What does the Christian Democratic Union of Germany believe?

Answer 1

Christian Democratic Union parties are all over the world and not just a German phenomenon. Christian Democratic Parties can be found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

To be a Christian Democrat, one must follow 4 simple foundational beliefs. Christian Democracy postulates the following fundamental beliefs and objectives:

1. The recognition of free and constitutional society as the only political system within which the fundamentals of values of Christian Democracy can be realized. In the discourse at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly with Socialism, Communism, Secular Humanism, Anarchism, Totalitarianism, and dehumanizing Rationalism combined seeking to tear apart of the basic social unit by which Society is based; Christian Democracy seeks to rebuild and restore. It is our most important objectives to restore, protect, and defend the core values of a Christian Democratic society.

2. In a Christian Democratic society it is the legal right to freely strive for political and economic self-realization and personal happiness while acting responsible towards oneself, others, and society. Personal responsibility for ones actions and ethics lie in the fundamental ideas of liberalism, self reliance, the rule of law, and Christian social ethics.

3. The acceptance of responsibility and the willingness to share responsibility, the principle of political decentralization, and personal responsibility as superior to centralized and authoritarian paternalism. Herein lies the principles of subsidiarity and community.

4. Solidarity with those who are weaker as an expression of the commandment to charity of one's fellow man and political reason. Therein lies the goals of Christian charity, Christian social ethics including the commandment of responsibility and charity towards the poor and needy.

These fundamental beliefs and political objectives continue to remain intact from the early beginnings of Christian Democracy from the 19th Century. Contemporary Christian Democracy Parties today continue to associate 19th Century Liberal ideas with conservative values and Christian Social ethics. These fundamental values of freedom, individual rights, justice, and solidarity of manare applied both to political and economic process as well as to social life.