Human Rights

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THE CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Defending the rights of vulnerable groups was not an invention of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This document did not emerge in a cultural vacuum; on the contrary, it is part
of a long history of the human quest to recognize what is just, what is good, what promotes the good of individuals and communities for the advancement of a better society.
We hope that the last edition of ABBA-PAI has been useful for us to better understand what human rights are all about, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and how
Christians involved in social assistance can dialogue with human rights values and movements. In this issue, we want to take a step back so that we can move further forward in this conversation. We will discuss the cultural context and the possible cultural influences that led to the UDHR. The
appreciation of these cultural issues behind the UDHR will help us to look even further back, to
Antiquity, in the next issue of ABBA-PAI, to try to understand the relationship between human rights
and biblical faith. Only then will we be able to look to the present and the future and propose a call to Christian mission marked by the advancement of human rights.

THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Confidence in human goodness and progress through reason marks Western society in the modern period, especially between the end of the 18th century and the middle of the 20th century. On the one hand, this is the period of colonialist movements and imperialist aspirations, marked by war, genocide and slavery. On the other hand, it is also the period of the great revolutions and aspirations for liberty, equality and fraternity, as in the famous slogan of the French Revolution.

Even though these two phenomena seem antagonistic, they are culturally grounded in a belief in human goodness and progress through reason. Both are human projects aimed at building a civilization in the image of the “enlightened,” who, in one way or another, remove and eliminate the “savages,” those with an identity and way of living different from Western ideals. This project reaches its end in the Second World War, when the West itself suffers the consequences of such aspirations. The atrocities against life and humanity, previously a reality promoted by the West against native peoples, now affect Western civilization itself. When the "enlightened" suffer the consequences of their own "savage" power, the naivety of trust in human goodness and progress through reason is revealed, and the modern project comes to an end.When we situate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which emerged right after the Second World War, in this socio-political and cultural context, two things become clear. The first is that the UDHR rejects the imperialist and universalizing project typical of the West in the modern period. The second is that the ideals and values that characterize the modernity project remain influential in the West generally, and in the UDHR specifically. In simple terms, the UDHR accepts the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, but rejects two mistakes made by the Western modern project related to a "top-down" power dynamic: disregarding the particular realities of each people and community in the pursuit of this ideal; using any form of force to implement this ideal. If we are talking about the human rights of all, and not just a few, it is clear that these two mistakes hinder rather than advance the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

THE CULTURAL ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

A brief historical overview will be helpful to guide our discussion on the cultural origins of human rights, especially in their version in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The notion of human rights has roots in antiquity, but it gained strength in the Middle Ages with the development of “natural rights” in Catholic scholastic theology, especially by Thomas Aquinas. However, for the current conception of human rights, the fundamental influence lies in the modern era, starting with the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the United States Constitution of 1787, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, originating from the French Revolution.

Some examples of these three movements can be useful to illustrate this modern history in the quest for clear definitions of human rights that culminated in the UDHR. The English Bill of Rights is the result of Parliament's efforts against abuses of power by the monarchy, especially in a religious context, as King James II sought to expand his Catholic faith throughout England, displeasing the Anglican aristocracy. In this document, Parliament defends some rights that are present in the UDHR, such as religious freedom, freedom of expression, and the right to defense in legal proceedings. The English case is interesting because Parliament sought to secure these rights by inviting King William III of Holland, a country that protected persecuted Protestants in England and France, to be present on the day of the document's vote. In other words, the guarantee of rights was initially obtained through a foreign military threat against the English monarchy. Even though the rights guaranteed benefited much of the English population, they arose from political disputes among groups with political interests, through political and military means. This is especially true in the context of religious disputes, as the religious freedom defended in the document aimed to secure the Protestant freedom of the political elites in Parliament.In the case of the United States Constitution of 1787, the context is also of political disputes, in this case between the colonial elite and the English monarchy. For the most part, the American document is about political organization and not human rights. The concern with human rights is found in the amendments enacted later, with the first 11 amendments being enacted in 1798. Similar to the UDHR, the American document defends religious freedom, the right to property, and the right to defense in legal proceedings. An interesting detail is found in the Ninth Amendment, which states: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The principle presented here is developed in the last article (Article 30) of the UDHR: "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein."The human rights presented in the amendments to the United States Constitution, as in the English case, bring benefits to the general population but serve the interests of political elites and are guaranteed, of course, through military means. The American case is striking, as there is no consideration for the human rights of native communities, much less consideration for their values and way of life in defining the human rights expressed in its founding document. The defense of religious freedom, then, is primarily a defense of Christian freedom, guaranteeing the religious privileges of the colonial political elite. Once again, as in the English case, Christianity is positively and negatively related to the guarantee of human rights.

