Does Faith Have a Contribution to a Human Rights Culture After the Enlightenment?
[5] The relatively recent emphasis on human rights in international law traces it roots to the Reformation and to the Enlightenment. The catastrophe of religious conflicts and wars of the post-Reformation period required protections for religious tolerance and ultimately, civil liberties. Given the churches reluctance to adopt the language “human rights” of the Enlightenment writers, preferring instead to speak about human responsibilities or duties, some have concluded that matters of faith were inconsistent with evidentiary methods of discovering knowledge. [6] More recently I suspect this misconception has been exacerbated by the arrival of a form of global “evangelical” Christianity which seems to place such a limited value on reason, education, and scholarship in articulating the faith. The wider social assumption has been what Stephen Carter calls a “Culture of Disbelief” where “. . . religion is like building model airplanes, just another hobby: something quiet, something privat
