The latest Theos report is written by Roger Trigg, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick and currently Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life at Kellogg College, Oxford.
The central argument of the report is simple enough. Trigg contends that human beings have a powerful prima facie natural right to the 'free exercise' of their religion. This is not, he argues, simply to be equated with freedom of speech. The report is animated by a deep concern that there is a tendency in European society to view religious belief as optional and private.
Trigg contends that religious faith is public. It can't be consigned to the private sphere. It takes public communal form. Religious people don't – as a rule – see their religious belief as an optional add-on to the rest of their lives but, rather, as part of their fundamental identity.
It has become common practice in recent official European declarations to say that when religion comes into conflict with rights, as it sometimes does, it has to give way to rights. No, insists Trigg. To think and speak in that way is to presuppose that religion carries no rights of its own – that citizens have no right to the free exercise of their religion.
It will no doubt be argued that since the report is published by Theos it lacks a certain 'objectivity' and 'neutrality' in defining and interpreting issues to do with religion and human rights. In short, we've got an agenda!
The point is well made, and it helpfully exposes a wider point. It's simply not possible to talk about theology or human rights in 'neutral' or 'scientific' terms without moral commitments. It isn’t possible to decide questions of policy, law, justice and rights without presupposing some account of the good life.
In the House of Lords today, there is a debate on the British Humanist Association's two reports Quality and Equality: Human Rights, Public Services and Religious Organisations and The Case for Secularism: A Neutral State in an Open Society. Using the language of 'tolerance', 'inclusion', 'liberalism' and 'neutrality', the BHA wish to see a humanistic world-view 'privileged' over other beliefs. Strikingly, humanists like A.C. Grayling argue that the humanistic world-view represents the 'objective', 'non-faith', perspective whereas religion is highly subjective and should, therefore, be kept out of the public domain.
The problem, however, is that the BHA's two reports fail to understand the point already made, namely that human rights cannot operate in an historical, philosophical and religious vacuum. The BHA's vision of rights is as faith-based and value driven as the Archbishop of Canterbury's. It's simply that the object of faith and some of the values in question are very different.
The UN documents on rights recognise that human rights are grounded in a belief in human dignity. It was Judaism and Christianity that introduced into the West the idea that every human being bears ineradicable dignity. It is surely morally and historically nonsensical to attempt to silence the religious grounding for human dignity and human rights.
It is clear, therefore, that we should do all that we can to protect religious freedom in a liberal society. If we don't we will actually undermine the liberal foundations on which our society is based and human rights exist. Indeed, we may discover that our attempts to secure ‘human dignity’ without a religious foundation actually lead not to the triumph of humanity, but its destruction, in C.S. Lewis’ terms, the Abolition of Man.
Paul Woolley is Director of Theos.
