Pulse
21 Jul 2025
Last year, Global Nation, in partnership with The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Citizen, Glocalities, and Goals House released the new Global Solidarity Report which assesses the current state of global solidarity.
The report’s analysis attempts to answer three questions: Do people worldwide share a sense of solidarity with each other? Have we established effective mechanisms for global cooperation? Has our collaborative effort yielded progress or regression?
The results of the study are sobering. The score is a mere 39 points on a scale of 100, suggesting that the world is in a precarious ‘danger zone.’
Global solidarity is threatened by recent events such as the Covid 19 pandemic, the Russian-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, as well as many other factors including economic inequality and the weakening of multilateral institutions.
Yet, it was only in the last century that the idea of solidarity saw something of a revival. This is often attributed to the work of German philosophers and social theologians such as Heinrich Pesch, Oswald von Nell-Breuning, and Gustav Gundlach.
The concept of solidarity, however, is not new. It is as old as the Bible, Greek philosophy and Roman law, and often referred to as the three pillars of Western civilisation. Christianity arguably brought depth to the concept of solidarity through its rich theological anthropology and ethic of indiscriminate love (agape).
In the twentieth century, it was arguably Pope John Paul II who more than any Christian leader has underscored the importance of solidarity through a number of addresses, but most significantly in his 1987 encyclical entitled Sollicitudo res socialis (The Social Concern).
For the late pontiff, it was the sense of solidarity that had transformed the hearts of thousands of people which put in motion the events of the 1980s that culminated in the Revolutions of 1989, also known as the Fall of Communism.
Reflecting on the history of the 1980s, Pope John Paul II said in his address to the United Nations in 1995 that:
those historical events nonetheless taught a lesson which goes far beyond a specific geographical location. For the non-violent revolutions of 1989 demonstrated that the quest for freedom cannot be suppressed. It arises from a recognition of the inestimable dignity and value of the human person, and it cannot fail to be accompanied by a commitment on behalf of the human person. Modern totalitarianism has been, first and foremost, an assault on the dignity of the person, an assault which has gone even to the point of denying the inalienable value of the individual’s life.
Later in his speech, the late pontiff added that:
A decisive factor in the success of those non-violent revolutions was the experience of social solidarity: in the face of regimes backed by the power of propaganda and terror, that solidarity was the moral core of the ‘power of the powerless.’
CHRISTIAN SOLIDARITY
As alluded to above, the Christian concept of solidarity is not premised on a phenomenological or sociological understanding of the human being and human society. It is based on Christian theological anthropology that is grounded in God’s revelation that human beings are so created as to be bearers of the divine image (Genesis 1:26-28; 9:6).
Since the inception of the Church, theologians have reflected on what the Bible means when it describes human beings as created in the image and likeness of their Creator. While the different interpretations of the imago Dei need not be rehearsed in this article, what is of moment is that they point to the fact that humans are given a certain dignity by God.
This dignity is accorded equally and without discrimination to every human being, regardless of sex or ethnicity. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church has so eloquently put it: ‘In creating men “male and female”, God gives man and woman an equal dignity. Man is a person, a man and woman equally so, since both are created in the image and likeness of the personal God.’
It is precisely because all humans enjoy equal dignity and value as bearers of God’s image that the imago Dei also serves as the foundation for solidarity.
If human dignity is the status of every human being because every one is created in the divine image, then solidarity is their shared responsibility of image bearers towards one another. Solidarity is the relational and social implications of being given the privilege of reflecting or imaging God.
The God in whose image human beings were created is the Trinitarian God whose very nature is love. We may say that there is divine and infinite solidarity within the Godhead as the distinct persons of the tripersonal God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – share the divine nature even as each one bears the fullness of that nature.
There is therefore not only an analogy between human and divine solidarity, the latter must serve as profound inspiration for the former. Pope John Paul II puts it this way in his encyclical:
Beyond human and natural bonds, already so close and strong, there is discerned in the light of faith a new model of unity of the human race, which must ultimately inspire our solidarity. This supreme model of unity, which reflects the intimate life of God, one God in three Persons, is what we Christians mean by communion.
As a people who are united to Jesus Christ by God grace, the Church should be the model of solidarity. The divisions caused by gender, ethnicity, social status that are so evident in society are overcome by the Christian’s union with Christ – or at least it should be.
As the apostle Paul has strikingly put it in his letter to the Galatians: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28).
Reflecting on what it means to be united to and in communion with Christ, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer asserts in The Cost of Discipleship that:
Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race.
THE PRACTICE OF SOLIDARITY
Just like any kind of social responsibility, there are varying levels of solidarity. However, regardless of its level or intensity solidarity always has to do with the willingness to offer disinterested service to our fellow human beings.
The Christian understands that true solidarity is motivated and energised by that unconditional love which the Bible calls agape. As such, the service of our fellow human beings in the name of solidarity has its source in and is inspired by God, whose very nature is agape (See 1 John 4:7-21).
The highest expression of solidarity is found in the person who would give his life for another human being, including the stranger, and even the enemy (John 15:13).
Just as there are many intensities of solidarity, so also there are many different types of solidarity.
Firstly, there is solidarity among Christians of different denominations and theological traditions. This concern is at the heart of Jesus’ high priestly prayer for his disciples (and, by extension, the Church) recorded in John 17:21-23:
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
The achievements of the ecumenical movement which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century notwithstanding, the full solidarity and unity of Christians is sadly still far from being achieved. This lack of solidarity or communion continues to obscure Christian witness because unity is never an optional extra, but the very essence of the Christian community.
Secondly, there is solidarity with the poor, marginalised, sick and needy.
This ethic of solidarity with the weakest in society is deeply rooted in the teachings of the Bible. This is amplified in Jesus’ arresting statement in Matthew 25: ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ (25:40; Cf., 25:31-46).
For Christians, solidarity with the poor and the needy is an integral aspect of discipleship – it has to do with what it means to follow Jesus and imitate our Lord.
The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America has so elegantly put it in its document entitled For the Life of the World: ‘The Church can be no less concerned for the plight of the poor and the defenceless than was Christ himself, and no less ready to speak for them when their voices cannot be heard.’
Thirdly, in a globalised world that is plagued by conflict and unrest, emphasis must be made on the importance of the solidarity of nations. Already in the late 1980s, Pope John Paul II had emphasised in his encyclical that humanity ‘needs a greater degree of international ordering, at the service of the societies, economies, and culture of the whole world.’
Addressing the United Nations in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI, building on the encyclical of his predecessor, stressed how important it is for international leaders to work together and to establish solidarity with the weakest regions in the wake of global challenges:
Indeed, questions of security, development goals, reduction of local and global inequalities, protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate, require all international leaders to act jointly and to show a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the law, and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions of the planet.
The need for this is ever greater than before today! The solidarity of nations is crucial for addressing poverty, the ecological crisis, nuclear armament, global security, terrorism, wars and unrest, human rights, and crimes against humanity – the list can easily be expanded.
Solidarity is the indispensable foundation for social harmony, both in society and in the arena of international relations. We may say that the fruit of solidarity is peace.
Pope John Paul II understood this very well, and wrote emphatically in his encyclical so many decades ago that:
… world peace is inconceivable unless the world’s leaders come to recognise that interdependence in itself demands the abandonment of the politics of blocs, the sacrifice of all forms of economic, military or political imperialism, and the transformation of mutual distrust into collaboration. This is precisely the act proper to solidarity among individuals and nations.
This is surely the message that our conflicted and polarised world needs to hear!
Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor at Trinity Theological College (Singapore) and Theological and Research Advisor of the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.