Across the globe, human rights and those that defend them are under threat. An estimated 3,500 people have been killed for their peaceful work defending human rights since 1998. These include journalists, lawyers, health professionals, trade unionists, farmers and victims of human rights abuses and their families:
‘What we are witnessing today is a full-frontal assault by governments, armed groups, corporations and others on the right to defend human rights. In 2016, at least 22 countries saw people killed for peacefully standing up for human rights. In 63 countries, they faced smear campaigns. In 68 countries, they were arrested or detained solely because of their peaceful work. In 94 countries they were threatened or attacked.’
Amnesty International, 2017[1]
Against such a backdrop it may seem trivial to be concerned about our situation in the UK, a country where international human rights conventions are adopted and incorporated in our legislation, and where a wide range of rights including peaceful assembly and freedom of speech are generally taken for granted. Should we really be concerned at the relatively minor pressures on our human rights?
It is my contention that we cannot ignore the homegrown attack on our human rights. I suggest that while our attention is understandably absorbed with the political threat (as in the proposed replacement of the Human Rights Act of 1998 and what may be lost through the European Withdrawal Bill) we also need to pay attention to what is happening within our civil society. Sometimes the attack comes from the most unexpected quarters, including groupings that use the very freedoms human rights afford to criticise those rights. We may be familiar with the threat to human rights from big business, from repressive governments and from majority ethnic groups, but we are perhaps less attentive to the voices raised in protest from those who uphold traditional values, including our fundamentalist churches. This grieves me for two reasons. Firstly, small in numbers though these detractors are, they hold great influence, are powerful orators, exploit social media and have a firm command among the faithful. As such, they have potential to become tools in the hands of more cynical forces. If you want to poison a nation, as Ben Okri suggests, you first poison its stories. Secondly, I am grieved because religious fundamentalism is my backstory. It is like the family that you’ll always love, no matter how much your paths diverge. I understand how it feels to be part of that community, to feel loyalty towards it, to want to leap to its defence. Nevertheless, my purpose in this paper is to take a closer look at how this attack on human rights is expressed, and to suggest another perspective.
I come to this discussion as a layperson. I am not a sociologist, human rights activist, political scientist nor a theologian. I am an educator who has spent most of her career working with families that experience poverty, social exclusion and disability. These days, I am mostly a mother and a grandmother and it is those relationships that inform my most immediate concerns for those who experience social exclusion and inequality because of poverty, disability or sexual identity. As someone who has worked with children in the care system and as an adoptive parent, my concerns are also for children whose life chances are hampered through the unfortunate circumstance of being without a parent who can adequately provide care. For me the inappropriate use of power is causally linked to these inequalities. It hurts me at a visceral level that many that I know, some of them friends and family, are human rights detractors. But my purpose in writing this paper is not to criticise, but rather to engage and to understand.
I have therefore been trying to understand the motivations of detractors from the fundamentalist churches[2] and found that they tend to lean heavily on the following five assertions:
1. Human rights are seen as humanistic and therefore antithetical to religious belief.
If human rights were antithetical to religious belief, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) would not be so positive in its defence of the rights of individuals to follow their religion, both in the private and the public sphere. What is often feared as anti-religious, secular or atheistic is better understood as being pluralist, i.e. having respect and tolerance for a range of different beliefs and cultures. Of course, there are some that would advocate that other people’s beliefs and cultures are not to be tolerated or respected, as this threatens their own beliefs and culture. A classic example is the issue of equal marriage, where it is argued that giving all sections of the population access to the community support, celebration and protection of marriage somehow threatens particular groups’ view of marriage, even though there is no enforcement for these groups to sanction such an inclusive view of marriage within their own religious community.
There are many types of humanism, as there are many types of religious belief. Not all humanism is atheistic or secular. Christian humanists believe that all humans are made in the image of God and should therefore be treated with dignity as individuals of worth. They point to the many teachings of Jesus that illustrate that central tenet.
