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1 Theories of Solidarity The term solidarity has been used in social, political, and religious discourse for over 200 years. However, very little attention has been given to defining and theorizing exactly what is meant by it.1 The idea of solidarity has had concrete influences in two arenas in contemporary social life—politics and religion. The concept of fraternité, or brotherhood, is a precursor to solidarity and shares some of its meaning. Let us begin our examination of solidarity by looking into the familial nature of the term fraternité. In the Beginning: FRATERNITÉ The political idea of fraternity, or brotherhood, was built upon the foundation of the family and the social bonds that united its members. Some of the earliest converts to Christianity were Greco-Roman households that were built on filial and familial ties. Early Christian communities invoked the language of family to describe their relationship with fellow believers and thought of themselves as a family of faith. In the fourth century, monastic communities of religious men began to set themselves apart from society and refer to one another as “brothers” in the faith. By the sixth century, communities of women religious developed parallel models of sisterhood. The use of the idea of brotherhood within Christianity was theological as well as social. In his teachings, Jesus radically redefined family by claiming, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). That the language of brotherhood was definitional for understanding the relationships between early members of the Christian community is evidenced by the frequency with which Paul addresses the recipients of his letters as “brothers.” This language is theologically consistent with the emphasis on God as “Father” that develops within the early Christian community. While the association of God with a father was present in the Hebrew Scriptures, the metaphor of God as Father becomes an important image for understanding God in the early church.2 While Jesus was understood as God’s son, it was not until 17 the second century that the theological proposition that Jesus was God became prominent, and not until the Council of Nicea in 325 that the doctrine of the Trinity became orthodox Christian theology. By the Middle Ages, the idea of a “brotherhood” based on bonds other than blood or faith began to extend to the secular world to describe the social identities and ties shared by men in a particular profession such as merchants, artisans, and their apprentices.3 Norwegian philosopher Steinar Stjernø argues that during this time and through the Enlightenment, as society generally grew more secular, the term fraternity gradually lost its religious connotations.4 While the term is widely associated with the French Revolution through the rallying cry of “liberté, egalité, fraternité,” it did not appear in the 1789 French political document Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, nor the next nine constitutional documents. It was not until the Constitution of 1848 that it appeared as a formal political concept in the governance of France.5 Philosopher John Rawls, an eminent scholar on issues of justice, noted that “[i]n comparison with liberty and equality, the idea of fraternity has had a lesser place in democratic theory. It is thought to be less specifically a political concept, not in itself defining any of the democratic rights.”6 The way that the principles of liberty and equality have been developed in Western political philosophy, these concepts primarily refer to the liberty or equality of the individual in relation to society. As such, they conform to the emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of individual persons that classic liberalism seeks to promote as the foundation of political organization. Fraternity, by contrast, is more closely associated with rights and responsibilities that correspond to our relationships with particular groups of people to whom we are related by blood, faith, or other social bond. The idea of brotherhood was used in the French Revolution to promote feelings of friendship and camaraderie in ways that downplayed the occupational differences and class distinctions among the revolutionaries.7 However, in contemporary rhetoric, the concept of fraternity refers more to moral obligations that we owe to people we claim as our “brothers” (or “sisters”) than to individual political rights. As a concept rooted in the moral obligations that arise from social relationships, it is a more complex political concept than equality or liberty and stands at odds with the liberal foundations of individualism that undergird contemporary Western...

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