Abstract
This contribution develops a theoretical framework for clarifying the relationships between human rights, religions and public education, in particular the relationship between human rights education and public religious education. It builds on the hypothesis that such clarification benefits from engagement with recent social and political theory. Drawing mainly on the positions and concepts of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, it advocates a pluralist reading of human rights that keeps a reasonable balance between the universal normativity of human rights and the intrinsic value of diverse religions and opposes a secularist reading of human rights that marginalizes, devalues or excludes religions. As a conclusion, the important role of religious education in human rights education and in public education as a whole is emphasized for promoting “complementary learning processes” (Habermas) of religious and nonreligious people.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
As Bruce Grelle points out, there are indications that an international framework may also be about to emerge on the role of religion in public education that is closely related with human rights (see Grelle, in this volume). While he mainly evaluates official documents on UN, EU and US levels, this contribution will draw on theoretical, philosophical concepts.
- 2.
An example of such a competitive view of religions and human rights can be found in the suggestion by the Canadian professor of comparative religion Arvind Sharma to initiate a separate “Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World’s Religions” and thus to complement the “secular” UN Declaration (Sharma, 2009).
- 3.
I am well aware that in the US context the notion of “religious education” is mostly associated with denominational instruction in religious communities. However, in the European context, “religious education” predominantly refers to the school subject, which in most European countries is a compulsory part of public education. To accentuate this, I will sometimes use the notion of “public religious education”.
- 4.
A more comprehensive elaboration of the framework introduced here and its significance for public religious education can be found in the up-coming German book publication Pirner, 2016.
- 5.
This is why Rawls’ book “Political Liberalism” (1993) seems more important to me than his publication “The Law of Peoples” (2001/1999). In the latter book, he draws, for international law in general, strong parallels to “Political Liberalism” whose principles he transfers from the society of citizens to the “Society of Peoples”. Yet, he explicitly touches on human rights only briefly and presents a very narrow view of their functions that I will not follow in my own reception of Rawls’ thinking.
- 6.
- 7.
Of course it should be noted here that Rawls assumes comprehensive doctrines in general to be in “irreconcilable” conflict with each other—which makes it necessary that they switch to public reason. The possibility that several or even all the comprehensive doctrines in a community may discover common ethical principles in their diverse traditions, as in the Global Ethic Declaration mentioned above, is not taken into account here—but will come into view in Rawls’ second idea, that of the “overlapping consensus”.
- 8.
As Rawls emphasizes here, this does not mean that people are expected to agree with the content of another comprehensive doctrine. The question of the truth of any comprehensive doctrine is not the issue here.
- 9.
This is why the endorsement of the human right of freedom of religion or belief can be called a “test case” for religions as to their compatibility with democratic values (see Bielefeldt, in this volume).
- 10.
Rawls on his part gives an example of the possibility for Islam to support constitutional democracy from within the Islamic tradition by referring to Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im’s book Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International Law (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990). Na’im suggests revaluating the Qur’anic texts from the Meccan period as superior to those of the Medina period. (Rawls, 1999, p. 590).
- 11.
I am indebted to Philip Barnes for drawing my attention to Paul Weithman’s essay.
- 12.
It is a similar, but not quite the same idea when Rawls speaks of “reasoning from conjecture”: “In this case we reason from what we believe, or conjecture, may be other people’s comprehensive doctrines, religious or philosophical, and seek to show them that, despite what they might think, they can still endorse a reasonable political conception of justice. We are not ourselves asserting that ground of toleration but offering it as one they could assert consistent with their comprehensive doctrines.” (Rawls, 1999, p. 591; see also p. 594).
- 13.
It is in this context that the famous quote from German constitutional law expert Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde belongs that “the liberal, secularized state lives from preconditions which it cannot itself guarantee” (Böckenförde, 1976, p. 60).
- 14.
This, of course, should also apply to faith-based schools. Their existence can be seen as supporting the idea of liberal pluralism in the field of public education. Similar to public religious education they offer the special chance to disclose to their students specific religious ways of understanding and promoting human rights and other societal values and at the same time to facilitate openness to learning from other religions and worldviews (for more on human rights and religious schools see Pirner, 2012).
References
Al-Daraweesh, F., & Snauwaert, D. T. (2015). Human rights education beyond universalism and relativism: A relational hermeneutic for global justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
An-Na’im, A. A. (1990). Toward an Islamic reformation: Civil liberties, human rights and international law. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Bedford-Strohm, H. (1999). Gemeinschaft aus kommunikativer Freiheit. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Bedford-Strohm, H. (2011). Public theology of ecology and civil society. In C. Deane-Drummond & H. Bedford-Strohm (Eds.), Religion and ecology in the public sphere (pp. 39–56). London/New York: T & T Clark.
