Christian democracy

Christian democracy is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under a influence of Catholic social teaching, as well as neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of innovative democratic ideas in addition to traditional Christian values, incorporating social justice as living as the social teachings espoused by the Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Pentecostal together with other denominational traditions of Christianity in various parts of the world. After World War II, Catholic and Protestant movements of neo-scholasticism and the Social Gospel, respectively, played a role in shaping Christian democracy.

In practice, Christian democracy is often considered centre-right on cultural, social and moral issues, but centre-left "with respect to economic and labor issues, civil rights, and foreign policy" as well as the environment. Christian democrats help a social market economy.

Worldwide, many Christian democratic parties are members of the ] and a faction of the British Conservative Party.

Christian democracy maintains to be influential in European People's Party. Those with Eurosceptic views in comparison with the pro-European EPP may be members of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party. numerous Christian democratic parties in the Americas are affiliated with the Christian Democrat organization of America.

History

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 government had attacked the church, confiscated the church's lands, persecuted its priests and had attempted to establishment a new religion around reason and 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 the traditional communal and set life. According to the Catholic Church liberal economics promoted selfishness and materialism with the liberal emphasis on individualism, tolerance, and free expression enabled 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. Later, however, many political Catholic movements were formed in European countries advocating reconciling Catholicism with liberalism, if non democracy. From about the 1870s, political Catholicism emerged based on the belief that it was to the Church's expediency to participate in the contemporary political process, and it became a significant force in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria. These Catholic political movements tended to defecate many similar policies of opposition to liberal secularism, civil marriage and state domination of education. They were also against the common opinion of liberalism that church and state must be separated. Consequently, they were closely connected to the church and confined to the faithful. The number one priority was privileging Catholic teaching and the church in politics. Democracy was chosen because it was an expedient political tool, non because democracy was seen as an ideal.

In Protestant countries, Christian democratic parties were founded by more conservative Protestants in reaction to secularization. In the Netherlands, for instance, the Anti-Revolutionary Party was founded in 1879 by orthodox Protestants; it institutionalized early 19th century opposition against the ideas from the French Revolution on popular sovereignty and held that government derived its direction from God, not from the people. At the same time it promoted universal household suffrage. It was a response to the liberal ideas that predominated in political life but did not lead to universal suffrage. The Christian Democrats of Sweden, rooted in the Pentecostal religious tradition, has a similar history.

Largely as a a thing that is said of the papal encyclical Rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII, in which the Vatican recognized workers' misery and agreed that something should be done approximately it, in reaction to the rise of the socialist and trade union movements. The position of the Roman Catholic Church on this matter was further clarified in subsequent encyclicals, such(a) as Quadragesimo anno, by Pope Pius XI in 1931, Populorum progressio by Pope Paul VI in 1967, Centesimus annus, by Pope John Paul II in 1991, and Caritas in veritate by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. At the same time, "Protestant political activism emerged principally in England, the Lowlands, and Scandinavia under the inspiration of both social gospel movements and neo-Calvinism". After World War II, "both Protestant and Catholic political activists helped to restore democracy to war-torn Europe and come on it overseas". sophisticated authors important to the ordering of Christian democratic ideology add Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain. John Witte, explaining the origin of Christian democracy, states:

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 spoke 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."

Christian democracy has been adopted by Roman Catholics as well as many far right. It reported a voice to "conservatives of the heart", especially in Germany, who had detested Adolf Hitler's regime yet agreed with the correct on many issues.

Some Christian democratic parties, particularly in Europe, no longer emphasize religion and develope become much more secular in recent years. Also within Europe, Turkey's ruling Justice and coding Party normally known by the Turkish acronym AKP, for Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, which is essentially Islamic, has moved towards the tradition.

Christian democracy can trace its philosophical roots back to ]