Christian Human Rights by Samuel Moyn

Excerpt

Law professor and historian Samuel Moyn makes a convincing case that all those concerned with understanding the origins of the modern human rights movement must take Christianity into account. In Christian Human Rights, Moyn describes how Roman Catholic and Protestant thinkers in the 1930s and 1940s came to understand respect for human rights based on human dignity to be essential for world stability and order. According to Moyn, the concept of human dignity gained public prominence through Pope Pius XI’s encyclical letter Divini redemptoris in 1937. That same year, the word “dignity” made its first appearance in a modern constitution. Roman Catholic Church leaders were pleased that Ireland sought to assure “the dignity and freedom of the individual,” as stated in the preamble of the Irish Constitution. Prime Minister Éamon de Valera and the Irish Constitution’s drafters considered their application of dignity to individuals to be in harmony with the codification of socially conservative Catholic understandings of a host of issues, including marriage, property rights, and Church-state relations. The year 1937 was also significant for Protestant ecumenism since the Faith and Order Conference at Edinburgh and the Life and Work Conference at Oxford agreed to form one council, laying the groundwork for the creation of the World Council of Churches after World War II. …