Bellah, R. N. (1974/1967). Civil religion in America. In E. R. Russell & D. G. Jones (Eds.), American civil religion (pp. 21–44). New York: Harper & Row (Reprint of the original essay from 1967).
Bielefeldt, H. (1998). Philosophie der Menschenrechte. Grundlagen eines weltweiten Freiheitsethos. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Bielefeldt, H. (2007). Ideengeschichte(n) der Menschenrechte. In N. Janz & T. Risse (Eds.), Menschenrechte – Globale Dimensionen eines universellen Anspruchs (pp. 177–186). Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag.
Bielefeldt, H. (2009). Historical and philosophical foundations of human rights. In M. Scheinin & C. Krause (Eds.), International protection of human rights. A textbook (pp. 3–18). Turku: Abo Akademi University.
Böckenförde, E.-W. (1976). Staat, Gesellschaft, Freiheit. Studien zur Staatstheorie und zum Verfassungsrecht. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Bowie, R. (2011). Human rights and religion in the English secondary RE curriculum. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 32(3), 269–280.
Donnelly, J. (2013). Human rights in theory and practice (3rd ed.). Ithaca, NY/London: Cornell University Press.
Freeman, M. (2004). The problem of secularism in human rights theory. Human Rights Quarterly, 26(2), 375–400.
Gearon, L. (2004). Citizenship through religious education. London: Routledge.
Gustafson, C., & Juviler, P. H. (Eds.). (1999). Religion and human rights: Competing claims? Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
Habermas, J. (1992). Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1992 (English: Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
Habermas, J. (2001). Glauben und Wissen. Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp (unauthorized and not in all parts successful English translation “Faith and knowledge – An opening” online at: http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0111/msg00100.html).
Habermas, J. (2007). Replik auf Einwände, Reaktion auf Anregungen. In R. Langthaler & H. Nagl-Docetal (Eds.), Glauben und Wissen. Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas (pp. 366–414). Wien: R. Oldenbourg Verlag.
Habermas, J. (2008). Between naturalism and religion. Philosophical essays. Cambridge: Polity.
Habermas, J. (2012). Nachmetaphysisches Denken II. Aufsätze und Repliken. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Küng, H., & Kuschel, K.-J. (Commentaries). (1993). A global ethic: The declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions. New York: Continuum.
Nickel, J. (2014). Human rights. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, online at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-human/.
Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2010). Teachers and human rights education. Oakhill, UK: Trentham Books.
Pirner, M. L. (2016, in preparation). Religion und öffentliche Bildung. Notwendige Lernprozesse in der postsäkularen Einwanderungsgesellschaft.
Pirner, M. L. (2012). Freedom of religion and belief in religious schools? Towards a multi-perspective theory. In B. Freathy, S. Parker, & L. Francis Leslie (Eds.), Religious education and freedom of religion and belief (pp. 167–192). Oxford: Peter Lang International.
Rawls, J. (1999). The idea of public reason revisited. In J. Rawls (Ed.), Collected papers (pp. 573–615). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Also published in “The law of peoples”).
Rawls, J. (2001/1999). The law of peoples. Revised Paperback Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (2005/1993). Political liberalism. Expanded Edition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rawls, J. (2009). A brief inquiry into the meaning of sin and faith: With “On my religion”. Thomas Nagel (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Sharma, A. (2009). The rationale for a universal declaration of human rights by the World’s religions: Before and after September 11, 2001. In A. Sharma (Ed.), The World’s religions after September 11. Religion and human rights (pp. 187–189). Westport, CT/London: Praeger.
van der Ven, J. A. (2010). Human rights or religious rules? Leiden, NL/Boston, MA: Brill.
Weithman, P. (2012). On John Rawls’s inquiry into the meaning of sin and faith. Journal of Religious Ethics, 40(4), 557–582.
Witte, J., Jr., & Green, M. C. (Eds.). (2012). Religion and human rights: An introduction. Oxford, UK/New York: Oxford University Press.
Ziebertz, H.-G., & Crpic, G. (Eds.). (2014). Religion and human rights: An international perspective. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pirner, M.L. (2016). Human Rights, Religions, and Education. A Theoretical Framework. In: Pirner, M., Lähnemann, J., Bielefeldt, H. (eds) Human Rights and Religion in Educational Contexts. Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Rights, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39351-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39351-3_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-39350-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-39351-3
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)