Even though he himself lost the Christian faith of his childhood as a teenager, Tocqueville is someone who, throughout his life, on the one hand, seeks this faith again, and on the other hand, also examines and emphasises the role of this faith – and of religious faith in general – for orderly and above all free human coexistence. Christianity and the free democratic society, to summarise one of Tocqueville’s basic concerns, are not only compatible with each other, but they also refer to each other. Especially in the introduction to the first volume of the Démocratie Tocqueville is keen to show that the advance of democracy must be seen as a God-willed event, with God leaving it to humans to steer this advance in the direction of free or despotic democracy.