Mission

Many Christians are deeply concerned about the direction in which South Africa is moving and about the ideas and influences shaping public policy, law and society. Some policies and cultural developments can create tensions with Christian convictions or make it more difficult for Christians to practise and express their faith freely in the public square.

Yet the Christian response has often been fragmented. Christians may respond to individual issues as they arise, organise around particular causes, withdraw from public life altogether, or become politically passive. For many, sustained engagement in public discourse can seem too demanding, while others have accepted the misconception that faith is essentially a private matter with little or no place in public life.

The result is that many Christians may have strong convictions about individual issues without having a coherent political framework that connects those convictions to a broader understanding of society.

This creates an important gap.

Christians need a framework that enables them to move beyond reacting to individual political issues and to think more systematically about the kind of society they want to help build. They need to be able to connect their understanding of human dignity, freedom, responsibility, family, community, justice, the economy, the rule of law and the common good within a coherent political vision.

The Christian Democracy Foundation seeks to help fill this gap by introducing and developing Christian democracy as a political and social tradition through which Christians from different traditions can engage constructively in the public life of South Africa.