Louis Henkin suggests that today "all the major religions proudly lay claim to fathering" human rights.¹ If this is so, it is remarkable in at least two respects. First, human rights are a central topic of legal and political discussion. It is by no means obvious that human rights are a matter of religious concern, much less that they are rooted in religious faith. Second, as each religious tradition is defined by different beliefs and practices, it seems unlikely that there would be any consensus about human rights among the participants in these traditions.

However, I will argue that Henkin's claim is essentially correct. Within the major religious traditions of the world today there are many leaders who have embraced human rights as an expression of their faith. This support for human rights is global, cutting across cultures as well as systems of belief and practice. How this has happened and what it might mean for our world is the subject of this investigation.

Clearly, something new is occurring when women and men² of different faith traditions join with those of no religious tradition to champion human rights. Faith in human rights is becoming global.

What are Human Rights?

Abdul Aziz Said suggests that today "Human rights may be difficult to define but impossible to ignore."³ Human rights are impossible to ignore, because they are widely asserted. However, human rights are hard to define because they are not simply derived from philosophical arguments. Rather, human rights are the result of experience and history: "while the struggle to assure a life of dignity is probably as old as human society itself, reliance on human rights as a mechanism to realize that dignity is a relatively recent development."⁴

With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the expression "human rights" replaced in international law the term "rights of man," an expression adopted during the nineteenth century to refer to the traditional affirmations of "natural rights" made popular by the English, American and French Revolutions.⁵

Because of this historical development, the term "human rights" has tended to convey a broader meaning than the expression "rights of man." "Human rights" thus connotes economic and social as well as civil and political rights, equality of the sexes and the rights of the individual on an international as well as a national plane.⁶

Thus, the expression "human rights" refers to the law of human rights, which has been and is being developed to protect and promote human dignity. Or more simply, human rights are "what the laws say" they are.⁷ In practical terms if a subject is in a human rights treaty, it is an issue of human rights.

The foundation of human rights law is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is now part of the customary law of nations and thus binding on all states.⁸ This Declaration is cited in most international human rights legal instruments and is affirmed by human rights scholars and advocates. Human rights law includes international, regional and bilateral treaties, and through constitutional provisions has been incorporated into the domestic law of most states. Human rights law makes the welfare of individual human beings a matter of international concern: "No nation can any longer claim not to know what human rights are; nor can any nation now assert that the manner in which it treats its own nationals is free from international scrutiny."⁹

Human rights include the self-determination of peoples, fundamental freedoms involving integrity rights for the individual and freedom of action, political rights, social and economic rights, and cultural rights involving the right to cultural identity and continuity and the right to participate in the cultural life of society and to enjoy the benefits of that activity.¹⁰ Today it is widely accepted, as stated by the International Commission of Jurists, that the:

Rule of Law requires the establishment and observance of certain standards that recognize and foster not only the political rights of the individual but also his economic, social and cultural security. It is endangered by the continued existence of hunger, poverty and unemployment, which tend to make a truly representative form of government impossible and promote the emergence of systems of government opposed to the principles of the Rule of Law.¹¹

Admittedly, no single theory of law accounts for all these rights, nor does any single strategy assure their balanced realization. Moreover, there continues to be vigorous debate over international human rights law.

Human rights law is a process of developing global consensus. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights not only laid the cornerstone for the content of human rights, but also established the manner in which the whole structure of human rights law is being built. When Louis Henkin refers to human rights as "simply those moral-political claims which, by contemporary consensus, every human being has or is deemed to have upon his society and government,"¹² he is affirming the tradition of human rights law that has developed since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Religious Opposition to Human Rights

Abba Hillel Silver admits that, "Religion was not only tardy in championing human rights; at times it was actually retarding and reactionary."¹³ Certainly, this was true of the Christian tradition. Despite all the present discussion of human rights in the churches, Erich Weingärtner suggests:

It is perhaps premature to speak of any "Christian tradition" of human rights, especially in view of the fact that the Christian church has not historically been in alliance with the pioneers of human rights, whatever their tradition.¹⁴

On behalf of the early church, Tertullian did argue with the Roman proconsul Scapula that worship according to one's convictions "is a fundamental right, a privilege of nature."¹⁵ However, soon after Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman empire, Augustine articulated a justification for "the spiritual utility of civil coercion" that gave the authorities "the right to restrain the freedom of dissenters.¹⁶

It is not surprising then that Pius VI, as early as the brief Quod Aliquantum in 1791, criticized the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man for supporting freedom of opinion and communication.¹⁷ Many saw the French Declaration as a threat to religious and spiritual authority and not merely as a rejection of traditional political authority. For this reason Lamennais called for a Declaration of the Rights of God rather than a Declaration of the Rights of Man.¹⁸ At stake in this struggle was the notion of rule by divine right, the dominant form of political theory in Europe after the fourth century.

