Europe’s Tradition of Christian Democracy Is Facing Regime Change From America’s Right-Wing Populism

Yet Rubio’s warnings of “civilizational erasure” because of mass migration echoed the brutally confrontational speech by Vice President J.D. Vance last year; they also subtly restated the threat that, if European elites are not going along with a Trump-inspired vision of what needs to be done to save the West, Trumpists will aim for regime change on the old continent. To rescue a civilization crucially based on what Rubio referred to several times as “Christian faith,” they are ready to throw their support behind what the National Security Strategy calls “patriotic” Europeans, which is to say: far-right parties.

What has been curiously absent from European discussions of these unprecedented threats is what one might call the continent’s “indigenous” political technology of Christian Democracy. At first sight, Christian Democratic parties might appear to have similarities with the MAGA-style promotion of Christian nationalism by Europe’s self-declared patriots. But the parties that were once pioneered to reconcile democracy and religion, Catholicism in particular—a model that eventually spread elsewhere in the world, most notably Latin America—are fundamentally different from what Trumpists are pushing today: They are not populist, and they promote moderation, not culture war, as the right way of doing politics.

Much rides on whether Europe’s locally developed parties informed by Christianity can survive in the face of the foreign-supported (and sometimes foreign-financed) “patriots.” These parties demonstrated how to accommodate the ambivalence that religious citizens felt about modern liberal democracy, but—unlike many of today’s self-declared post-liberals—in a way that was consistent with the core elements of democracy.

Far-right populists prioritize belonging to the national collective, whereas actual religious beliefs (let alone religiously inspired behavior) matter little. They also systematically undermine the project of European integration, which none other than Christian Democrats had started in the 1950s. It would be a historical tragedy if Europe fails to resist the siren song of far-right populists and post-liberals or to remember its own tried and tested answers to the political questions that they raise.

And yet, judging from Christian Democracy’s dwindling public support, that is exactly the direction in which European politics is now heading.

His countryman Alexis de Tocqueville pursued a similar agenda with his description of the reconciliation of democracy and religion in the United States—which was really a prescription for France. Contrary to conventional wisdom, he did not posit an affinity between Protestantism and democracy; rather, he claimed that a free way of life could easily become disorienting for citizens—too many choices!—if they did not have a firm moral anchor. And the firmest moral anchor happened to be provided by the Catholic faith. American Catholics, the French aristocrat assured his audiences back in Europe, were both the most obedient and the most independent of citizens.

Christian Democratic political parties could build on such arguments; but it is important to remember that, for a long period, they did not wholeheartedly accept representative democracy as the only legitimate form of modern politics. Their names contained words such as Volk and Popolo (both referring to “the people”)—but these were meant to signal proximity to the lower classes, and not necessarily an endorsement of popular sovereignty, let alone of the pluralism that, inevitably, characterizes democracy in large, complex societies. After all, for anyone holding nonnegotiable religious beliefs, pluralism would automatically seem to spell the danger of relativism—a fear still prominently echoed by Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of the 21st century.

Christian Democratic parties, then, were more like interest groups formed in the face of secular states that, in the eyes of Catholics, proved actively hostile to religion. These parties did not emerge where Catholicism was an unquestioned element of political culture, such as in Ireland—they would have been deemed superfluous—but where religion became contested and deeply politicized.

In Germany, Catholics were mobilized against Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf—the original “culture war”; the Iron Chancellor sought to cast doubt on Catholics’ loyalty to the unified German nation-state dominated by Protestant Prussia and weaken the church’s political influence. (He eventually lost that war.) Italy witnessed a fierce conflict between the Vatican and the newly unified nation-state (which had seized most of the Papal states), so much so that the Pope forbade Catholics to participate in democratic political life in any shape or form—even voting was verboten.

Christian Democratic parties served as defensive political instruments, but they also promoted what one might call a particular political technology: Pope Leo XIII, recognizing the urgency of the social question, had advocated for balancing the interests of workers and capitalists; in contrast to the class struggle advanced by socialists, he proposed the ideal of a harmonious society in which different groups cooperated for the common good.

Accordingly, Christian Democrats sought to mediate among conflicting interests; they were wary of centralized power, and they wished to protect a pluralism of different groups in society, starting with the traditional family (something quite different from a pluralism of belief systems).

After the First World War, the Vatican lifted the prohibition on engaging in Italian politics. The result: The Christian Democratic Popolari became the second-strongest party; in Germany, the Catholic Center Party formed a crucial part of the coalitions that sustained the Weimar Republic. Yet in both counties, Catholic political leaders eventually allied with anti-democrats: the Popolari were pressured by the Vatican to bow to Benito Mussolini; the Center Party voted for Adolf Hitler’s Enabling Act in 1933.

