Christian democracy is an ideology inspired by Christian social teaching to respond to the challenges of contemporary society and politics.
Christian democracy has drawn mainly from Catholic social teaching and neo-scholasticism, as well as the Neo-Calvinist tradition within Christianity; it later gained ground with Lutherans and Pentecostals, among other denominational traditions of Christianity in various parts of the world. During the nineteenth century, its principal concerns were to reconcile Catholicism with democracy, to answer the "social question" surrounding capitalism and the working class, and to resolve the tensions between church and state. In the twentieth century, Christian democrats led postwar Western and Southern Europe in building modern welfare states and constructing the European Union. Furthermore, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, Christian democracy has gained support in Eastern Europe among former communist states suffering from corruption and stagnation.
On the European left–right political spectrum, Christian democracy has been difficult to pinpoint, as Christian democrats have often rejected liberal economics and individualism and advocated state intervention, while simultaneously defending private property rights against excessive state intervention. This has meant that Christian democracy has historically been considered centre-left on economics and centre-right on many social and moral issues. More recently, Christian democrats have positioned themselves as the centre-right, as with both the European People's Party and European Christian Political Party, with which many Christian democratic parties in Europe are affiliated. Christian democrats support a "slightly regulated market economy", featuring an effective social security system, thus a social market economy.
Worldwide, many Christian democratic parties are members of the Centrist Democrat International. Examples of major Christian democratic parties include the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, the Dutch Christian Democratic Appeal, The Centre in Switzerland, the Spanish People's Party, the Mexican National Action Party, the Austrian People's Party, and the Christian Democratic Party of Chile. Many Christian democratic parties in the Americas are affiliated with the Christian Democrat Organization of America.
Christian democracy continues to be influential in Europe and Latin America, although it is also present in other parts of the world.
Overview of political viewpoints
As a generalization, it can be said that Christian democratic parties in Europe tend to be moderately conservative and, in several cases, form the main conservative party in their respective countries (e.g., in Germany, Spain, Belgium, and Switzerland), such as the Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland, the Christian Social Party, the Evangelical People's Party of Switzerland and the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland. By contrast, Christian democratic parties in Latin America tend to vary in their position on the political spectrum depending on the country they are in, being either more left-leaning, as in the case of the Christian Democratic Party in Chile, or more right-leaning, as in the case of the National Action Party in Mexico. Geoffrey K. Roberts and Patricia Hogwood have noted that "Christian democracy has incorporated many of the views held by liberals, conservatives and socialists within a wider framework of moral and Christian principles."
Christian democrats are usually socially conservative and generally have a relatively skeptical stance towards abortion and same-sex marriage, although some Christian democratic parties have accepted the limited legalization of both. They advocate for a consistent life ethic concerning their opposition to capital punishment and assisted suicide. Christian democrats have also supported the prohibition of drugs. Christian democratic parties are often likely to assert their country's Christian heritage and explicitly affirm Christian ethics rather than adopting a more liberal or secular stance; at the same time, Christian democratic parties enshrine confessional liberty. Christian democracy fosters an "ecumenical unity achieved on the religious level against the atheism of the government in the Communist countries."
Christian democrats' views include traditional moral values (on marriage, abortion, prohibition of drugs, etc.), opposition to secularization, opposition to state atheism, a view of the evolutionary (as opposed to revolutionary) development of society, an emphasis on law and order, and a rejection of communism. Christian democrats are open to change (for example, in the structure of society) and not necessarily supportive of the social status quo, and have an emphasis on human rights and individual initiative. A rejection of secularism and an emphasis on the fact that the individual is part of a community and has duties towards it. Christian democrats hold that the various sectors of society (such as education, family, economy, and state) have autonomy and responsibility over their sphere, a concept known as sphere sovereignty. One sphere ought not to dictate the obligations of another social entity; for example, the sphere of the state is not permitted to interfere with raising children, a role that belongs to the sphere of the family. Within the sphere of government, Christian democrats maintain that civil issues should first be addressed at the lowest level of government before being examined at a higher level, a doctrine known as subsidiarity. These concepts of sphere sovereignty and subsidiarity are considered cornerstones of Christian democracy political ideology.