In France, for the first time, we have a movement seeking human rights without religious interests; on the contrary, part of the French Revolution had to do with eliminating the religious foundation of political organization, especially the monarchy. It is in France, too, that there is significant popular participation in the formulation and search for human rights, even though there is a strong influence of the French intellectual elite and the movement's political strength is related to the support of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Popular participation, even in the definition of human rights in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, is due to the fact that the French Revolution had to do, in large part, with agrarian production. France was the most populous country in Europe, its production was still organized by the feudal system and there was a great loss in agricultural production in 1788. All these factors put pressure on the guarantee of minimum sustenance for the population in general. Shared with the English and American documents, the French document speaks about freedom of religion and freedom of expression (article 10), legal processes (article 9), but adds some rights and definitions that deserve to be highlighted. The French document is explicit about the innate equality of all people and highlights social distinction as being justified only when useful for the common good (article 1). The French document establishes property as a foundation for freedom, therefore, as a right of all (article 17). Finally, the French document guarantees the right to resist oppression (article 2). Unlike the other two documents, in France there is an intention to qualify freedom in a very broad way, eliminating the foundations of elite privilege. In Article 4, it is stated that “the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits other than those which ensure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights”. Here, it is not a question of freedom from some oppressive power only, but freedom for self-affirmation, with the rights of others as the limit of individual freedom. It is possible that here lies part of the origin of two important foundations of the UDHR: human fraternity and plurality as an expression of human dignity. One negative characteristic that the struggle for human rights in France shares with England and the United States is the use of military or violent force to guarantee them. From these examples, we can see how the UDHR, as a historical document, fits well as the heir to an important process in Western cultures in the search for human rights. Using the example of the three documents we have seen, we can speak of this process based on the three themes of the French Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. First, the basic human right was liberty in the sense of “freedom from” coercion by powers, especially the State. Second, it seeks to fight against the inequalities created by imperialist and capitalist exploitation, which depends on state interventions to ensure “rights to” goods and benefits. Third,

It is clear that human rights depend on “solidarity rights” based on the concept of fraternity, that is, of humanity as a family in which each group has its value affirmed (pluralism) and whose well-being and future are interdependent. Readers of the latest edition of ABBA-PAI can see that the UDHR is obviously based on these three elements of human rights. As we saw a little earlier, although the UDHR fits into this historical process of Western cultures and shares its values, it is still a rejection of the “Enlightenment” project, which proved disastrous in the Second World War. The UDHR, as has been said, rejects the imperialist and universalizing project typical of the West in the modern period. This rejection has not only a theoretical character, but also a practical one, as it presents itself as a document that does not have the force of law and, more importantly, that intentionally leaves open many applications of its values ​​according to the particularities of each community. This tension between humanitarian values ​​and imperialist and universalizing practices reveals a relevant characteristic of the development of human rights in general: the discussion of human rights is intertwined with a larger discussion about political order between individuals, communities, and institutional powers, especially state powers. This perception will be relevant when we deal with human rights values ​​in Antiquity and in the Bible, since in this context the role of kings is fundamental. However, in the final part of this edition, it is worth considering how Christianity, as part of Western culture, contributed to the formulation of human rights values ​​and participated in the imperialist and universalizing project that failed miserably in the advancement of human rights.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE MODERN CULTURAL FOUNDATIONS OF DUDH

