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...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2023
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In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 2023, Volume: 116, Issue: 1, Pages: 147-171 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Benenson, Peter 1921-2005
/ Perlzweig, Maurice L. 1895-1985
/ Malik, Charles Habib 1906-1987
/ Human rights
/ Religion
/ Interfaith dialogue
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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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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. |
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ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000372 |