Christian democrats emphasize community, social justice, and solidarity, alongside supporting a welfare state, labor unions, and support for regulation of market forces. Most European Christian democrats reject the concept of class struggle and instead prefer co-determination, while US Christian democrats support a distributist economic system containing widespread distribution of productive property, in particular increased worker ownership (workplace democracy) and management (workers' self-management) of their production.
The Christian democratic welfare state aims at supporting families and often relies on intermediary institutions to deliver social services and social insurance, often with the support of the state.
Christian democrats support the principle of stewardship, which upholds the idea that humans should safeguard the planet for future generations of life. Christian democrats also tend to have a conciliatory view concerning immigration.
Political philosophy
No single author has been recognized by all Christian democrats as the leading Christian democratic thinker, but Jacques Maritain comes closest. Thus, in terms of impact, he is in no way akin to what John Locke is for liberalism, Edmund Burke for conservatism, or Karl Marx for socialism. Other authors critical to forming Christian democratic ideology include Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI, Emmanuel Mounier, Heinrich Pesch, Abraham Kuyper, and Luigi Sturzo.
General inspiration
Neo-scholasticism
Christian democracy can trace its philosophical roots to Thomas Aquinas and his thoughts on Aristotelian ontology and the Christian tradition. According to Aquinas, human rights are based on natural law and are defined as the things humans need to function correctly. For example, food is a human right because, without food, humans cannot function properly. Aquinas affirmed that humans are images of the divine, which follows human dignity and equality; all humans are equal because they all share that nature. Aquinas also affirmed the natural reality of family and household, based on the lifelong commitment of husband and wife, perfected with children, a unit that has priority over other communities. Aquinas also argued that public power could legitimately appropriate private owners of their resources for the common good when used for people in genuine need. When Leo XIII became pope, he issued the Papal Encyclical Aeterni Patris, which rehabilitated scholastic philosophy. The pope highlighted Aquinas's views on liberty, authority, laws, justice, and charity in this encyclical.
Aquinas's ideas would later be the foundation for the idea of subsidiarity, alongside the ideas that the state is to serve the people and that there is universal solidarity amongst humanity. A significant Neo-Scholastic was Jacques Maritain, who attempted to reconcile democracy and human rights with Thomist natural law. Maritain argued that human rights are based on natural law and that democracy needs Christianity to succeed. Jacques Maritain would use Thomist ideas of property to reduce inequality, arguing that the state should be involved if individuals do not use their property correctly. Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier would also use Thomist thinking in developing their idea of personalism.
Neo-Calvinism
Another intellectual element of Christian democracy was neo-Calvinism. The neo-Calvinist political ideas relied on John Calvin's ideas of the sovereignty of God and common grace. God's sovereignty was particularly useful in light of the French revolution and notions of individual and state sovereignty. It was the basis of sphere sovereignty, which helped the interests of Reformed Christians, which have historically been a minority. In sphere sovereignty, each sphere has its activity area related to God. Within this view of sphere sovereignty, it was the state's role to pursue public justice. Another element was that life is religious, and politics should reflect this.
Orthodoxy
The development of Orthodox Christian democracy has been held back by the fact that Orthodox Politics has not received church support in the way that Rerum Novarum encouraged Christian democracy, or how early Christian democrats such as Luigi Sturzo received tacit consent for his political activities. Russian Christian democrats, for example, have had to develop a doctrine of democracy.
Political thought
Academics have noted a few ideas key to Christian democracy, including personalism, solidarity (or some variant of social capitalism), popularism (or some variant of its catch-all nature), notions of "pluralism" (which in a vertical sense relates to subsidiarity, and in a horizontal sense denotes sphere sovereignty) and stewardship.
