A Christian Understanding of Human Rights in a Secular World

I tried to articulate a distinctively Reformed, Christian foundation for the concept of human rights in "Looking for Bedrock: Accounting for Human Rights in Classical Liberalism, Modern Secularism, and the Christian Tradition" published as part of a symposium issue of the Campbell Law Review (abstract here). I first argued that secular liberal revisionism aside, the modern concept of human rights finds its historical genesis in Medieval and Reformation-era theology and politics. And of the Reformation (and post-Reformation Protestant) traditions, the Reformed rowed the laboring oar. I then turned from history and looked more deeply at the works of Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff and theologian David VanDrunen to "bulk up" an analytic-theological basis for (and critique of) the contemporary human rights movement.

I made use of some works of Christopher McCrudden in my piece and now he has come out with a new article titled "Catholicism, Human Rights, and The Public Sphere" (abstract here). Although McCrudden focuses on the contemporary European experience, his comments are also useful in the American and international contexts. I'll comment on only two of his points.

First, and positively, McCrudden argues that makers of public policy including legislators and judges need to "adopt a cognitively internal point of view" when considering religious issues. In other words, even those who do not share the internal viewpoint of the adherents of a particular religion should attempt to understand the adherent's conduct in terms of the normative standards of the agent herself. If this is not at least attempted, legal decisions will be made purely from the policy-maker's internal standards which may, to state the obvious, run rough-shod over the adherent's. Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not suggesting (nor do I think that McCrudden is arguing) that that the internal norms of an adherent's religion trump any conception of public law. I am suggesting only that those internal norms be given real weight when their accompanying conduct collides with the ever-increasing intrusiveness of that same public law.

McCrudden's second contribution has to do with the notion of "public reasons." So-called public reasons are those that are allegedly accessible to all of one's fellow citizens. John Rawls's Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, in other words. Many have argued--irrefutably in my opinion--that the notion of "public reasons" is a smokescreen for a particular conception of public life, one which many do not share. And that to insist upon only "public reasons" in public discourse is stacking the deck against non-conformists. So I also argued in "Looking for Bedrock."

I am surprised and disappointed that McCrudden accepts this argument. Some of his diffidence at this point may have to do with the multifarious state of what today qualifies as a human right. With so many human "rights," that often amount to no more than a list of human wishes, one might indeed expect the only useful argumentative approach would be one couched in terms of public (read: prudential) reasons. Were we to rightly limit the concept of human rights, the concession to "public reasons" would be seen for what it is: a stipulation to eventual destruction of rights as true "rights."

McCrudden offers a series of detailed and valuable insights into the current state of a number of cases in the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights having to do with freedom of religion. I wish only that he had stepped back from his insightful internal analysis and taken more seriously the transcend claims of his own Catholic tradition.