1 - Christianity and International Law: An Introduction

Summary

The interplay between Christianity and international law … The terms “Christianity” and “international law,” as well as their relationship to each other, are not easy to understand – at least where there might be consensus. The aim here is to diagnose the elusiveness of these phenomena, to explain why this is important to understand, and to set the stage for further investigations.

So why is it that we cannot come to a consensus about this issue of “Christianity and international law”? If you are inclined, pause a moment with this text and build a list of possible reasons … Some contrarians might answer that we actually do have a relative consensus, that most reasonable people, at least with the opportunity to learn, find common agreement over most things and whatever differences simply reflect the diversity, the spice, the irreducible uniqueness of individual personalities and cultures.