Personalism
Personalism is a political doctrine generally linked to Emmanuel Mounier. It focuses on the person, their intellect, responsibilities, and value. It stresses that humans are free beings with dignity and political rights, but these rights must be used for the common good. It also stresses that true human freedom is used in line with God's will. It is against the individualist and collectivist notions of humanity. It also stresses that people become full when they are members of their communities. In practical policy, it leads to a few conclusions:
Human life is sacred and is an end in itself. It is, therefore, against abortion and euthanasia.
The family unit is an essential part of society and must be defended.
Traditional gender roles must be respected; this leads to a rejection of same-sex marriages.
Freedom is not a license for Moral permissiveness.
Personalism has generally been the underlying basis in Christian democracy that leads to human rights, especially in relation to a right to life, a right to family and a right to aid, a right to suffrage, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion.
Modern personalist views also are inspired by ecologist values. Rowan Williams contrasts personalism, which he describes as a relation between humans and God, to modern-day capitalism, which is focused only on endless economic growth, which is harmful to the natural environment.
Solidarity and social capitalism
The Christian democratic political economy has not tethered itself to one "third way" between capitalism and socialism, but rather various ways between capitalism and socialism. Over time, Christian democrats moved from solidarism to a social market economy.
Initially, many Catholic political movements in the 19th century opposed capitalism and socialism equally, as both were based on materialism and social conflict. Initially, the system that Catholics advocated was one of corporatism, based on bringing back a guild-organized economy. The idea was a society where individuals were organized by their economic position. In these corporatist systems, the fathers were the head of families. One of these conceptions was that of Franz von Baader, who advocated for proletariat enfranchisement in the corporatist system. Baader is recognized as the first person to advocate for workplace codetermination. Codetermination would become a key point of unity amongst the Christian democratic trade unions. In the 19th century and early 20th century, the Lutheran social Christians advocated an authoritarian view of corporatism, and the Neo-Calvinist corporatist idea has been credited as an inspiration for the polder system that currently exists in the Netherlands. Many of these corporatisms would advance the idea of replacing the elected parliament with corporative parliament recognizing the various corporate estates of the nation; industrialists, small businesses, peasants, landowners, workers, etc. The papal encyclical Rerum Novarum would recognize some of the principles behind corporatism.
The Christian democratic notion of corporatism was found within Heinrich Pesch's solidarism. Pesch's solidarism argued for international solidarity based on shared humanity, national solidarity based on shared nationality, familiar solidarity for family members, and class and cross-class solidarity based on shared interests in the workplace. This latter solidarity focused on occupational associations advancing collective interests, codetermination, and a "third house of parliament" that would advise on economic matters. Heinrich Pesch's idea of corporatism would be a qualified notion of subsidiarity. Pesch's ideas would be influential in the Papal Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, given that Pesch's disciple Oswald von Nell-Breuning would draft the document. Quadragesimo Anno was significant in legitimatizing the push for a corporatist system and subjected it to the notion of subsidiarity. Around this time, corporatism became increasingly prominent among young Catholics frustrated with parliamentary politics and, in many instances, would inspire authoritarian and fascist regimes movements in Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany. Eventually, corporatism fell out of the political debate due to this association with authoritarian and fascist regimes.
Another economic idea within Christian democracy is the social market economy, which is widely influential across much of continental Europe. The social market is an essentially free market economy based on a free price system and private property. However, it supports government activity to promote competitive markets with a comprehensive social welfare system and effective public services to address social inequalities resulting from free market outcomes. The market is seen not as an end but as a means of generating wealth to achieve broader social goals and maintain societal cohesion. The basis of the social market economy is ordoliberalism, or German neoliberalism, an idea related to thinkers such as Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm, Ludwig Erhard, Wilhelm Röpke and Alfred Müller-Armack. Ordoliberals viewed the concentration of power as a significant danger to liberty. They desired an economic constitution that would ensure competition in markets and free decisions, where people are uninfluenced by the government. As a result of the economic constitution, this model is mildly corporatist. This model of capitalism, sometimes called Rhine–Alpine capitalism or social capitalism, is contrasted with Anglo-American capitalism or enterprise capitalism. Whereas the Anglo-capitalist model aims to remove restrictions on capitalism and enable individual prosperity, the Rhinish Model embeds the market into the social framework, with the goals of nation-building and of taking care of citizens.
