Religious freedom is a fragile human right. I hold that it is a natural right, grounded in human dignity, and universally merited, but relatively rarely in history have conditions existed in which religious freedom has been enjoyed in practice and guaranteed effectively by law. Even under constitutions such as that of the United States, a pioneer and model of religious freedom, new threats have emerged in recent years. A fortiori threats are faced by the Uighur Muslims in China, Christians in Nigeria, and Bahais in most places where they live.
Religious freedom faces a different kind of threat in skepticism of its worthiness as a right — different and in some respects more thoroughgoing. The defense of religious freedom in so many places depends on the presence of the human right of religious freedom in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, other international law instruments, the constitutions of states, and other forums whose championing of this right depends on its presence in law: eighteen states whose foreign policies promote religious freedom, five multilateral bodies, including the European Union, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. If people cease to believe that religious freedom merits its place as a human right in international law and constitutions, this presence of religious freedom there will be endangered.
Numerous intellectuals, at least in the Anglo-American world, have published skeptical arguments that religious freedom deserves a right of its own. This is worrying, for it is in the university, including its law schools, that tomorrow’s advocates of human rights are trained as international lawyers, activists, government officials and much more.
In this paper, forthcoming as an article this month in the American Journal of Jurisprudence, I offer a fresh defense of the human right of religious freedom. Here is the abstract:
This essay presents a fresh defense of the human right of religious freedom. It addresses two versions of skepticism of this human right, one a liberal variant, which questions religious freedom’s distinctiveness, the other a post-modern variant, which questions religious freedom’s universality. The case for a universal and distinct human right of religious freedom rests upon the claim that religion is a basic human good, manifesting human dignity and warranting a human right. The essay details four respects in which religion fulfills the meaning of a basic human good. Religion is a purposive set of acts, or practices; is a definable phenomenon whose core meaning is right relationship with a superhuman power; entails both an intrinsic good and derivate goods; and is universal in its scope. Finally, crucial to the human right of religious freedom is religion’s interiority, that is, its critical involvement of will, mind, and heart.
Response is welcome.
