"The origin of human rights is creation. Man has never 'acquired' them. Nor has any government or other authority conferred them. Man has had them from the beginning. He received them with his life from the hand of his Maker. They are inherent in his creation. They have been bestowed on him by his Creator." (John Stott (1984) Issues Facing Christians Today, pp.143-144)

Continuing yesterday's thoughts reflecting on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), signed sixty years ago today, I am reminded that one of the principal architects of the UDHR, a Christian seminary professor called Frederick Nolde, once noted how "an international Christian influence played a determining part in achieving the more extensive provisions for human rights and fundamental freedoms which ultimately found their way into the Charter."†

Most secularists would assert, together with the authors of the American Declaration of Independence, that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." However, the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps either more honestly or more insightfully, denounced equality as immoral and harmful, asserting "Life itself recognises no solidarity, no 'equal rights,' between the healthy and the degenerate parts of an organism: one must excise the latter–or the whole will perish," and "The poison of the doctrine of 'equal rights for all'–it was Christianity that spread it most fundamentally."† As the American law professor Michael Perry has argued, there is "no intelligible secular version of the idea of human rights."† Men are not self-evidently born equal–except that we have been created equal in the image of God by the Creator of space and time.

This biblical concept of imago Dei is also the true basis for human dignity–a fact that was missing in the discussion on today's news about the assisted suicide of former university professor Craig Ewert that is to be televised this evening by Sky TV. As Vinoth Ramachandra notes in Subverting Global Myths, "It is God's action, not human agency, that confers inherent dignity on human beings."

So, if the Church were to reassert the biblical roots to the rights movement, what would a Christian conception of human rights look like?  Drawing upon the references below and in yesterday's post, the following is offered as a starting-point:

• All humans enjoy the right to life and the basic resources to sustain life, for life is a gift from God.
• All humans enjoy the right to justice, for all have been created equal before God's law.
• All humans enjoy a responsibility to secure the rights of others, for God is love, has made us in His trinitarian image for mutual relationship, and requires us to love Him and our neighbour as ourselves.

Given what Nolde observed, we should not be surprised to find these foundation rights in evidence throughout the Universal Declaration. However, if its tenets are consistently to be applied across the many debates in which the rights of one group appear in conflict with the rights of another, society would do well to remember the objective basis without which its democratic freedoms crumble. For this to happen, the Church must make known the good news of Christ wherever human dignity is violated.

† Cited by Vinoth Ramachandra (2008) Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the public issues shaping our world, pp.107, 97 and 100-101, whose chapter "Myths of Human Rights" informs much of the above.

See also Julian Rivers (1997) Beyond rights: the morality of rights-language (Cambridge Papers)

• 
• Share