Beginning in the 1980s, European Christian democratic parties have partially adopted "neo-liberal" policies. However, Christian democrats in the American Solidarity Party instead adopted distributism. The promotion of the Christian democratic concepts of sphere sovereignty and subsidiarity led to the creation of corporatist welfare states throughout the world that continue to exist to this day. In keeping with the Christian democratic concepts of the cultural mandate and the preferential option for the poor, Christian justice is viewed as demanding that the welfare of all people, especially the poor and vulnerable, must be protected because every human being has dignity, being made in the image of God. In many countries, Christian democrats organized labor unions that competed with communist and social democratic unions, in contrast to conservatism's stance against worker organizations. In solidarity with these labor unions, in Belgium, for example, Christian democrats have lobbied for Sunday blue laws that guarantee workers and civil servants a day of rest in line with historic Christian Sabbath principles. Another example of a Christian-inspired workers' movement is the Catholic Worker Movement established by Dorothy Day, which not only fought for better working standards, but also contributed to promoting the idea of pacifism and a just war.
Popularism
Popolarismo (or popularism) is a political doctrine conceived by Don Luigi Sturzo, however in reality this was Christian democracy in the political sphere. The papal encyclical Graves de communi re prohibited Christian democracy to be a political ideology, and so Sturzo used the term popularism instead. Popularism helped European Catholics come to accept democracy, and so the idea has been linked to Christian democratic ideas of democracy, which Sturzo Defined as:
The political and social system resting on the free, organic participation of the whole people in the common good.
Academics have tied the idea of popularism to the way Christian democratic parties encompass sections of the whole population. This results from the inherent religious center allowing cut across class divisions. In realization of this, Christian democratic parties tend to invoke the title "People's Parties". Academic Carlo Invernizzi Accetti links the idea of popularism to proportional representation, pillarization, and consociational democracy.
Pluralism
The Christian democratic notion of pluralism is about how humans are generally embedded in a social framework. John Witte, explaining the origin of Christian democracy, describes pluralism thus:
Both Protestant and Catholic parties inveighed against the reductionist extremes and social failures of liberal democracies and social democracies. Liberal democracies, they believed, had sacrificed the community for the individual; social democracies had sacrificed the individual for the community. Both parties returned to a traditional Christian teaching of "social pluralism" or "subsidiarity", which stressed the dependence and participation of the individual in family, church, school, business, and other associations. Both parties stressed the responsibility of the state to respect and protect the "individual in community".
Sphere sovereignty stresses the horizontal element; social communities have roles they must uphold and certain liberty and autonomy. Here the government had the role of policing the spheres. Subsidiarity is the vertical element, where the state has the role of protecting and regulating the spheres. The state must not interfere if these communities are behaving effectively. This also means that a state can intervene when these communities are not competent. In practice, subsidiarity has been used to justify the creation of international organizations, as higher international authorities need to exist to police nation-states.
Stewardship
The idea of stewardship has traditionally been linked to managerial skills regarding property and income; Stewardship can be found in neo-Calvinist Abraham Kuyper's works, where it relates to a person's responsibilities over what is entrusted to them, especially their property. In Social Catholic circles in the 1970s, stewardship was explicitly linked to environmental matters. Stewardship was found in the first programs of the Christian Democratic Appeal, and from here alongside the works of American bishops, the idea would spread to other Christian democratic parties. They view competent and efficient government as emblematic of a "just steward", which includes just stewardship over environmental matters. Pope Francis took a firm stance on environmentalism in the papal encyclical Laudato Si in 2015. Here, the idea of stewardship comes from the correct translation of Genesis, where God entrusts man with stewardship of the earth.