In 1864 Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors struggled to preserve the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church. Among the ideas condemned in this desperate effort are the following:

55. The Church should be separated from the State and the State from the Church.

77. In this age of ours it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be treated as the sole State religion and that any other forms of religious worship should be excluded.

78. Hence those States, nominally Catholic, who have legally enacted that immigrants be permitted to have free exercise of their own particular religion, are to be praised.¹⁹

Until very recently, the Roman Catholic Church resisted the human rights movement "as an alien force."²⁰

Of course, this failing of the Catholics was always "clear" to Protestants, who tend to see their own history "as a series of successes in emancipating people for the enjoyment of greater freedom," and Roman Catholicism as "a perennial Inquisition":

Catholic history is depicted [by Protestants] as unrelieved servitude in subjection to hierarchical authority, freedom of conscience being stifled by the imposition of unreasonable, outrageously dogmatic restraints upon children, women, and men.²¹

Similarly, Protestants tend to see Eastern Orthodoxy, especially the notorious early Byzantine and the Russian traditions, as equally flawed and oppressive.

In fact, it was only the "left-wing" Christians of the Reformation in the sixteenth century who consistently advocated freedom against oppression by either princely or priestly power.²² In contrast, Luther's support for civil authority over against the rights of the common people is well documented, as is the Calvinist bent toward theocracy and the suppression of personal liberties used to enforce it.

Thus, the development of human rights in the West may be seen as a central dimension of what social theorists now call "secularization." Max Stackhouse writes:

For at least two centuries in the West, the fact that established Christianity has relinquished, or been forced to relinquish, control over key public institutions of civilization as well as over the habits of the modern mind has not only been described as historical fact, but has been celebrated as the triumph of freedom, human rights, and democracy.²³

Stackhouse notes that many observers of "secularization" see it as a kind of "banishment of religion by modern progress," but he suggests it might better be understood as "the triumph of some kinds of religion" over others.²⁴

It is understandable then why members of traditional cultures may resist the Western values associated with human rights, for many leaders in the religious traditions of the West have similarly been very wary. In both instances, human rights affirmations are seen to involve beliefs and practices that undermine revered traditions.

Specifically, faith in human rights seems to undercut the sense of duty that is so much a part of traditional culture in both its Eastern and Western forms. Elaine Pagels writes that the concept of human rights "does not occur in ancient rabbinic Judaism,"²⁵ and Louis Henkin observes: "Judaism knows not rights but duties, and at bottom, all duties are to God."²⁶ Clearly, the Bible "stressed not rights but duties,"²⁷ and the early Christian tradition:

tends to focus more on duties and responsibilities than on rights, more on the call to achieve our human potential by overcoming sin and distortion in life through a synergy of Divine Grace and the exercise of spiritual self-discipline than by claiming it as a right to be granted by others. The tradition emphasizes the idea that love more often than not requires sacrifice of one's "rights" than the insistence upon them, and forgiveness of their violation by others than insistence upon their fulfillment.²⁸

Within such a tradition "rights," when identified as necessary to protect those who are victimized by others, tend to be derived from the duties that humans have to God.

In the words of Carl F. H. Henry, evangelical Protestant theologian and founder of Christianity Today:

The Bible does not teach that human beings simply on the basis of existence have inherent or a priori rights, or that they have absolute rights accruing from sociological or political considerations. The Bible has a doctrine of divinely imposed duties; what moderns call human rights are the contingent flipside of those duties.²⁹

Moreover, Henry asserts that the God of the Bible "formulates human duties as an obligation to God, not as conferring tangible rights or benefits upon humanity per se."³⁰

This emphasis on duty rather than rights is not unique to traditional Christian faith. Kana Mitra writes: "Like most other religions of the world, Hinduism emphasizes the duties of humans rather than their rights."³¹ It is obvious, therefore, why human rights were seen by members of traditional cultures and religious communities as part of an alien faith.

Support for human rights developed during World War II. As early as 1941 Hersch Lauterpacht argued: "The protection of human personality and of its fundamental rights is the ultimate purpose of all law, national and international."³² That same year President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to give "human rights" perhaps their first official articulation, in a message to Congress encouraging support for the "Four Freedoms" (also call the "four essential human freedoms"). Roosevelt declared that "Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere."³³ And the following year Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke of the time "when this world's struggle ends with the enthronement of human rights."³⁴

The founding texts of the modern international order were based on an affirmation of fundamental human rights that Louis Henkin describes as "a declared article of faith," and which he suggests may be understood as "a self-evident truth."³⁵ This affirmation of faith was to usher in "a revolution in the theory and practice of international law," in the words of John Humphrey, who suggests "that there has been no more radical development in the whole history of international law than this bursting, as it were, of its traditional boundaries."³⁶ In international law the treatment of the citizens of a state had never before been subject to review by an international authority. However, under human rights law the fundamental rights of persons clearly transcend the authority of the state.

