The life and times of religion and human rights

Abstract

Seen from a human perspective and as communal protection of human dignity, human rights are universal challenges to which all major traditions of the human family have subscribed. However, ways and means as to the realisation of this universal human ideal have been subject to controversy because of differences in the life and times in which human rights conceptions were conceived and the life and times during which they are profiled. Another issue relates to how compliance to human rights may be reinforced: by reference to the life and times during which the major religious and philosophical traditions of the human family were conceived or the life and times experienced by humans over the centuries.

In this paper we argue that human rights and religion are mutually reinforcing insofar as human rights is related to spiritual roots and hence not conceived as “a secular religion” and provided that religion is seen within the full dynamic context of the life and times of its adherence. However, like other ethics (religious or secular) human rights ethics are about rights and wrongs, rights and duties, norms and expectations and not just instruments for compliance devout of peoples' reality. In essence we implore the contention that in the field of human rights, religion should be conceived as a mirror of the life and times during which it is practised. Concomitantly, it should be supplicated as the cultural context in which the struggle for the protection of basic human dignity has to find its spiritual roots rather than the life and times within which it became part of the human tradition.