Christian Democracy

I'm a big fan of Touchstone magazine (although I wish they would put more of the magazine's content online!).  The latest issue -- see if you can find it, or just subscribe! -- has an essay that will be of interest to all those who all those intrigued by the "seamless garment party" idea that gets kicked around on this blog sometimes.  In "The Long Culture War:  The Christian Democratic Response to Modernity and Materialism," Allan Carlson presents and analyzes the rise and history of Christian Democratic parties in Europe.  (Nutshell -- Christian Democratic politics were a response to the French Revolution and the Kulturkampf, and aspired to be a distinctly Christian response to modernity.)  Christian Democracy, he describes, opposed "economic materialism", "stood for organic society", embraced "the spontaneous structures of human life" and sought to protect them from "the leveling tendencies of modernity", viewed the family "as the vehicle for the regeneration of all society", and so on.

Carlson notes "there has never been a serious Christian Democratic party in America," in part -- interestingly -- because of our "more complex, or perhaps more confused, relationship with the legacy of the French Revolution."

There's a lot more.  If you can find the article, check it out.