ABSTRACT
The United States Constitution along with the governments and legal systems that it authorizes do integrate society’s diversity into a common public order. Nationalism became the dominant ideology, yielding little room to public debate of significant ideological differences between Christian democratic and radically secular views of life. By contrast, the nineteenth-century European experience—defined so markedly by the more radical French Revolution—sparked a number of different Christian reactions to the political forces inspired by the ideal of autonomous human freedom and power. The relatively immature Christian democratic tradition may have something significant to offer if it can resist accommodation to compulsive, delusional ambitions, whether ancient or Modern, and step forward boldly to work for the development of an integral Christian approach. A Christian democratic approach to law and politics affirms, as a matter of principle, that every citizen should enjoy the same civil and human rights.
