of Enacting Catholic Social Tradition are now available for purchase through Liturgical Press.

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