2. The campaign for human rights is regarded as a political ideology
Human rights affect people personally, challenging the power differential and the status quo. The movement therefore has a political presence and forms aspects of political platforms, but to suggest it is an ideology with a grand narrative such as Marxism is erroneous.
The essence of a political ideology combines three things: ideals of how society should work; a notion of how these ideals may be achieved; and a sense of who should hold the power. Human rights as defined in the UDHR outline a set of ideals, but without identifying a method for achieving them.
To defend human rights is to view the world with an assumption about the equal rights of all humans, but not necessarily to outline how this equality may be achieved.
Some of the understanding of human rights as a political ideology stems from the work of Samuel Moyn, who suggests that the human rights movement gained momentum in the 1970s as a result of the failure of communist utopian ideals. While accepting that human rights as a international movement accelerated during this period, there is no doubt, as Moyn himself outlines, that the history of human rights is ancient - albeit in earlier times it appeared at the state level, and at various times drew distinctions between those who held rights and those who did not, e.g. conquered peoples and women. The fundamentalist churches’ distrust of the international aspect of human rights may be rooted in a pessimistic eschatology – a belief that there will be a time of great evil when all nations will be ruled as one, have a common currency and follow a common belief.
3. Human rights is regarded as a new religion
Advocates of human rights, it is suggested, display an all-consuming and passionate commitment to the movement, which is therefore regarded with suspicion by existing religions, against whom it is seen as a pale imitation of the genuine article. This staking out of ground on which no one else may be permitted to tread is unnecessarily defensive.
There are indeed human rights advocates who pursue justice and equality with zeal, but then so did women suffragettes, those who led the opposition to slavery and the civil rights movement – many of whom were motivated by their Christian faith.
4. The campaign for human rights and equality is seen as ever expanding, with the potential to demand rights in the future that we regard as untenable and immoral
This fear is understandable. Our understanding of the rights of our fellow human beings has changed over time. At one point slavery was regarded as moral, as was the subjugation of women and imprisonment of homosexuals. Some people of faith express concern that the current growing acceptance of LGBTI rights will extend in future to bestiality or child abuse. There is, however, a clear distinction based on the issue of power. Just as we recongise a sexual relationship between a professor and his student is wrong because of positional power, we also recognise sex with children and animals is wrong because there is a power differential.
Our notion of rights is not rigid and is currently expanding in the area of animal rights and data protection. In the future we may face vexed questions on the rights of robots. These are complex issues and I would suggest the key question to ask is, ‘Who holds the power?’
5. The incorporation of human rights into our legislation is dismissed as ‘undemocratic’.
A process that is undemocratic is one that is controlled by one person or by a small number of people, rather then by the people as a whole, through their elected representatives. Human rights in the UK are not, as some protest, devised and implemented by a small group of elites. They are part of our legislative framework, democratically enacted through various acts of parliament. We may not like what our democratic system decides, but we cannot argue that these decisions are undemocratic.
At the heart of our apparent democracy in the UK, we have blatantly undemocratic systems, e.g. we have unelected members of the House of Lords and unelected church representatives on education committees. But to cultivate democracy we need to look not only at our systems, but also to a quality that runs through the whole of our life and to the relationships between us. While those who advocate human rights are concerned with the rights of individuals, they are also concerned with the rights of individuals as social beings. There is no true democracy without equality, without embracing diversity and without recognising how we hold and how we use power. This is painful, for, as Gloria Aldred says, privilege and entitlement die very painful deaths; no one gives up power without a struggle
I’d like to suggest that opposing human rights on these grounds is to set up a false dichotomy, presenting only two options: either the rejection of human rights as a devious distraction from the life of faith; or the rejection of faith on the grounds that it is oppositional to human rights. There are other options open to sensible, respectful debate and mature, compassionate consideration.
[1] Amnesty International (2017) Human Rights Defenders under Threat: A shrinking space for civil society.
