5 - Radical Orthodoxy and the Rebirth of Christian Opposition to Human Rights

Summary

This chapter explores one of the most important recent Christian critiques of human rights. It uncovers how a group of British and North American theologians, who gathered under the title of “radical orthodoxy,” has claimed that modern human rights laws, and religious liberty in particular, have done great damage to Christianity and should be abandoned. This chapter shows how this line of argument, which has also been embraced by several progressive scholars, has complicated roots. It argues that the origins of radical orthodoxy’s claims lay in reactionary Catholic opposition to religious liberty, and in particular, in the belief that religious freedom was a Protestant conspiracy to eradicate Christianity from the public sphere. This chapter then shows how the writings of radical orthodoxy’s leading figures, John Milbank and William Cavanaugh, resurrected these confessional polemics in their attacks on religious liberty. It then concludes by reflecting on the potential meanings of this genealogy to recent critiques of religious freedom more broadly.