The Religions of Human Rights

The modern human rights movement arose during a moment of unprecedented encounter between global religions in the mid-twentieth century. Yet attempts to parse the historical relationship between human rights and religious thought have almost exclusively taken the form of case studies of individual r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Harvard theological review
Main Author: Loeffler, James ca. 20./21. Jh. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2023
In: Harvard theological review
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Benenson, Peter 1921-2005 / Perlzweig, Maurice L. 1895-1985 / Malik, Charles Habib 1906-1987 / Human rights / Religion / Interfaith dialogue
RelBib Classification:AX Inter-religious relations
BH Judaism
CC Christianity and Non-Christian religion; Inter-religious relations
KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history
NCD Political ethics
Further subjects:B Middle East
B Cosmopolitanism
B Pluralism
B Human Rights
B Judaism
B Christianity
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Description
Summary:The modern human rights movement arose during a moment of unprecedented encounter between global religions in the mid-twentieth century. Yet attempts to parse the historical relationship between human rights and religious thought have almost exclusively taken the form of case studies of individual religious traditions. This focus on intellectual genealogies obscures the fact that much of human rights doctrine emerged from interreligious contacts and conflicts between Judaism and Christianity, particularly in the context of the decolonizing Middle East. This article retraces this interreligious encounter through the writings of Amnesty International founder Peter Benenson, diplomat and theologian Charles Malik, and rabbi and activist Maurice Perlzweig. Together they represent three different theopolitical responses to the problem of religious pluralism after global empire: minoritarian human rights, majoritarian human rights, and cosmopolitan human rights. Recovering these interrelated human rights conceptions exposes the frames of religious difference embedded in the modern Western human rights imagination.
ISSN:1475-4517
Contains:Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000372