[2] I dislike this term probably as much as those who I am describing it dislike it! Feel free to read it as ‘reformed’, ‘evangelical’ or any other description you prefer.
‘What we are witnessing today is a full-frontal assault by governments, armed groups, corporations and others on the right to defend human rights. In 2016, at least 22 countries saw people killed for peacefully standing up for human rights. In 63 countries, they faced smear campaigns. In 68 countries, they were arrested or detained solely because of their peaceful work. In 94 countries they were threatened or attacked.’
Amnesty International, 2017[1]
Against such a backdrop it may seem trivial to be concerned about our situation in the UK, a country where international human rights conventions are adopted and incorporated in our legislation, and where a wide range of rights including peaceful assembly and freedom of speech are generally taken for granted. Should we really be concerned at the relatively minor pressures on our human rights?
It is my contention that we cannot ignore the homegrown attack on our human rights. I suggest that while our attention is understandably absorbed with the political threat (as in the proposed replacement of the Human Rights Act of 1998 and what may be lost through the European Withdrawal Bill) we also need to pay attention to what is happening within our civil society. Sometimes the attack comes from the most unexpected quarters, including groupings that use the very freedoms human rights afford to criticise those rights. We may be familiar with the threat to human rights from big business, from repressive governments and from majority ethnic groups, but we are perhaps less attentive to the voices raised in protest from those who uphold traditional values, including our fundamentalist churches. This grieves me for two reasons. Firstly, small in numbers though these detractors are, they hold great influence, are powerful orators, exploit social media and have a firm command among the faithful. As such, they have potential to become tools in the hands of more cynical forces. If you want to poison a nation, as Ben Okri suggests, you first poison its stories. Secondly, I am grieved because religious fundamentalism is my backstory. It is like the family that you’ll always love, no matter how much your paths diverge. I understand how it feels to be part of that community, to feel loyalty towards it, to want to leap to its defence. Nevertheless, my purpose in this paper is to take a closer look at how this attack on human rights is expressed, and to suggest another perspective.
I come to this discussion as a layperson. I am not a sociologist, human rights activist, political scientist nor a theologian. I am an educator who has spent most of her career working with families that experience poverty, social exclusion and disability. These days, I am mostly a mother and a grandmother and it is those relationships that inform my most immediate concerns for those who experience social exclusion and inequality because of poverty, disability or sexual identity. As someone who has worked with children in the care system and as an adoptive parent, my concerns are also for children whose life chances are hampered through the unfortunate circumstance of being without a parent who can adequately provide care. For me the inappropriate use of power is causally linked to these inequalities. It hurts me at a visceral level that many that I know, some of them friends and family, are human rights detractors. But my purpose in writing this paper is not to criticise, but rather to engage and to understand.
I have therefore been trying to understand the motivations of detractors from the fundamentalist churches[2] and found that they tend to lean heavily on the following five assertions:
1. Human rights are seen as humanistic and therefore antithetical to religious belief.
If human rights were antithetical to religious belief, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) would not be so positive in its defence of the rights of individuals to follow their religion, both in the private and the public sphere. What is often feared as anti-religious, secular or atheistic is better understood as being pluralist, i.e. having respect and tolerance for a range of different beliefs and cultures. Of course, there are some that would advocate that other people’s beliefs and cultures are not to be tolerated or respected, as this threatens their own beliefs and culture. A classic example is the issue of equal marriage, where it is argued that giving all sections of the population access to the community support, celebration and protection of marriage somehow threatens particular groups’ view of marriage, even though there is no enforcement for these groups to sanction such an inclusive view of marriage within their own religious community.
There are many types of humanism, as there are many types of religious belief. Not all humanism is atheistic or secular. Christian humanists believe that all humans are made in the image of God and should therefore be treated with dignity as individuals of worth. They point to the many teachings of Jesus that illustrate that central tenet.
