The Grace of equality as opposed to Human Rights as ‘Secular Religion’?

In the second half of the twentieth century, local and international solidarity over any form of significant injustice has become common. This moral unity has been celebrated as the emergence of a ‘civil society’, itself the expression of a rising awareness of human rights. Today the adjective ‘civil’ has more prestige than ‘civilized’ (as in ‘European civilization’) and certainly more than ‘Christian’, which many are taking pains to forget entirely. ‘Civil’ has the disadvantage of remaining wedded to the domain of politics, largely co-opted by politicians of all persuasions. If the affirmation of equality suffices to prove the dignity of man and the ‘universality’ of that common foundation of humanity, nevertheless the rights of the individual are a political value, guaranteed primarily by citizenship. Obviously, one’s likelihood of realizing those rights depends on where one is a citizen. Human rights are so dependent on the political context that it can be reasonably doubted whether individual rights per se are ever fully defended. Indeed, many politicians are only too happy to tell us that what they are defending is democracy - the only genuine, humanitarian form of government.

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