ABSTRACT
Th e two generations from 1820 to 1880 were, then, a pilot stage, in which the essential principles of the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ to the ideas characteristic of modern society were established, but the full con sequences of this for the construction of Christian Action and Christian Democratic movements had not yet been seen. By 1880 or 1890 there were working patterns of political Christian Democracy in Belgium or Holland or Germany or Switzerland, and in some countries at least the beginnings of a Christian social movement. Christians of all denominations, all over Europe, had found little difficulty in adapting themselves to liberalism in the economic field. But the social movement was as yet feeble; there were countries, notably Italy and France, where Christianity and political liberalism were still at a deadlock, whatever solutions might be dawning on the horizon; and large bodies of Christians, and especially of Protes tants, had as yet scarcely been touched by any consciously Christian political, economic, or social movement at all. It was the task of the next two generations to draw together and complete these untidy beginnings, and to build on them by the end of the second World War a movement both comprehensive and reasonably well integrated. Three main develop ments took place. Protestants in Germany, Switzerland, and France entered the stream, in which their co-religionists in Holland already had an important place. The Christian Democratic social movements, and above all the workers’ movements, grew to their full stature and made their weight felt in the political movements. The political movements were completed both by acquiring a broader and firmer base in the social movements and through an increase in their own strength and numbers. In France and Italy, in particular, full-scale Christian Democratic parties now emerged.
