How To Think Theologically About Rights

[Vineyard Scholars]

Here is Stanley Hauerwas's paper, "How To Think Theologically About Rights."

Abstract:

My primary concern is that rights language has become too powerful. By that I mean that appeals to rights threatens to replace first order moral descriptions in a manner that makes us less able to make the moral discriminations that we depend upon to be morally wise.

I cannot hope to give an adequate philosophical or theological justification concerning my worries about rights language, but I at least need to try to provide an account of what I take to be my primary concerns. Yet I feel the need to begin by naming the difficulties I see with claims about rights in general. By doing so I hope to show or at least suggest how my worries about rights are interrelated. So what follows is a broadside critique of what I can only regard as the over dependence on rights language in our culture. Once that task is completed I hope to defend how right making claims can and should be used by attending to the work of Simone Weil and Rowan Williams.

The full paper is attached to this post as a PDF.

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[Derek Morphew]

What I have argue in my books is that a better way is to simply define who is controlling the human rights narrative, and to define in what way one is using terminology. There is a long history of Christian authors using this language in a way that is clearly distinguished from the way secular humanists use rights language. Why "ban" the language itself? Why not "own" it from a Christian perspective? We have more "right" to use the language as our own as they do.

[David Johnston]

Absolutely, Derek. Pope Francis uses it all the time. As you show in your book, it so easily provides a framework within which we can tell the story of Jesus!

Of course, it's useful to me too in narrowing the distance between Muslims and us -- another way to express that God so loved human beings that he became one of us to redeem us all. Loving God and loving neighbor, whether she's a Syrian refugee stuck in a refugee camp in Lebanon, a colleague at work, or even a young man who was deceived, traveled to join IS, and is committing atrocities. God loves them all, and so should we!

But before we can get to that, we have to start with creation -- each one of us created in God's image, and as Wolterstorff argues, that dignity supervenes on our being human by virtue of God's love for us. That's is something we followers of Jesus can bring to the table when discussing with secular people, more often than not agnostics, who through organizations like Amnesty Int'l and Doctors without Borders have sacrificed so much for the cause of human rights (even putting many of us Christians to shame!) and done so much good in our evil world. This is what our justice network is trying to do -- not just nice words, but good deeds for the sake of the least of these!

[Derek Morphew]

Greetings David for the festive season!

[Keith Hovey]

Preface: I understand that not everyone feels this way - I'm just expressing my own experience with the terminology.

I have difficulty understanding the word "rights" in any way that is compatible with the teachings of Jesus.  Perhaps this is because I am an American, and because our founding fathers here talked about "rights" as being self-evident, universal, inborn, and inalienable.  They also viewed them as being of insurmountable value - so much so that only a fool would give up his rights rather than die fighting to preserve them.

But even those bedrock rights mentioned by the founding fathers (life, liberty, and property) fail to live up to the description of rights given by America's founders.  None of these three rights are inalienable; even the founders recognized that criminals and tyrants deserved to lose them.  Nor are they inborn; the notion of an infant having a right to property is silly.  And if they are universal (endowed to "all men") then I cannot understand how one man would ever have the right to take property from another man, nor to enslave them.

So anytime the notion of "rights" is brought up, I am immediately struck with the incredible dissonance between our idealized notion of rights and the way the world actually works.  Including the most-idealistic among us.

What is more, it seems to me that Jesus and Paul both taught against any notion of personal rights.  As believers, we're to consider ourselves lower than anyone/everyone else and that would seem to indicate that the "rights" of others would always take precedence to our own rights.  Effectively, that means we don't have any rights - and that we should never struggle to pretend that we do.  Everything good that we have is a GIFT - a gift of grace from the father - and not a right.  "It's all from your hand / and there's nothing that's mine / and all that you give / you're free to take away" (Mainstay - "Take Away".  A compelling song.)

This perspective on rights (or rather, on the nonexistence of rights) might lead to a trainwreck when it collides with our theology of justice.  I consider social justice to be of tremendous importance, and am immovably convinced that scriptures teach us of God's constant and focused concern for it.  But even in an age where laws (arguably ALL laws) are based on rights, I am not sure that God's law ever has been.

[David Johnston]

Keith, thank you so much for weighing in!

I agree with everything you wrote, but we're not talking about the same things. You must not have read Derek Morphew's book on human rights, which was on sale at last year's SVS in Media, PA. Nor my two papers, both last year and the year before in Columbus. It would be helpful if you could look at some of that material. It was my paper in Columbus that stimulated the idea of bringing Stanley Hauerwas to SVS the next year.

We're not talking about our individual spiritual lives as followers of Jesus. We're talking about human rights because we live in a pluralist democratic society, which is part of a worldwide order that came into being after two horrendous world wars. Arguably, the holocaust (along with the few million others intentionally killed by the Nazis because they were gay, Gypsies, or whatever) would not have happened, at least to such an extent,  if the other world powers had been more vigilant. Am I truly my bother's keeper, at least in an international political sense? The answer to that question would determine how you see US foreign policy and provide one more criterion in choosing candidates to vote for. Also, if you are a pacifist, you would say that nonviolence is the only path to a more just human society, locally and globally.

Jesus called his disciples "the light" and "the salt of the earth." Somehow, as we preach the kingdom of God, like Jesus we will have to seek to demonstrate it as well. Do we stop with preaching, healing and exorcisms? Or do also seek to do good? And if so, is this only about charitable works, and without any political involvement whatsoever? Apparently, like Joseph and Daniel in foreign lands (both imperial powers, though Egypt less so), God calls some of his people into politics.

It just so happens that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was pushed through against great odds by a Christian woman (Eleanor Roosevelt). Many other people were involved, but few realize how influential she was! She was helped by the fact that these nations could see the point of agreeing on the basic dignity of the human person after some 40 million lives had wantonly been obliterated in a war started by Europeans, but which tragically affected many others as well. The UDHR became the foundation for international law as we know it today. It's what gives the UN its mandate, or the idea that (at least ideally!) working together for peace as nations will stop the repeat of such bloody global wars as took place in the 20th century, especially now that we actually do have weapons of mass destruction!

Also, if you care about human trafficking, you will not get very far without collaborating with secular agencies, or in SE Asia, Buddhist ones, etc. Human rights is the lingua franca everyone understands in the fight to make this world a more just and peaceful one.

Have a look at Derek's book, "The Kingdom of God and Human Rights" (Derek got interested in this topic in his fight against Apartheid in South Africa) or at this pretty readable (not all my stuff is that readable!) article I had published in an international law review, available here on my website ("A Muslims & Christian Orientation to Human Rights"): http://www.humantrustees.org/resources/item/134-indiana-law-review-hrs

[Derek Morphew]

Hi Keith and David,

Just to say, I am on leave, camping. So I am not into focusing of such lofty details. However, just to say Keith, it would be nice get your dialogue after you have read what David and I have written, if you ever get the time.

Greetings,