History
19th century
The origins of Christian democracy go back to the French Revolution, where initially, French republicanism and the Catholic Church were deeply hostile to one another as the revolutionary governments had attacked the church, confiscated the church's lands, persecuted its priests, and attempted to establish new religions, first the Cult of Reason and then the Cult of the Supreme Being. After the decades following the French Revolution, the Catholic Church saw the rise of liberalism as a threat to Catholic values. The rise of capitalism and the resulting industrialization and urbanization of society were seen to be destroying traditional communal and family life. According to the Catholic Church, liberal economics promoted selfishness and materialism with the liberal emphasis on individualism, tolerance, and free expression, enabling all kinds of self-indulgence and permissiveness to thrive. Consequently, for much of the 19th century, the Catholic Church was hostile to democracy and liberalism.
This hostility to democracy and liberalism would be challenged by liberal Catholics who believed the alliance between the church and aristocracy was a barrier to the church's mission. Initially, this group desired to reconcile the Catholics with the state of modern politics, getting Catholics involved in parties, public action, and parliamentarianism. This, however, was not an endorsement of democracy, and the liberal Catholics maintained they did not adhere to liberalism. Eventually, the movement's leading figures, such as Félicité de La Mennais, would become more accepting of democracy. The group came to be associated with a desire for a free press, freedom of association and worship, and free education.
Around this time, Catholic social thought developed, with social Catholic theologians and activists advocating the interests of workers in society. Some activists, such as Frédéric Ozanam, the Society of St Vincent de Paul founder, were more amenable to liberal democracy. Ozanam criticized economic liberalism and the commodification of labor and argued that charity was insufficient to deal with these problems and that labor associations and state intervention were needed. Italian Popular Party leader Luigi Sturzo credits Ozanam as the first Christian democrat. One of the more influential theologians in Germany was Wilhelm von Ketteler, who encouraged Catholics to accept the modern state. Ketteler argued for productive associations with profit sharing, Christian trade unions, and general workers' rights.
In the 1870s, Catholic political movements arose independently of the Catholic Church to defend Catholic interests from the liberal states. In Europe, generally, the liberal states desired to wrestle control over the Catholic education system; however, in Germany and Italy, this was a direct attack against the church. The Catholic political movements specifically opposed liberal secularism and state control of education; the parties that came out of these movements include the Centre Party (Germany), the Catholic Party (Belgium), various Catholic parties in the Netherlands, and the Christian Social Party (Austria). Initially, most of these parties accepted the anti-liberal beliefs of the Catholic Church at the time; many Catholics behind these movements believed all spheres of life should be regulated by religion. These movements were initially built by ultramontanes, were against the liberal view that church and state must be separated, and used the term "Christian democracy" in opposition to liberal democracy. The Centre Party in Germany seems to be an exception to this trend in that they defended the Catholic Church through an appeal to liberal freedoms and democracy. Additionally, the Centre Party, inspired by Ketteler, supported social legislation.
Despite the thoroughly pro-Catholic position of these movements, the church itself resisted the movements, seeing them as a challenge to the church's control of the laity. Over time, the impact of electoral politics on these parties pushed them to be more accepting of liberal democracy. To form effective political coalitions, these parties evolved from Catholic parties to parties inspired by Christianity and turned to voters, not the Catholic Church, for legitimacy. During this time, the Catholic parties took an inter-class nature, such that they comprised trade unionists, landlords, industrialists, peasants, and artisans, which academics have linked to the notion of popularism.