Much of the leadership for this revolution in law came from nongovernmental organizations that participated in the drafting of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Forty-two private organizations were present at the UN Conference at San Francisco in April 1945. This was the first time in history that citizens' groups had participated in a conference on international law. The Dumbarton Oaks Proposal—developed in 1944 by representatives of the governments of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China—had asserted that the United Nations should "promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms."³⁷ However, it was largely through the lobbying efforts of nongovernmental organizations that this single reference to human rights was expanded to seven references in the final draft of the UN Charter and also that nongovernmental organizations were given a role within the structure of the United Nations to assist in the promotion and protection of human rights.³⁸

Only a few representatives of religious institutions were among the human rights advocates at this stage. In particular, Lutheran theologian O. Frederick Nolde of the Federal Council of Churches lobbied very effectively for inclusion of human rights in the UN Charter and later for specific provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

While Roosevelt had spoken of the "Four Freedoms" and Churchill of "the enthronement of human rights," the governments of the United States and Britain were at "first rather cool towards taking up the question of human rights."³⁹ Representatives of the governments of Chile, Cuba and Panama took the lead in urging that the UN Charter include specific provisions concerning human rights.⁴⁰ In fact, the great powers did not consider human rights issues central to the development of the United Nations until the atrocities committed during the war in the concentration camps of Eastern Europe were widely publicized.⁴¹

By 1945 there was substantial pressure to develop an international bill of human rights. That same year Hersch Lauterpacht published a draft bill and an argument for its enactment. He began his essay by quoting Churchill's now memorable phrase:

In the course of the second World War "the enthronement of the rights of man" was repeatedly declared to constitute one of the major purposes of the war. The great contest, in which the spiritual heritage of civilization found itself in mortal danger, was imposed upon the world by a power whose very essence lay in the denial of the rights of man as against the omnipotence of the state. That fact added weight to the conviction that an international declaration and protection of the fundamental rights of man must be an integral part of any rational scheme of world order.⁴²

He began his draft bill by asserting that "the enthronement of the rights of man has been proclaimed to be the purpose of the war waged by the United Nations. . .."⁴³

On 10 December 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations affirmed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without dissenting vote, with forty-eight nations voting in favor, eight nations abstaining, and two nations absent.⁴⁴ A new era had begun.

The Universal Declaration affirms that human beings, "born free and equal in dignity and rights," are entitled to human rights "without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status." The rights set forth are primarily civil and political rights and include the rights to life, liberty, security, protection against torture and arbitrary arrest, equal protection of the law, freedom of movement, participation in government, religion, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of assembly and association, and ownership of property.

However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights also affirms social and economic rights. For everyone "is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality."

Therefore, the Declaration proclaims "the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment," as well as the rights to leisure time and education. Moreover, it affirms that: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Humphrey remarks that adoption of the Declaration was a far greater achievement than anyone could have imagined in 1948: "For while its adoption by the General Assembly gave it great moral and political authority, it is its subsequent history which has given the Declaration the unique status it now possesses in international law and politics."⁴⁵ Eighteen years later the texts of the two covenants designed to implement the Universal Declaration would be adopted without dissenting vote by a General Assembly more representative of the world's peoples, with one hundred nations voting in favor and only Portugal and South Africa abstaining.⁴⁶

These covenants were developed because the Universal Declaration was intended as a standard or first stage, to be followed not only by covenants but also by institutional machinery for implementation. Gerald Draper has described the Universal Declaration as "a transitional instrument somewhere between a legal and a moral ordering."⁴⁷

During the years since its adoption the Declaration has come, through its influence in a variety of contexts, to have a marked impact on the pattern and content of international law and to acquire a status extending beyond that originally intended for it. In general, two elements may be distinguished in this process—first, the use of the Declaration as a yardstick by which to measure the content and standard of observance of human rights; and, second, the reaffirmation of the Declaration and its provisions in a series of other instruments. These two elements, often to be found combined, have caused the Declaration to gain a cumulative and pervasive effect.⁴⁸

In 1974 Humphrey was able to assert as the accepted opinion of legal scholars that, regardless of the intentions of its authors, "the Universal Declaration is now part of the customary law of nations and therefore binding on all states."⁴⁹

Although its legal status has changed, from the very beginning the Universal Declaration was affirmed in language suggesting the highest credibility and authority. In her final speech at the plenary session of the General Assembly, Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the Commission on Human Rights that drafted the Declaration, suggested that the Declaration "may be the Magna Carta for all humanity."⁵⁰ In 1949 Arthur Holcombe was already comparing the Universal Declaration with the American Declaration of Independence, whose principles "remain a source of continuing inspiration to us."⁵¹

