Priests of Democracy?

In the United States of America, the governor of the state of Florida named Ron DeSantis seems to regularly make the headlines these days. He recently supported what’s called the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” – a bill designed to ban critical race theory from schools. A few days ago, this bill was overturned by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who criticized it sharply.

Now, these events in Florida don’t personally affect my daily life. But there was something that Judge Walker said in his document that I saw some people talk about, and it caught my eye. Here’s what stuck out:

One thing is crystal clear—both robust intellectual inquiry and democracy require light to thrive. Our professors are critical to a healthy democracy,⁷⁰ and the State of Florida’s decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all. If our “priests of democracy” are not allowed to shed light on challenging ideas, then democracy will die in darkness.⁷¹ But the First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark.

Walker, p. 135.
Quoted by Tim Kephart, “Judge blocks Florida’s ‘Stop W.O.K.E. Act’ at colleges and universities”, ABC Action News, 17 Nov. 2022. https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/state/judge-blocks-floridas-stop-w-o-k-e-act-at-colleges-and-universities.

Did you catch that? The “priests of democracy” part. What a weird phrase. There are a couple of odd things here. The first and is that it implies that democracy is some kind of religious systen with a priesthood, which isn’t how most people would see it. The second is a bit more subtle; in the Old Testament, the purpose of a priest was to mediate between God and the laypeople (Num. 16.8-9). That’s why in the New Testament, the Lord Jesus is called a high priest for mediating between God and man (Heb. 4.14-15). Now, is the judge saying university professors are mediators on democracy’s behalf? This prompts even more questions.