Although this question is somewhat difficult to address, it is important for the purposes of our study of human rights. It is from this consideration that we can point to a better direction in our search for a Christian mission that advances, not impedes, human rights. On the one hand, Christian traditions that have been very influential in the modern Western political order, especially in England and the United States, emphasize conscience, freedom, and the rights of individuals against any form of tyrannical control by established powers, especially the state. This emphasis is what most closely resembles Christianity as one of the cultural origins of human rights, since this was a common cause with secular humanists. It reveals that we are not dealing with an exclusively Christian value. We can trace this value back to Greco-Roman culture. Thus, we can say that we are faced with a simply Western origin, of which Christianity is only a part. On the other hand, these Christian traditions also advocate submission to authorities, often to the detriment of individual freedom and the common good, and project this power and authority over the entire society onto the church itself. Especially in the context of England and the United States, this apparent contradiction is quite understandable. The defense of freedom, in this context, was a dispute over political power in which religion was an important factor. It was about freedom from certain state powers that served the purpose of an elite seeking to form a different state power. In the case of the United States, for example, it was freedom from the state power of England in the interests of the political elites of the colony to form their own state power. Thinking about the role of religion in this dispute, the freedom of religion was affirmed against colonial impositions, but submission to the authorities of the elites in the colony was affirmed. In some way, then, this tension between freedom from political authorities and submission to other political authorities served to guarantee political power to certain Christian traditions that were privileged by the political elite. To a large extent, therefore, freedom, as a human right within the modern project, ensured the authority of the church independently of certain political powers, but serving the interests of other political powers.

It is in this confusion between political powers and the role of Christianity as part of Western culture that we see the church grounding certain values ​​of human rights while at the same time participating in practices of profound violations of the human rights of various individuals and communities. Given this political character of the church's authority and its relationship to Western culture as a modern project, especially in the Protestant Christian tradition, two different phenomena have occurred that are relevant to the discussion of human rights. The first is that the advance of Western “civilization” is confused with the advance of Christianity. For example, it is typically argued that capitalism and constitutional democracy are particular developments of the Protestant Christian tradition. Given the relationship between these phenomena and Western culture, David Smolin rightly concludes, from the same logic, that “this merely demonstrates the truth that Protestantism, historically, is a purely Western development.” In a sense, this relationship between church and culture or church and state, which permeates various Christian traditions, and not only Protestantism, means that the struggle for human rights can also be a struggle against the authority imposed by the church itself, something that occurred very explicitly in the French Revolution. This has to do with the second phenomenon. Instead of depending on the moral authority of the church to determine the values ​​of human rights, there arises the search for a moral authority separate from the church, based on reason and not on religion. It is in this second phenomenon that the explanation for the confusion that exists between the relationship between Christianity and human rights lies. For some, human rights as we know them today are as if they were a direct manifestation of Christian values, especially Protestant and Western ones. For many others, human rights only advanced through the efforts of secular humanists in opposition to the church. Perhaps this second option is the most common among evangelical Christians. On the one hand, it is explained by the great difference in the relationship with the church between human rights movements of the Protestant, Puritan, English and American traditions, and the secular French tradition. In the end, however, both traditions presented a strongly Western and Enlightenment character, with impositions of their values ​​and culture on others through political and even military power, especially in the case of the colonization movement. Being aware of this relationship between Christianity and Western culture and the modern project helps us in two points that lead to two different errors. The first is to imagine that political power, especially state power, is always in opposition to human rights. Political power has a fundamental role in guaranteeing human rights, but it needs to be part of a broader network.

