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Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice pp 159–172Cite as

Christianity and Human Rights: Foundation, Expression and Practice

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Abstract

Although the notion of human rights has been challenged on religious, philosophical and political grounds, human rights has gained a unique and unprecedented prominence in the national and international political discourses of the post-WWII era. This development has not gone unnoticed by churches and theologians, but how human rights should be interpreted from the perspective of the Christian faith and what role they should play in the way Christianity engages with social and political issues, remains disputed. In this chapter, I will examine the foundation, expression and practice of human rights from the perspective of Christian theology.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Evans [8].

  2. 2.

    Rorty [18].

  3. 3.

    Reed [16, p. 23].

  4. 4.

    Robinson [17, p. 60].

  5. 5.

    Ibid., pp. 60–61.

  6. 6.

    Witte and Christian Green [20, p. 5].

  7. 7.

    Donnelly [7, p. 400].

  8. 8.

    Ibid., p. 401.

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    Bucar and Barnett [2, p. 2].

  11. 11.

    Kepel [11] and Thomas [19].

  12. 12.

    Witte and Green, ‘Introduction’, in Witte and Green, eds., Religion and Human Right, p. 14.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., p. 17.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., p. 15.

  15. 15.

    Ibid.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., pp. 15–16.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., p. 20.

  18. 18.

    Ibid.

  19. 19.

    Esther D. Reed, The Ethics of Human Rights, p. 8.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., p. 13.

  21. 21.

    Wolterstorff [23, p. 46].

  22. 22.

    Ibid., p. 47.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., p. 49.

  24. 24.

    Reed, The Ethics of Human Rights, p. 16.

  25. 25.

    Wolterstorff [23, p. 52].

  26. 26.

    See also Adeney [1].

  27. 27.

    Wolterstorff, ‘Christianity and Human Rights’, in Witte and Green, eds., Religion and Human Rights, p. 53.

  28. 28.

    Reed, The Ethics of Human Rights, pp. 6–7.

  29. 29.

    Cronin [6].

  30. 30.

    Hollenbach [10].

  31. 31.

    Porter [15].

  32. 32.

    Nurser [14].

  33. 33.

    Reed, The Ethics of Human Rights, p. 17.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., p. 40.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 42.

  36. 36.

    Nordstokke [13, p. 42].

  37. 37.

    Ibid..

  38. 38.

    Collins and Nordstokke [4].

  39. 39.

    Nordstokke, Liberating Diakonia, p. 37.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p.18.

  41. 41.

    Church of Norway Council [3, p. 5].

  42. 42.

    Lutheran World Federation [12, p. 8].

  43. 43.

    Hans Morten Haugen [9].

  44. 44.

    Ibid., p. 124 (original emphasis).

  45. 45.

    Ibid., p. 136.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., p. 130.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., p. 132.

  48. 48.

    Wolterstorff [21,22,23].

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  1. MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, PO BOX 5144, 0302, Majorstuen, Oslo, Norway

    Kjetil Fretheim

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  1. Kjetil Fretheim
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  1. Shanghai, China

    Zhibin Xie

  2. York, UK

    Pauline Kollontai

  3. Pasadena, CA, USA

    Sebastian Kim

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Fretheim, K. (2020). Christianity and Human Rights: Foundation, Expression and Practice. In: Xie, Z., Kollontai, P., Kim, S. (eds) Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5081-2_11

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