Protestant confessional politics was more wide and varied. The most significant movement was in the Netherlands, where Reformed, neo-Calvinist Protestants founded the Anti-Revolutionary Party. Similarly to the Catholics, this party was formed out of similar concerns with liberal control of education. The party was against the ideas of the French revolution, and its founder, Abraham Kuyper, held that the government derived its authority from God, not from the people. However, Kuyper and the Anti-Revolutionary Party did support organic democratic representation and promoted universal household suffrage. In Germany, this element came from the Lutheran Adolf Stoecker, who established the Christian Social Party, and those who followed him. The Christian social movement aimed to challenge Marxist socialism, so Stoecker supported pro-worker economic policies to win over the working class. However, when this failed, Stoecker turned to anti-Semitism. In Switzerland, Stoecker and his fellow allies generated some interest in Protestant political organization, but Protestants largely accepted the predominance of liberalism, so there was only minor growth of a Protestant political movement.
Between Rerum novarum and World War II
The papacy of Pope Leo XIII was a turning point in the development of Christian democracy, and he attempted to infuse democracy and liberalism with Catholic values. In the papal encyclical Rerum novarum in 1891, Pope Leo XIII recognized workers' misery and argued for means to improve workers' conditions. He also attacked economic liberalism and condemned the rise of socialism, and generally encouraged a corporatist approach to labor relations. Rerum novarum would provide Catholic labor movements with an intellectual platform and would coincide with the rise of Christian trade unions across Europe. It was the catalyst for the beginning of Christian democracy in France, Italy, and Austria. The same year as the release of Rerum Novarum, Abraham Kuyper organized the Christian Social Congress alongside the Protestant workers' movement, where Kuyper outlined their social principles and policy. These actions reinforced the push for Christian social action in the Netherlands. In Graves de communi re, the pope would protest against using Christian democracy as a political label, preferring it to describe a social movement.
Some academics consider the Catholic political parties around this time to be essentially Catholic and not Christian democratic. However, others consider the new Italian People's Party and the Popular Democratic Party (France) Christian democratic. These parties advocated political liberties, religious liberties, economic reform, and social partnership, policies to support democracy and internationalism. The Italian People's Party also advocated for regionalism and proportional representation. At the beginning of the Weimar Republic, Adam Stegerwald attempted to reform the Centre Party into a Christian democratic party, uniting Catholics and Protestants. In Belgium, the rising workers' movement came to form the increasingly powerful Christian democratic faction of the Catholic Party. This period also saw other Catholic parties forming; Bavarian Catholics broke away and formed the Bavarian People's Party due to the Centre Party's participation in establishing the Weimar Republic. In Switzerland, Catholics formed the Swiss Conservative People's Party, which, as a party, was divided between three competing demographics; rural Catholics who wanted greater regional independence, Catholic workers who wanted economic reform, and the more conservative groups who opposed democracy. Overall, the party was held together by the Catholic faith and anti-socialist and anti-liberal tendencies. In Ireland, Fianna Fáil was founded as a Catholic political party. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and Labor would all be avenues for Christian democracy in the post-war period.
In the early 20th century, Protestant confessional politics developed further. In Weimar Germany, Stoecker's Christian social party joined the German National People's Party as its labor wing in 1918. The Christian social parliamentarians from this party would then leave in 1929 to form the Christian Social People's Service (CSVD). Protestant workers' movements in Switzerland gradually developed mutual aid funds into an independent trade union movement. Around this time, Swiss Protestants formed the Evangelical People's Party. The 1930s saw the rise of the Christian People's Party in Norway. It was built on the work of Pietist Lutherans, and the party was initially founded to defend the country's Christian heritage against the rise of secularization. There was cooperation between the Protestant and Catholic parties during this period. The Catholic and Protestant parties would form joint governments in the Netherlands and Germany. However, this cooperation did not challenge the underlying differences between the movements; in Germany, there was tension from cooperation with Protestants, while in the Netherlands, the Anti-Revolutionaries would not support pro-Vatican policies.