2. The campaign for human rights is regarded as a political ideology
Human rights affect people personally, challenging the power differential and the status quo. The movement therefore has a political presence and forms aspects of political platforms, but to suggest it is an ideology with a grand narrative such as Marxism is erroneous.
The essence of a political ideology combines three things: ideals of how society should work; a notion of how these ideals may be achieved; and a sense of who should hold the power. Human rights as defined in the UDHR outline a set of ideals, but without identifying a method for achieving them.
To defend human rights is to view the world with an assumption about the equal rights of all humans, but not necessarily to outline how this equality may be achieved.
Some of the understanding of human rights as a political ideology stems from the work of Samuel Moyn, who suggests that the human rights movement gained momentum in the 1970s as a result of the failure of communist utopian ideals. While accepting that human rights as a international movement accelerated during this period, there is no doubt, as Moyn himself outlines, that the history of human rights is ancient - albeit in earlier times it appeared at the state level, and at various times drew distinctions between those who held rights and those who did not, e.g. conquered peoples and women. The fundamentalist churches’ distrust of the international aspect of human rights may be rooted in a pessimistic eschatology – a belief that there will be a time of great evil when all nations will be ruled as one, have a common currency and follow a common belief.
3. Human rights is regarded as a new religion
Advocates of human rights, it is suggested, display an all-consuming and passionate commitment to the movement, which is therefore regarded with suspicion by existing religions, against whom it is seen as a pale imitation of the genuine article. This staking out of ground on which no one else may be permitted to tread is unnecessarily defensive.
There are indeed human rights advocates who pursue justice and equality with zeal, but then so did women suffragettes, those who led the opposition to slavery and the civil rights movement – many of whom were motivated by their Christian faith.
4. The campaign for human rights and equality is seen as ever expanding, with the potential to demand rights in the future that we regard as untenable and immoral
This fear is understandable. Our understanding of the rights of our fellow human beings has changed over time. At one point slavery was regarded as moral, as was the subjugation of women and imprisonment of homosexuals. Some people of faith express concern that the current growing acceptance of LGBTI rights will extend in future to bestiality or child abuse. There is, however, a clear distinction based on the issue of power. Just as we recongise a sexual relationship between a professor and his student is wrong because of positional power, we also recognise sex with children and animals is wrong because there is a power differential.
Our notion of rights is not rigid and is currently expanding in the area of animal rights and data protection. In the future we may face vexed questions on the rights of robots. These are complex issues and I would suggest the key question to ask is, ‘Who holds the power?’
5. The incorporation of human rights into our legislation is dismissed as ‘undemocratic’.
A process that is undemocratic is one that is controlled by one person or by a small number of people, rather then by the people as a whole, through their elected representatives. Human rights in the UK are not, as some protest, devised and implemented by a small group of elites. They are part of our legislative framework, democratically enacted through various acts of parliament. We may not like what our democratic system decides, but we cannot argue that these decisions are undemocratic.
At the heart of our apparent democracy in the UK, we have blatantly undemocratic systems, e.g. we have unelected members of the House of Lords and unelected church representatives on education committees. But to cultivate democracy we need to look not only at our systems, but also to a quality that runs through the whole of our life and to the relationships between us. While those who advocate human rights are concerned with the rights of individuals, they are also concerned with the rights of individuals as social beings. There is no true democracy without equality, without embracing diversity and without recognising how we hold and how we use power. This is painful, for, as Gloria Aldred says, privilege and entitlement die very painful deaths; no one gives up power without a struggle
I’d like to suggest that opposing human rights on these grounds is to set up a false dichotomy, presenting only two options: either the rejection of human rights as a devious distraction from the life of faith; or the rejection of faith on the grounds that it is oppositional to human rights. There are other options open to sensible, respectful debate and mature, compassionate consideration.
[1] Amnesty International (2017) Human Rights Defenders under Threat: A shrinking space for civil society.
[2] I dislike this term probably as much as those who I am describing it dislike it! Feel free to read it as ‘reformed’, ‘evangelical’ or any other description you prefer.