The search has been "for some notion of law which should transcend the positive law of the state—that positive law which had so often been manipulated for tyrannical purposes—to seek for a law which might afford a basis for essential human rights. . .."⁵² More than a generation after the adoption of the Universal Declaration, Senator Edward Kennedy suggested:

The lesson of the Holocaust was etched in the Universal Declaration; the sovereignty of the state is no longer immune to the claims of our common humanity. The higher law of human rights transcends the often heedless engines of political power.⁵³

To find the Nazis guilty of crimes against humanity required finding some authoritative law above that of the German state. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the expression of that standard. It was declared to be not merely international, representing agreement among states, but universal in that it set forth a morality transcending that of any particular tradition or culture.⁵⁴

In the words of Myers McDougal and Gertrude Leighton, the Universal Declaration:

represents the converging and integration on a global scale of many movements, movements hitherto restricted in a real diffusion but centuries-old and rooted deep in universal human nature and civilized culture. It is heir to all the great historic democratic movements—for constitutionalism, freedom, equality, fraternity, humanitarianism, liberalism, enlightenment, peace, opportunity, and so on. It is the contemporary culmination of man's long struggle for all his basic human values. . ..⁵⁵

Sir Muhammed Zafrulla Khan of Pakistan, a Muslim and a member of the International Court of Justice for many years, gave this tribute to the Universal Declaration:

It stands as a shining milestone along the long, and often difficult and weary, paths trodden by man down the corridors of history, through centuries of suffering and tribulations towards the goal of freedom, justice and equality. It is the first comprehensive formulation, based upon consensus, of the values which are designed to secure the dignities of man.⁵⁶

This "consensus" has been described as the "practical point of convergence of extremely different theoretical ideologies and spiritual traditions."⁵⁷

James W. Nickel argues that: "The formulation by the United Nations in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights made possible the subsequent flourishing of the idea of human rights."⁵⁸ Whatever the reasons, clearly human rights are a central topic today in both international law and contemporary moral and religious discourse.

Despite their denial in practice, human rights are universally accepted in principle. Louis Henkin argues:

For natural law today, it is human rights that claim to be the natural, higher law, not the divine right of kings or the sovereignty of the state, not the inferiority of women or races. In positive law today, it is human rights that are national and international law, not the laws of Hitler or some other "jurisprudence of terror." And it is individual civil-political and economic-social rights that are accepted as law, not unmitigated collectivism or laissez-faire. The idea of human rights is accepted in principle by all the governments regardless of other ideology, regardless of political, economic, or social condition.⁵⁹

The enforcement of human rights is certainly inadequate and at times hypocritical, yet no government overtly denies the standards of international human rights law.

As early as 1951, Jacques Maritain referred to this notion of an international consensus as a kind of "secular faith."⁶⁰ What I will show in the following chapters is that this human rights consensus is embraced and affirmed by leading members of the major religious traditions of the world.

In fact, human rights are at the center of a global moral language that is being justified, elaborated, and advocated by members of different religious traditions and cultures. This is true not merely in the West but also in Africa and Asia. It is true not only in the First and Second Worlds, where liberal and socialist human rights theories have evolved, but in the Third World as well. It is true despite opposition by some influential religious leaders and fundamentalist movements in the Hindu, Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions.

Today many Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and advocates of indigenous traditions in Africa and Asia support human rights. In what follows I will offer evidence to support this conclusion.

In Part One I will examine different positions within the Christian tradition. The World Council of Churches, Evangelicals and Roman Catholics support human rights, despite quite different theological approaches. Moreover, Christians all over the world are involved within their own cultures in the struggle to secure human rights. This new witness and consensus on human rights within the global Christian community is a striking development that deserves greater recognition.

In Part Two I will examine the human rights arguments and advocacy of leaders in other religious traditions. Highly regarded Jews and Muslims read their scriptures to justify support for human rights. Respected Hindus believe that their tradition values human rights as well as sacred duties, and well-known Buddhists affirm that human rights may express the relational reality of all life. Leading Africans and Asians assert that the traditional values of their cultures provide the conditions for human dignity, which in modern parlance are identified as human rights. Of course, other significant leaders in these religious traditions oppose the universal claims of human rights, but this opposition should not necessarily be given greater credence than religious support for human rights. Time will tell which view will prevail within these religious traditions.

In Part Three I will argue that disparate notions of human rights are being forged into a new synthesis (or global faith) in our time, particularly in the crucible of the Third World. There the denial of human rights is flagrant and brutal. Nonetheless, the witness to human rights is as passionate as it is dangerous. Throughout the Third World men and women have rallied around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and have supported human rights affirmations that are rooted in the cultures of the First and Second Worlds as well as in their own traditional cultures.

Thus, one may discern a common faith at the heart of the human rights movement that increasingly is shared by people all around the globe.

Notes to Introduction 

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