The Religious Roots of Human Rights

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The Religious
Roots of Human Rights

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Speaker:            Glen Harold Stassen, Professor of Christian Ethics, Fuller Theological Seminary

Respondents:  Graham Walker, Professor of Theology and Associate Dean, McAfee School of Theology

                             Matt Norman, Missiologist and Personnel Selection Manager, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

Stassen: [. . . ]  It has been the defenders of the unjust
status quo who stand to benefit from it who have said Christians should not
push for human rights, that human rights are selfish.  Human rights are not about selfishness, they
are about caring for those who may be victimized. There are groundings for
human rights in many traditions, but my charge is to talk about Christianity,
and more specifically the Baptist tradition. 
Early Baptists, such as Richard Overton saw that most wars are fought on
religious grounds and that the right for religious liberty would end many
wars.  They also were concerned with
justice for the poor.  Human rights are
about caring, defending the defenseless. 
The doctrine of human rights belonging to all persons was born fully developed in the 1600s in the form of
religious liberty, freedom for the press, the right to understand the law in
one's own language, and the right of prisoners not to be starved, beaten or
tortured.  Richard Overton, 1647.

Second,
caring for those whose voice needs hearing. 
The narrative that carries the meaning of human rights victims is not a
light narrative; it is embodied in law and custom.

Third, Jesus
cared for people, lepers, prostitutes, tax collector, a centurion, women, those
who were outcasts.  He cared so much that
he confronted the authorities for what they were doing.  We count 37 times Jesus confronted the
authorities of the Sadducees, Pharisees etc (not counting the Gospel parallels).  He confronted them about the injustice of
exclusion from community, of domination by power, and of violence.  These are the same injustices the prophet
Isaiah focused on.  They are not
arbitrary types of injustice, they are God's concern, injustices God especially
warned about.  We all sin, so do nations
sin.  The temptation to sin is the
greater the more powerful you are, and our nation is incredibly powerful.  It is when Cheney and Rumsfeld lifted the
protection of the Geneva Conventions that all these acts were committed.  Torture is terrorism.  I encourage everyone to go to our website
Matthew5Project.org and get discussion groups together around making the United
States listen to other nations in the world. 

Fourth,
incorporating objections.  All ethics is
stronger and more healing if it can incorporate objections in its
arguments.  I've participated in the struggle
for human rights, and it has never been about "I need my human rights," it is
always about caring for others and defending their rights.  It's about caring for God's children who God
cares for.  That's why we all are here,
because we care for people who are tortured, and we care for our nation that it
not become morally corrupt.  Jesus
teaches caring and justice, therefore human rights is part of peacemaking.  Even though some make wars on the basis of
human rights, in the entire 20^th century, not one democracy with
human rights went to war with another democracy with human rights.  Don't tell me human rights doesn't promote
peacemaking. 

From the
free church movement we get religious liberty, human rights and democracy.  It is not politically irrelevant.  The solution is for churches to recover our
history that human rights is our baby, coming long before the
enlightenment.  We need to make clear
that the push for human rights is not only a government effort, but the church's
work. 

Fifth, twentieth
century German reaction to human rights. 
The churches opposed human rights because they thought it came from enlightenment
thought and then they had nothing with which to oppose Hitler.  Led by Martin Luther King Jr and others the
reclaiming of human rights began. 
Another defender of human rights, and another piece of Baptist heritage
is the work of Jimmy Carter.  Karl Barth and
Dietrich Bonhoeffer were the only exceptions in Nazi Germany.  They advocated for human rights and located
their arguments in the kingdom of God and the incarnation. 

There's a
lot of good theological stuff here I have to skip.  But I will say one more thing about caring
for our own nation's history on human rights. 
We need to spend more time talking about what is so important about our
nation.  I have a sense of this country
as standing for human rights, not perfectly, but trying.  Isn't that part of so many of our narratives?  Our history is Martin Luther King Jr and
Civil Rights, and the Bill of Rights.  I
don't mean we're perfect, but that's the better part of what we've got.  I feel extreme sorrow over what torture has
done to the soul of this nation. 

Walker: 
Is there a possibility for a pluralistic religious basis for engaging human
rights?  Haven't we learned in the past
decades that any discussion for human rights must be interfaith?  There can be no doubt for the place of
mutuality among faiths in the fight for human rights when we look at the work
being done both before and after 9/11.  Religious
protest will provide a counter force to the way religion is being abused in all
contexts.  No single religious tradition
has a monopoly on the understanding of how suffering can be alleviated.  We need to be able to acknowledge we have a
lot to learn from all parties involved. 
Interfaith dialogue can provide the space for sanctuary rather than
torture.  Some traditions are more
missionary than others.  But even those
religions that are not marked by sending missionaries readily receive converts.  The point is to bring to the surface the
depth of religious experience.   Religions bring us into community with one
another.  We do have to confront the
issue of how to have genuine connections in the midst of our real
differences.  Friendships give the face
of ‘the other' its power and moral claim over us.    There
is something that is moving in the world today that shows that if things are
going to change it is going to be dependent on interreligious friendships.  I think this begins when we find ourselves in
the face of human suffering.  The history
of suffering that so often gets lost is the history where we begin our
friendships across religious lines.

Norman: 
There are places where you can drive down bombed out roads and measure
distance by road blocks passed.  There
are places that understand war to be a reality, peace to be a myth, and love to
be a fetish.  I know these places, but I
have also seen hope.  The biblical
ideology of human rights is bound to the understanding of what it is to be
human.  Christians believe that the core
of God is relationship.  God creates
humans in God's image meaning relationship is central to our being.  The biblical story also tells us that God's
mission is one of healing and redeeming. 
Therefore we receive our life so we can give our life to God's mission
of healing and redemption.  In the
wholeness of Christ's humanity, Christ openly embraced all that is human.  This is the core of our understanding of
human rights, that the core of our understanding of God is based on
relationship and love.  Christ's service
to the Father was born out in service and healing.  If human rights are about the enlightened
understanding of the individual then we reduce human rights to the self.  Human rights is bigger than the
individual.  It is about love.  If this is true, then each time we injure
someone we violate God, we violate each other, we violate ourselves.