It was only after the Second World War that Christian Democrats fully endorsed democracy, disavowing authoritarian alternatives such as Francisco Franco’s Catholic state in Spain. The traditional right had been discredited by the experience of totalitarianism in Germany and Italy; a sufficient number of Catholic leaders had been active in the resistance to make Christian Democracy appear like a fresh moral start. In front-line countries of the Cold War, Christian Democracy was seen as the anti-communist force par excellence (and hence backed by Washington).

Christian Democrats claimed that both communism and 19th-century liberalism constituted forms of materialism, the major difference being that one was collectivist, whereas the other promoted individual autonomy. By contrast, Christian Democrats subscribed to the vague and by now almost completely forgotten philosophy of “personalism.” (Pope John Paul II was one of its last great adherents.) Personalism was said to do justice to the spiritual dimension of human life and respect the dignity of both individuals and groups cooperating in a harmonious society.

The vagueness of personalism helped Christian democratic parties to present themselves as catch-all parties open to many different citizens (the Italian Christian Democracy party was nicknamed the white whale—balena bianca—apropos its sheer size); they decidedly did not want to be seen as confessional political groupings: The German Christian Democratic Union emphasized the word “union” in its name, claiming at last to have reconciled Catholics and Protestants after centuries of conflict going all the way back to the 30 Years’ War.

Behind the anti-communist shield—the Italian Christian Democracy party adopted a crusader shield as its symbol—the prescription remained to address political conflicts through mediation and a posture of ecumenism.

They created the supranational structures that Europeans still live with today: not just what eventually became the European Union, but also the Council of Europe and the European Convention of Human Rights—the joint creation of British Tories and continental Christian Democrats (with a decidedly anti-socialist thrust), which turned out to be the world’s most successful regional human rights regime.

While the structures remain, the spirit that had animated them has been steadily weakening. At the ballot box, Christian Democratic parties have been doing worse and worse. Secularization is one obvious explanation. Less obviously, there is the disappearance of anti-communism after the end of the Cold War: Clearly, the only thing worse than having a mortal enemy is losing a mortal enemy. Anti-communism had served as a glue to keep quite heterogeneous ideological fractions together (analogous to its role in enabling President Ronald Reagan’s coalition in the United States).

The Italian Democrazia Cristiana (DC)—which had always legitimated itself as the bulwark against Western Europe’s strongest Communist Party and which had been continuously in government since the beginning of the republic—disappeared altogether in the early 1990s; it was obvious by then that its success had been based not just on anti-communism but also staggering levels of corruption and clientelism (not to mention connections with the Mafia). Elements of its philosophical legacy have been scattered across the Italian party landscape. (Matteo Renzi, the prime minister from 2014 to 2016, got his start in the Italian People’s Party, a short-lived successor to the DC; while Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia also tried to claim the DC’s mantle.)

The sordid history of the DC might suggest that ideals did not really matter for Christian Democracy. But they did, at least until fairly recently: German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was the last major figure in Germany who took major risks because he was profoundly committed to European integration; his successor, Chancellor Angela Merkel, merely kept things together, resisting all attempts by French counterparts such as Presidents François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron to develop a more ambitious agenda for deepening European integration.

To be fair, domestically, Merkel did practice the traditional strategy: de-escalating conflicts; reconciling and co-opting different interests (thereby also demobilizing opposition); mediating among many different groups; and keeping change as incremental and, ideally, consensual, as possible. Of course, such a form of governance was made easier by the fact that, during Merkel’s 16-year reign, money was plentiful. (Though, as we now know, her Modell Deutschland depended on cheap Russian gas and selling SUVs to China; it was never sustainable.)

Quite apart from changed economic circumstances, the Christian Democratic model of doing politics seems less feasible in societies fragmented and polarized at the same time. In the postwar years, groups were well-organized, and mediation among interests could result in stable compromises, not least because the groups sustaining Christian Democracy electorally—farmers and medium-sized businesses—also benefited from the prosperity generated by European integration. Farmers have virtually disappeared as a factor in West European politics, and today’s societies are just more individualistic—which is another way of saying “disorganized.” Questions of identity have become more complicated and often cannot be addressed through strategies traditionally pursued by catch-all parties.

That is not to say that we should pine for a golden era of democracy—take your pick—during the 1950s or 60s: One only need to think of the vulnerable situation of women and sexual minorities during those decades in order to be disabused of cheap political nostalgia. (Marital rape was only criminalized in Germany in 1997; the country’s current Chancellor opposed the change at the time.)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives for a meeting at the Vatican on Dec. 4, 2024. Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto via Getty Images

To make things worse, Europe has seen the appearance of figures claiming Christian democracy’s heritage—figures who can only be called impostors. Most prominently, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been promoting himself as the last authentic Christian Democrat. Insinuating not so subtly that Merkel and other mainstream figures have been sellouts—since they allegedly made too many compromises with liberalism, for instance, on refugee policies and same-sex marriage—Orban celebrates Christian Democracy as inherently “illiberal” and hence as integral to his project of erecting an “illiberal state” (first announced in summer 2014).

