Christian Impact on Human Rights: Home

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Understanding Human Dignity aims to help the reader make sense of current debates about the meaning and implications of the idea of human dignity. The concept of human dignity has probably never been so omnipresent in everyday speech, or so deeply embedded in political and legal discourse. Indebates on torture, abortion, same-sex marriage, and welfare reform, appeals to dignity are seldom hard to find. The concept of dignity is not only a prominent feature of political debate, but also, and increasingly, of legal argument. Indeed, courts tell us that human dignity is the foundation ofall human rights. But the more important it is, the more contested it seems to have become. There has, as a result, been an extraordinary explosion of scholarly writing about the concept of human dignity in law, political philosophy, and theology. This book aims to reflect on these intra-disciplinary debates about dignity in law, philosophy, history, politics, and theology, through a series of edited essays from specialists in these fields, explored the contested concept in its full richness and complexity.

E-Book
In Christianity and Human Rights: Christians and the Struggle for Global Justice, Frederick M. Shepherd has collected essays by scholars and activists who, in a wide variety of ways, confront the issue of Christianity's role in the burgeoning movement for human rights. The volume's contributors provide diverse perspectives on the theology behind the idea of human rights, the debate over the its meaning, and the evolution of the struggle for human rights. A wide variety of disciplinary perspectives are represented, from economics, political science and law to history, philosophy and theology. The essays also represent a broad political spectrum, including specific accounts from activists participating in the struggle for human rights. Separate chapters focus on cases from Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia. Christianity and Human Rights begins and ends with attempts to synthesize current theory and practice, acknowledging both Christianity's great success and its failures in defending basic human rights around the globe.

E-Book
This volume is about the positive, ambivalent, null and negative effects in various historical periods by various religious denominations within Christianity, Islam and Hinduism on the attitudes towards human rights of the first, second and third generation.

E-Book
What are human rights? Can theology acknowledge human rights discourse? Is theological engagement with human rights justified? What place should this discourse occupy within ethics? Ethna Regan seeks to answer these questions about human rights, Christian theology, and philosophical ethics. The main purpose of this book is to justify and explore theological engagement with human rights. Regan illustrates how that engagement is both ecumenical and diverse, citing the emerging engagement with human rights discourse by evangelical theologians in response to the War on Terror. The book examines where the themes and concerns of key modern theologians -- Karl Rahner, J. B. Metz, Jon Sobrino, and Ignacio Ellacuría -- converge with the themes and concerns of those committed to the advancement of human rights. Regan also critically engages with the "disdain" for rights discourse that is found in the postliberal critiques of John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas. This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of systematic theology, theological ethics, human rights, religion and politics, and political theory.

General Collection
Proposes that Christian faith has much to say about human rights and that biblical values make key contributions to contemporary understandings of human rights.

General Collection
The concept of human dignity has been stripped from its traditional context in Christian thought, becoming "a moral trump frayed by heavy use," but a compelling alternate vision has not yet emerged. "God and Human Dignity" offers a fresh restatement of the nature and scope of human dignity in Christian perspective. Theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars from around the world here examine the dimensions of human worth in the light of sacred Scripture, doctrine, and ecclesial practice. In contrast to modernity's often monochromatic accounts of human dignity in terms of freedom or rationality, these essays argue that human dignity in Christian perspective is a "many-splendored thing" reflecting humanity's participation in the divine drama of creation, redemption, and new creation. Representing disciplines across the academic spectrum, the essays in "God and Human Dignity" offer systematic and scriptural perspectives on human dignity that connect to a host of pressing contemporary issues.Contributors: C. Clifton Black, Russell Botman, Don Browing, J. Kameron Carter, Elaine Graham, Robert W. Jensen, James L. Mays, M. Douglas Meeks, Esther Menn, Peter Ochs, John Polkinghorne, Hans Reinders, Gerhard Sauter, Christoph Schwvbel, R. Kendall Soulen, Fraser Watts, Michael Welker, and Linda Woodhead.D

General Collection
The biblical laws were extremely progressive in ancient society; this book explores the changing concept of justice through the ages, and how the tradition underlying the biblical laws applies to the concept of human rights. The Jewish Thought Series from Israel s MOD Books, now distributed exclusively by Jewish Lights. A part of Israels Broadcast University Series, each book is written by leading experts and authors in their respective fields. They are published jointly by Tel Aviv University, the Chief Education Office of the IDF, and IDF Radio.

General Collection
Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of justice as grounded in rights. Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular account of natural human rights is successful; he offers instead a theistic account. Wolterstorff prefaces his systematic account of justice as grounded in rights with an exploration of the common claim that rights-talk is inherently individualistic and possessive. He demonstrates that the idea of natural rights originated neither in the Enlightenment nor in the individualistic philosophy of the late Middle Ages, but was already employed by the canon lawyers of the twelfth century. He traces our intuitions about rights and justice back even further, to Hebrew and Christian scriptures. After extensively discussing justice in the Old Testament and the New, he goes on to show why ancient Greek and Roman philosophy could not serve as a framework for a theory of rights. Connecting rights and wrongs to God's relationship with humankind, Justice not only offers a rich and compelling philosophical account of justice, but also makes an important contribution to overcoming the present-day divide between religious discourse and human rights.

General Collection
The 11th Origeniana conference took place at Aarhus University, Denmark, in August 2013. The theme of the conference was Origen and Origenism in the History of Western Thought. The present volume contains a large selection from the papers that were given at the conference. The majority of the papers deals with various aspects of the influence and reception of Origen and his thought and writings in Western traditions to this day. As was the case also in previous conferences, there was an opportunity to give papers on other aspects of current Origen research. The volume contains seven sections: Origen's thought in modern theology and philosophy; philological approaches to Origen's works; Origen's thought in the West in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; Origen's thought in the West until John Scotus Eriugena; Origen in Western mysticism and liturgy; the reception of Origen in the East.