Only in this way will state power be able to consider human rights, whose values ​​and practical applications benefit all individuals and communities in a plural society, and not just an elite group, a “moral majority”. The second error is to imagine that by rejecting the role of the State, and focusing on individual changes, it is possible to separate oneself from the projects of political and ideological powers. This is a common error among evangelicals. Thomas Moore describes the problem well: “it is assumed that people, when freed from the oppressive effects of sin in their lives, will be able to build a more just society and culture”. But, as we have seen, this movement can still be part of a political project that even includes violence in its practice. In general, therefore, human rights in their modern construction, and by implication the UDHR as well, have their cultural origins in Western Christianity, especially in English and American Protestantism, and in Western humanist secularism. There are, as we will see in the next issue of ABBA-PAI, fundamental values ​​and ideals of human rights and the UDHR that are not exclusive to this origin, even though they have permeated it. But before we look at these different cultural sources, it is necessary to conclude this topic by being explicit about a crucial characteristic of this Western cultural origin. Given what can be seen historically, in all human rights traditions, prior to the UDHR, there is a relationship with certain political structures and ideologies. It seems reasonable to say that, even more than the values ​​and ideals, the Western mark of the cultural origin of human rights lies in the political form of implementation of these ideals and values ​​as an often violent imposition on minority status groups within this structure. This political implementation, always from the top down, often takes on an oppressive, colonizing and universalizing character. The UDHR, as we saw in the last edition of ABBA-PAI and briefly above, does not carry this characteristic, working outside of political structures and from the perspective of the basic experience of the family and of the oppressed groups themselves. For Christians interested in human rights, this difference is of paramount importance, because of the typical confusion between Christianity and Western culture, especially when we have to deal with the relationship between human rights, biblical faith and Christian mission, in a future edition of ABBA-PAI. From this awareness, we can conclude this topic with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), the only woman on the committee that drafted and approved the UDHR, and who identified as a Christian:

"Where do human rights begin? In small places, close to home-
so close and small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.
But they are the world of the individual; the neighborhood in which one lives, the school or
university where one studies, the factory or farm where one works. These are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they will have little meaning anywhere else. Without the
citizen organization to defend these rights close to home, we will search
in vain for progress in the larger world."

CONCLUSION

Eleanor Roosevelt's quote is useful for clarifying important points about human rights, the State and cultural influences as a conclusion to this edition. For many, the emphasis on "small places", these smaller contexts where people's daily lives take place, can lead to erroneous implications about more structural, cultural issues and the role of the State in everything that involves human rights. For some, perhaps, this emphasis is beneficial, because the State is a potential oppressor, and therefore a violator of human rights. For others, perhaps, the emphasis is harmful, because it does not respond to the structural problems that lie behind many human rights violations. However, this emphasis is not intended to prevent State action in favor of human rights or to ignore structural problems. This emphasis is a response to the abuses of state power in violating human rights and to the universalizing and imperialist drive of Western cultural values, sometimes Christian in character, that violate the freedom and agency of diverse human communities to determine what is good for themselves. Thus, articulating human rights from these “small places,” and having them as the ultimate goal of human rights benefits, is a way of qualifying state action to guarantee human rights and establish the appropriate relationship between diverse cultures and social groups in a global and plural society. An appropriate conclusion, as a way of summarizing what we can learn from the cultural foundations of human rights, is to consider power relations. There can be no human rights when there is a “top-down” imposition of values ​​and practices. In Brazil, as reflected in its legislation, as we saw in the last issue of ABBA-PAI, the State guarantees civil and human rights based on values ​​and practices that emerge from the particular reality of communities, families and individuals. For us Christians, as we will see in a future issue on Christian faith, mission and human rights, the emphasis on “small places” forces us to recognize two things: (1) in history, Christianity has been confused with Western culture in its universalizing aspirations, which are, in fact, imperialist, imposing the values ​​of one particular culture on others; (2) human rights and the Christian faith, in order to advance, depend on the appreciation of cultural diversity, while maintaining certain universal values ​​that are fulfilled by the cultural expressions and particular practices of different social groups, families and individuals in their particular experiences. In the next issue, we will take an important step back that will help us in these two recognitions. We will talk about human rights in cultures neighboring and contemporary to ancient Israel. This will make us realize that many human rights values ​​are not exclusively Christian or Western and that many of the values ​​we find in the Bible are shared by these other cultures.

- ABBA TEAM