On one level, that designation is not entirely false: Plenty of Christian Democrats did indeed regard liberalism as a toxic combination of secularism; individualism; and, as we already saw, materialism. But as we also saw, they were highly suspicious of nationalism—whereas Orban fraudulently asserts that Christian Democracy is inherently national. As we saw as well, Christian Democrats were precisely not invested in the kind of culture war that Orban relentlessly pursues: stoking conflicts and declaring minorities a danger to the country.

What is being sold as Christian Democracy here is really just far-right populism with a Christian veneer. It is, as the French social scientist Olivier Roy has pointed out, all about belonging, not about believing, let alone behavior that could be called authentically Christian.

Christendom as a group identity is at stake—the “civilizational” perspective also adopted by the Trumpists—not Christianity. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gives the game away in her autobiography Io Sono Giorgia: There, she writes that “the Christian identity can be secular rather than religious.”

A statue of French intellectual and politician Alexis de Tocqueville stands under the flag of the European Union in the courtyard of the Normandy General Council in Saint-Lo, France, on May 12, 2005. Mychele Daniau/AFP via Getty Images

But other protagonists of the post-liberal movement openly promote Catholic integralism, the idea of subordinating the state to religious imperatives; they heap praise on Orban’s Hungary—a kind of Disneyland for the transnational far right—because the prime minister dares to use public power extensively to enforce the “right” kind of morality (as opposed to the sham neutrality of the liberal state).

What is remarkable about some of these Catholic hard-right post-liberals is their willingness to break with core elements of Christian Democracy: Even if they are not necessarily nationalists, they are perfectly comfortable with the idea of aggressively centralizing state power. Nothing is left of the traditional Christian Democratic model of decentralization; pluralism (among groups); and mediating and compromising among different interests, identities, and ideas.

The “patriots” singled out by the Trumpists for something like most-favored-party status (and designated drivers of regime change) talk the talk of “European civilization” and promote what the social scientist Rogers Brubaker has termed “Christianism”—a collective identity rather than an actual individual ethics, let alone faith.

For the remaining authentic Christian Democratic parties, these “patriots” pose a dilemma: If they start copying them—thereby legitimating far-right rhetoric and policies—citizens will eventually vote for the original, not the copy; if they hold the line—or, to use the image prevalent in Germany, if they keep the far right behind a firewall—they can always be accused of not being properly conservative at all by the far right (and by its own members who were uncomfortable with Merkel-style moderation all along).

A less defensive approach would start by asking whether there is not some use left in the old Christian Democratic toolkit for conducting politics: Might conscious attempts to de-escalate conflicts not be welcome when people regularly complain about polarization and exhaustion from obviously unjust culture wars á la Orban?

Christian Democrats could also recover their heritage in economics; their policies used to be far from neoliberal in the postwar period. This would allow for overlap with social democratic approaches and make grand coalitions seem less incoherent. There is a reason why, during the late 1940s, Christian Democrats were seen as both staunchly anti-communist and center left at the same time.

More risky—but perhaps also much more rewarding—would be an attempt to wrest Christianity away from assorted Christian nationalists and far-right populists. Citizens might prefer tight border controls, but, as the first year of Trump 2.0 has demonstrated, they do not support ostentatious cruelty; the good Samaritan has not become an incomprehensible figure. Obviously, part of the problem for Europeans is that they might offer high-minded talk of the EU as a “normative power,” but de facto outsource the cruelty to Libya and Tunisia; the European Convention of Human Rights is being undermined by a group of nine European countries (including such traditional homes of Christian Democracy as Austria, Belgium, and Italy) that seek to weaken protections for refugees.

Clearly, a fundamental rethinking of asylum and migration policies is an uphill struggle against a far right that has benefited from years of concessions—both in rhetoric and policy substance—from the center right. Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, still tried to engage in that struggle when she declared in 2015 that her party’s principles mandated welcoming strangers in need.

The Czech philosopher and dissident Jan Patočka, in essays penned toward the end of his life (a life cut brutally short by the police of the state socialist regime in 1977), speculated about a European Christianity after Christendom. In a somewhat similar vein, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor once claimed that the full development of the moral intuitions of Christianity depended on what he called a fundamental “breach with Christian culture.”

To be sure, it would be complacent and ridiculously Eurocentric to claim that an EU now under attack from both Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the U.S. government is particularly well placed to show what it means to remain faithful to such moral intuitions, and what it means to move beyond the identitarian myths of Christendom.

So far, leaders of what can only be called a post-West Europe are clearly not rising to the occasion—even though, ironically, there is now an American Pope speaking from the heart of Europe, a pope who clearly opposes the Christianism coming out of Washington, D.C. (Just recall his rebuke of Vice President J.D. Vance’s crude nationalism in spring 2025).

Still, Leo XIV and the remnants of authentic Christian Democracy in Europe may still demonstrate the power of the seemingly powerless.

This text is based on parts of the Jan Patočka Memorial Lecture, delivered on Dec. 11, 2025, at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.