The controversy within the Anglican communion over same-sex issues, considered again at the recently concluded Lambeth Conference, and concern about human rights in China in the context of the Olympic Games, throw up an awkward question.
To what extent is the promotion of human rights a western colonial exercise?
To what extent are so-called “self-evident truths” arising from the Judeo-Christian tradition – still dominant as a pattern of thinking in the West if not any more where religious practice is concerned – simply by-products of a particularly successful culture rather than being “truths” that genuinely have the universal application claimed.
You might ask the same of democracy, still so new where so many of our fellow EU countries are concerned. It remains a novel political system for most countries in eastern Europe and for such western European countries as Spain and Portugal, as well as Greece farther east.
Read it all but when you do remember that Archbishop Rowan Williams made it quite clear that the debate is precisely NOT about rights:
I might just add, perhaps, a note here. One complication in discussing all this is that assumption, readily made, that the blessing of a same sex union and / or the ordination of someone in an active same-sex relationship is simply a matter of human rights.
I’m not saying that is claimed by people within the church but you hear that from time to time. You hear it in the secular press. And that’s an assumption that I can’t accept because I think the issues about what conditions the church lays down for the blessing of unions has to be shaped by its own thinking, its own praying.
Now, there is perfectly reasonable theological reflection on this in some areas, I’m not saying there isn’t. But I don’t want to short-circuit that argument by saying it’s just a matter of rights.
Therefore to say the rights and dignities of gay and lesbian people, as people in society, is not what we are disagreeing about. I hope and pray anyway.
The media and revisionist churches always puts their spin on such topics, while the Bible simply states the truth.
I think it is not about rights, but perhaps some time could be spent exploring why (or how) the the language of the civil state and the language of religion are linked. I think there is some – but are there thinkers exploring it? Pierce, James, John Dewey or Niebhur come to mind, in some sense. As does Walter Rauschenbusch. Not all were Christians, but they did influence Christian thinking regarding the knowledge, religion and the state.
Baruch wrote [blockquote]while the Bible simply states the truth[/blockquote]Truer words were never spoken.
It occurs to me that the Gospel casts us as humble supplicants dependant on God’s grace. Whereas TEC is a collection of little people squeaking about their Rights.
The matter of human rights arose within a quite specific cultural trajectory, one that took more than a few centuries for the notion to flower. Rowan Williams himself calls such root cultural paradigms “time bombsâ€. And so, while it may indeed be correct that our present Communion’s strife is not exactly driven by the issue of “rights†– to some people’s minds! – the very fact that many around the world view human being as being endowed with such innate dignity is a veritable cultural treasure, spawned uniquely from the Judeo-Christian matrix.
In beginning to trace its growth, Walter Kasper, the now Cardinal who addressed Lambeth let us note, once wrote of “the aim†and “need†of the early Church to make the transition “from the one-sidedly essentialist thinking of Greek philosophy into a personalist thinking … laying the foundation of a new type of thought.†[[i]The God of Jesus Christ[/i] (ET 1983), 260]
And so, even as we are now witnessing the degradation of this glorious jewel on account of its being grafted onto another stump of a different tree altogether, one that speaks of a vapid multiplicity of ‘equal views’ supposedly held in appropriate tension despite their clearly being [b]contradictory[/b] – the ideology of secular pluralism – we must not deny its authentic pedigree. For only by quarrying more deeply into the source of this glorious image may we revive its flame. And such a move is already, in the providence of God, open and available. The revival of Trinitarian theological thought over these past few decades offers us real hope to repolish the tarnished doctrine of the [i]Imago Dei[/i], allowing it to undergird once again authentic forms of life and therefore a properly Christian moral formation of human being. I deliberately do not say “ethics†in this postmodern rootless western potpourri cultural soup.
As John Wilkins has mentioned some names [2], I would offer rather these: Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel, Robert Jenson, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Hans Urs von Balthasar, John Paul II, Walter Kasper, Colin Gunton, Tom Torrance (with apologies to those omitted, for the list of revivalists could be much longer!). Thereafter, on the political-cultural front especially, Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, and their sparring partner [i]par excellence[/i], Stanley Hauerwas, plus Charles Taylor. Enjoy the theological digging folks, as we seek also both policy makers and law makers to effect the needed societal turn around, even as we sorely need good ministers and pastors for our congregations who too need consistent nurture in these things. St Paul would call it Rom 12:1-2!