Essay 7 on Christianity and Universal Human Rights

Edgecombe Community College

REL 110 OL1

Update on human rights and ideas of salvation.

What we are going to be looking at between now and the end of the semester is the whole question of human rights.  This is about the push for universal human rights as embraced by a secular civil society vs. a more conditional religious approach which would see human rights from the perspective that people who belong to a certain faith have different rights.  

In Judaism, in Christianity, and in Islam there are groups of people pulling in opposite directions.  Some advocate for the ideals of a secular, humanistic civil society where everyone is treated equally.  Others advocate for a more specifically religious social narrative where a person's status, and thus their rights, are determined more by the narrative of faith.  The more religious social narrative inclines more toward religious fundamentalism.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all possess narratives of salvation and damnation.  That is to say, they all have doctrines which deal with salvation, with who exactly gets to live with God in the after-life.  They also have doctrines of damnation, or who gets excluded from the heavenly fellowship after death.  We might see these as narratives of divine inclusion and divine exclusion.  These competing narratives merge into considerations of human rights because, if we really believe a certain person is going to hell, why should we work to assure their rights while they are here on earth?  This has led to tremendous religious persecution in the past.

The problem all three religions have is that there are people in each faith who strongly believe that their own personal doctrine of salvation is the only one that works. Likewise, all three faiths have scriptures which call for respect and hospitality to be shown to those who are “sojourners”, or people of a different, or outsider faith. Unfortunately, in many situations these are not the scriptures which get promoted. Instead, people tend to gravitate toward doctrines which promote a more limited and specific idea of exactly who enjoys the favor of the Almighty.