Chapter 12: Faith and Human Rights
Different religions have different beliefs about human rights. This chapter is primarily about Christianity and human rights.
I begin with the first story of creation in Genesis. In this story, God is claimed to have said, “Let us create humans in our image, male and female.” This story claims all humans are made in the image of God. Failing to treat another person respectfully can be understood as a failure to treat God respectfully.
The Jewish scriptures are grounded in Middle Eastern culture including laws of hospitality. Sodom and Gomorrah, implied by Jesus, were destroyed for breaking those laws of hospitality for strangers. The law about leaving the edges of a field unharvested was a law to serve the needs of marginalized people. Those without income, like widows and orphans, could glean those fields so they could have food. A human right in most older cultures is the right to access food. Most non-industrial societies recognized and recognize this right and have ways to support it within the community. When there is enough food for all, all shall eat.
Jesus described God as like a caring Dad and named his followers as brothers and sisters. While the importance of family has shrunk in the last few decades, expectations about how we treat other members of our families include unrelated people. In the Christian scriptures, family as all of the human race is implied to readers like myself.
In the Jewish scriptures, the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” evolved from not killing someone in your family to someone in your tribe to someone in your nation.
As power held by leaders depends in part on maintaining a sense of us and them, most Christian leaders for a long time ignored this universality using some kind of fear for the group identity to keep their power.
If power is the priority for the leader, then economics usually becomes part of the value system, supporting a readiness to see humans different from the group as not part of the family or even as not fully human.
Protestants could kill Catholics and Catholics could kill Protestants by seeing them as having lost their humanity by choosing the wrong belief. All of them could see Africans and Americans as also being not fully human, permitting slavery and slaughter.
Today we can see these points of view as fundamentally wrong, reject them, and choose to see all people regardless of race or religion or ethnicity or sexuality or self-identity as part of our family. With this point of view, it is a short step to extend a variety of rights to all people as we are followers of Jesus. Many people do not see others as part of their family or even as human, and many Christian communities have narrow definitions of who is really part of the Christian family.
I begin with the ancient right to eat. In our society, eating implies access to employment to pay for our food, access to stores, access to travel, access to education to gain access to employment, and access to a place to live where we can prepare and eat our food.
As we move on to being members of one family, if we desire good for all our family members, we would want them to have access to medical care, religious services, and non-harmful sources of pleasure such as libraries, theatres, and restaurants. As an act of respect, we would also want them to share the decision-making power for our community, voting rights and rights to run for election.
Different religions have different beliefs about human rights. This chapter is primarily about Christianity and human rights.
I begin with the first story of creation in Genesis. In this story, God is claimed to have said, “Let us create humans in our image, male and female.” This story claims all humans are made in the image of God. Failing to treat another person respectfully can be understood as a failure to treat God respectfully.
The Jewish scriptures are grounded in Middle Eastern culture including laws of hospitality. Sodom and Gomorrah, implied by Jesus, were destroyed for breaking those laws of hospitality for strangers. The law about leaving the edges of a field unharvested was a law to serve the needs of marginalized people. Those without income, like widows and orphans, could glean those fields so they could have food. A human right in most older cultures is the right to access food. Most non-industrial societies recognized and recognize this right and have ways to support it within the community. When there is enough food for all, all shall eat.
Jesus described God as like a caring Dad and named his followers as brothers and sisters. While the importance of family has shrunk in the last few decades, expectations about how we treat other members of our families include unrelated people. In the Christian scriptures, family as all of the human race is implied to readers like myself.
In the Jewish scriptures, the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” evolved from not killing someone in your family to someone in your tribe to someone in your nation.
As power held by leaders depends in part on maintaining a sense of us and them, most Christian leaders for a long time ignored this universality using some kind of fear for the group identity to keep their power.
If power is the priority for the leader, then economics usually becomes part of the value system, supporting a readiness to see humans different from the group as not part of the family or even as not fully human.
Protestants could kill Catholics and Catholics could kill Protestants by seeing them as having lost their humanity by choosing the wrong belief. All of them could see Africans and Americans as also being not fully human, permitting slavery and slaughter.
Today we can see these points of view as fundamentally wrong, reject them, and choose to see all people regardless of race or religion or ethnicity or sexuality or self-identity as part of our family. With this point of view, it is a short step to extend a variety of rights to all people as we are followers of Jesus. Many people do not see others as part of their family or even as human, and many Christian communities have narrow definitions of who is really part of the Christian family.
I begin with the ancient right to eat. In our society, eating implies access to employment to pay for our food, access to stores, access to travel, access to education to gain access to employment, and access to a place to live where we can prepare and eat our food.
As we move on to being members of one family, if we desire good for all our family members, we would want them to have access to medical care, religious services, and non-harmful sources of pleasure such as libraries, theatres, and restaurants. As an act of respect, we would also want them to share the decision-making power for our community, voting rights and rights to run for election.
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