The changing situation in South Africa and eastern Europe prompts Charles Villa-Vicencio to investigate the implications of transforming liberation theology into a theology of reconstruction and nation-building. Such a transformation, he argues, requires theology to become an unambiguously inter-disciplinary study. This book explores the encounter between theology, on the one hand, and constitutional writing, law-making, human rights, economics, and the freedom of conscience on the other. Locating his discussion in the context of the South African struggle, the author compares this situation to that in eastern Europe, and the challenge of what is happening in these situations is identified for contexts where 'the empire has not yet crumbled'.

Christian Ethics and U.S. Foreign Policy examines the evolution of American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union during the period 1973-1980. In particular, Larry Pullen investigates how and why human rights issues became an increasingly significant part of the U.S.-Soviet relationship, focusing on the development of the Helsinki Accords and the process of monitoring compliance with its human rights provisions. Pullen presents an informed critique of both (realist) Henry Kissinger's and (idealist) Jimmy Carter's human right's policies in the tradition of Christian realism associated with Reinhold Neibuhr. The study is sure to provoke debate among students and scholars of foreign policy and ethics.

This book addresses the relationship of Christianity and human rights—a relationship fraught with ambiguity. While human rights discourse arose in a Christian culture, it has sometimes stood in opposition to organized Christianity. Christianity has been a champion of human rights; on other occasions it has been a major violator of them. Contributors to this book explore both positive and negative views of human rights arising from Christian traditions. Among the issues discussed are the sources of ideas on human rights, Christian influences on international human rights covenants and conventions, Christian theology and human rights, the right to change religions, Roman Catholic perspectives, and Christian peace activism and human rights. Christian discourse is juxtaposed with the proposed Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World’s Religions, which is included.

How should a religious person view the role of rights in the liberal polity? What should the role of religion be in public political discourse? Some prominent scholars have recently argued that religious persons ought to view the concept of a right as alien to a traditionally religious way of life. Others have suggested that there is no legitimate place for religious reasoning in public political discourse. Contributors to Religion in the Liberal Polity reject these positions by defending the claims that the concept of a right is central to traditional religion and that religious concerns belong in public political discourse. authority. Nicholas Wolterstorff contends not only that rights exist, but that moral duties are determined by rights. Timothy P. Jackson raises the issue of how thinking about the imago dei may ground human rights issues for a Christian. John Hare explores whether there is an evolutionary account of natural right and justice capable of sustaining a liberal democracy. Paul Weithman contends that individuals who have rights are simultaneously protected and liberated by the possession of those rights. Terence Cuneo offers a justification for the provision and protection of religious civil liberties from the perspective of natural law theory. Mark Murphy considers the nature of the demands that the state can make on individual agents. polity. Essays by Jeffrey Stout, Christopher Eberle, Richard Mouw, and Kent Greenwalt all consider whether religious reasons should be employed in public political discourse. Merold Westphal's concluding essay focuses on the political virtue of shame in both the liberal tradition and the history of philosophy generally. Religion in the Liberal Polity will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars in philosophy, political science, theology, and law.

In The Ethics of Human Rights , Esther Reed constructs a Christian theology of "right," "rights" and "natural rights" and does so in constant awareness of and conversation with the public and political implications of such a theology. Reed's use of Genesis 9:1-17, God's covenant with Noah, enables her critical Christian engagement with issue of right and her application of this Christian theology of rights to the contemporary moral dilemmas of animal rights, the environment, and democracy.

Just war, pacifism, weapons of mass destruction, war on terror, preemptive war. These phrases highlight recent world events that have brought questions about the morality of war into sharp relief. Instead of advocating a particular approach to war, War and Christian Ethics offers a variety of Christian perspectives, enabling readers to make up their own minds about what they believe. This collection of primary source materials contains texts from many influential classic and contemporary writers that are crucial to the development of Christian thought on war. From Plato to Augustine, Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther, Reinhold Niebuhr to Paul Ramsey, the book covers a broad range of writers. The second edition includes new selections from Rowan Williams, George Weigel, and Duane Friesen.

While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says 'everyone has a right' to food, housing, livelihood and health, advocacy for human rights tends to emphasize people's civil and political rights rather than their economic and social rights. The poverty, violence and globalization which are depriving more and more people of these basic human entitlements calls for creative new approaches to economic and social rights which, the authors say, must be rooted in human needs, human dignity and legitimacy and underpinned by religious convictions. Such approaches will consider poverty and violence not merely as problems to be solved by economic development but as everyday realities for millions of people in the world -- realities which oblige their fellow human beings to act.

Carole Fontaine, well known among biblical scholars for her feminist studies in the biblical wisdom traditions and the ancient Near East, is also a human rights and interfaith activist working on issues of violence against Muslim women in the Middle East and Southern Asia and a board member of many agencies such as the International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan, and the Women's Forum against Fundamentalism in Iran. In this collection of her essays, mostly previously unpublished, she brings together these two concerns, distilling from the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam valuable insights into current questions of human rights. Unlike many writers, Fontaine recognizes the critical role of gender in the fundamental concept of the 'Other', so determinative for our view of humanity. In our days, Fontaine argues, human rights issues have taken on a new dimension in political discourse about war, peace and terror, where often an appeal is made to religious and scriptural justifications for the violation or preservation of rights. Fontaine urges attention to the priority of the sufferer in adjudicating meaning, and turns to the 'little texts' of daily ethics rather than grand theological abstractions in order to place 'scriptures' in meaningful conversation with the concrete realities of our world.