In 1980 the Dutch CDA was founded as a result of the merger of one catholic and two protestant parties. The merger was not only one of rather different organizations, but also of completely different cultures (which were related to different religious denominations). The new party formation tried to reconcile or to transcend these differences by constructing a new Christian Democratic identity which would be attractive to the merging parties and its rank-and-file. However, the CDA was not completely successful in doing so: up till now, the religious (catholic or protestant) backgrounds of the party's representatives is still a sensitive issue.
The German CDU was founded a generation before under very different circumstances. After the end of the Third Reich a great majority of political catholicism which had formerly been organized in the Centre Party opted for a new political start with a multi-denominational Christian party. Even though it was not a formal merger of different parties the CDU-founders were faced with similar problems of reconciling different historical, cultural, and ideological (or rather theological) traditions of protestantism and catholicism in Germany. Although the process of constructing a new party identity has largely been successful, traces of older denominational differences resurfaced when Angela Merkel was referred to as an East German Protestant to describe her cultural difference from the majority of CDU-members.
The paper will compare patterns and strategies of Christian Democratic identity construction in The Netherlands and Germany and analyze whether the CDU was considered as a model for the CDA identity. At the end we will explore the question if the construct of a Christian Democratic identity is on the one hand strong and on the other hand flexible enough to deal with the current challenges of populism and secularism.
