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Christianity and Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2015

Charles Villa-Vicencio
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Extract

The historic relationship between Christianity and human rights is an ambiguous one. For hundreds of years the Christian Church actively promoted religious intolerance and persecuted those who failed to accept its moral values and customs. Many of these values and practices are today rejected as contrary to a human rights culture and moral decency. Max Stackhouse argues that while “[t]he deep roots of human rights ideals are rooted nowhere else than in the biblical tradition,” these values “remained a minority tradition (within the Church) for centuries.” James Woods, in turn, argues that “religion and freedom have not been natural allies.”

The affirmation of human rights emerged painfully and belatedly in the Christian Church. The “deep biblical roots of human rights ideals” have, however, periodically been acknowledged and retrieved throughout the history of the church in an attempt to correct wrongs, repudiate theological support for abuses, and to pursue a more humane society. The history of the emergence of human rights within the Western Christian tradition, recognises that religions develop in interaction with other social and cultural forces in society. I argue in what follows that the relationship between Christianity and the human rights tradition can only enrich society to the extent that the relationship is sustained by mutual critique and correction.

Type
South Africa Symposium
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , 2000 , pp. 579 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2000

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References

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13. I acknowledge the importance in this regard of papers delivered at the Int'l Conference on The State of Religious Human Rights in the World: Religious and legal Perspectives, Emory U, Atlanta, Ga, 6-9 Oct 1994. Brian Tierney's excellent historical analysis of the history of Christian developments regarding the freedom of religion published in the papers from this conference has been especially helpful in the preparation of the pre-Reformation section of this paper. The papers of the Emory Conference are published in two volumes, one devoted to religious perspectives and one related to legal perspectives: Witte, John Jr. and van der Vyver, Johan D., eds, Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996)Google Scholar, and van der Vyver, Johan D. and Witte, John Jr., eds, Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Legal Perspectives (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996)Google Scholar. Tierney's analysis, entitled Religious Rights: An Historical Perspective, appears at 17-45 in the volume on religious perspectives.

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49. A fuller exposition of these two theological approaches to human rights is found in Villa-Vicencio, , A Theology of Reconstruction at 137–50Google Scholar (cited in note 33).

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57. In addition to the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran and Reformed teachings on human rights cited here, for the Anglican teaching on human rights see The Truth Shall Make You Free: Lambeth Conference 1988 (Church House Pub, 1988)Google Scholar for the Reports, Resolutions and Pastoral Letters from the Bishops. For Methodist teaching on human rights see Faithful Witness on Today's Issues: Human Rights (The Gen Bd of Church and Soc'y, n.d.).

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59. See, for example, Setiloane, Gabriel, African Theology (Skotaville, 1986)Google Scholar; Shutte, Augustine, Philosophy for Africa (UCT Press, 1993)Google Scholar in which traditional Catholic doctrine is related to the African notion of ubuntu—which gives expression to African notions of humanness and human belonging. Important historical work in this regard has, for example, been under taken by Jean and John Comaroff. See, inter alia, their Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (U Chi Press, 1991)Google Scholar. Work on contemporary ethical concerns is more limited.

60. See, for example, Cobbah, Josiah A.M., African Values and the Human Rights Debate: An African Perspective, in 9 Human Rights Q 309 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also my A Theology of Reconstruction at 168 ff (cited in note 33).

61. There is no major South African work on human rights and contemporary ethical issues readily available on the subject for the use of churches and elsewhere in South Africa—in discussion with Chirevo Kwenda, who teaches African religion at the University of Cape Town. His Ancestors and Protestors, which is yet to be published, covers a number of ethical themes from the perspective of African culture and traditional religion. In this regard see also Augustine Shutte, Ubuntu: Ethics for a New South Africa. Forthcoming.