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The Role of Christianity in the Origins, Formation and Reception of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

In the twenty rst century, human rights have become the ubiquitous rallying cry of a diverse, and
sometimes conicting, range of causes across the globe. Tellingly, according to the Guinness Book
of World Records, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)the common
reference point for the conceptis now the most translated document in the world, produced in over
300 languages and dialects. Not only this, but it has become the basis of a global political
1
standard accepted by virtually all states in at least in some form. In response to this phenomenon,
2
there has been a tremendous growth in scholarship over recent decades dealing with the history
and theory of human rights. Often, scholars have adopted triumphalistic language, extolling human
rights as an historically deep-rooted development, emerging as a moral response to the horrors of
the Holocaust. However, recent work by historians such as Samuel Moyn in The Last Utopia
(2010), has begun to challenge this view. Moyn argues that far from reaching an inevitably
predestined apogee in 1948, human rights only truly emerged as we know them in the 1970s. The
reasons for this striking claim, he argues, are intimately linked to the role played by Christian
inuences both in the formation and reception of human rights. He contends that only when human
rights were able to shed the strongly Christian, conservative associations of their beginnings were
they adopted as an alternative utopia seized upon when reigning ideologies were waning.
In examining Moyns thesis, after discussing views on the inuence of Christianity in the
origins of human rights, this essay will look at the role of Christians in the process of forming the
UDHR in 1948 and how these links affected the global reception and adoption of the concept.
What will be seen is that even if Christianity did not perhaps lead inevitably to contemporary
human rights, it was indeed the guiding worldview out of which the modern conception did
eventually rise and also played a central part in the promotion and perception of human rights from
the UDHR onwards. Finally, in considering the implications of this, it will be asked what the
continuing role for Christianity is in what has become a global, though largely secularised,
movement.

In his introduction to the July 1948 UNESCO symposium on human rights, Jacques Maritain, the
French philosopher at the heart of framing the UDHR, quipped, We all agree on the rights but on
1
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the Most Universal Document in the World, Ofce
1
of the High Commission for Human Rights [website]. <http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/pages/
WorldRecord.aspx>, accessed 27.04.14.
Henkin, Louis, The Universality of the Concept of Human Rights, Annals of the American
2
Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 506, Human Rights Around the World (1989), p.13.
SN: 1388816 April 2014
condition that no one asks us why. This was reportedly in response to how such an ideologically
3
and culturally diverse group could possibly agree on a universal list. That why, he followed, is
where the argument begins. For Maritain and others among that group, the answer lay in the
4
moral foundations laid by Christian-inuenced civilisation. The rst task in this essay is to consider
the extent to which that view is justied. In doing so, we will look at three broad outlooks on the
origins of human rights: the anti-religious, secularist view; the multi-cultural, cumulative approach;
and nally the idea of Judaeo-Christian roots.

Firstly, one widespread view in the contemporary world is that human rights were born specically
out of secular, Enlightenment principles. In particular, emanating from the founding documents of
the American and French revolutions, they are seen to represent a triumph of secularism against
religious, state control of the individual. Thus, far from originating in religion, they are seen as a
protection against itespecially Christianity. The reason, according to this view, is that when
religion is allowed into the public square it inevitably infringes upon human rights such as freedom
of conscience, speech and expression, a fact taken to be vividly exemplied by the murder of
Dutch lmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose Submission (2004) criticised the treatment of women in
Islam.

Interestingly, the view that human rights are of inherently secular and anti-religious origins is not
only held by secularists, but has been espoused by a variety of religious groups including Muslims
and Orthodox Christians. For example, Vigen Guroian argues that human rights thinking is alien to
Christians within Eastern Orthodoxy, a fact J. Paul Martin conrms, adding that according to the
5
Russian Orthodox Church, they are the degradation of the system of spiritual values. Also,
6
though from a different perspective, both mainstream and fundamentalist Islamic voices have at
times claimed that human rights are a secular construction and in conict with the teachings of
their faith, especially Shariah provisions for corporal and capital punishment.
7
2
Maritain, Jacques, Introduction, in UNESCO, eds., Human Rights: Comments and
3
Interpretations, (Paris, July 25 1948), p.1. <http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/
0015/001550/155042eb.pdf> accessed 27.04.2014.
Martitain, 1948:1
4
Guroian, Vigen Human Rights and Modern Western Faith: An Orthodox Christian Assessment,
5
The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1998), p.241.
Martin, J. Paul, The Three Monotheistic World Religions and International Human Rights,
6
Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 61, No. 4 (2005), pp.834-835.
Martin offers one illustrative example of this when in a meeting of the UN Committee against
7
Torture, the Saudi representative argued, the Committee had no jurisdiction over Shariah
provisions that allow amputations for theft and oggings and over capital punishment for certain
sexual offenses and the consumption of alcohol. (2005: 836)
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However, a problem with the anti-religious view is that human rights, if they are universal, should
not only protect the secularist from religious incursions, but they are also designed to shield the
religious from secular incursions. They are about creating a neutral space, above state intrusion,
where the liberty of each individuals person and conscience is protected, a space where people of
faith and of no faith alike can ourish. As Simon Schama argues, this was the balance intended in
the Enlightenment separation of church and state, at least in its American formulation, keeping the
church from directing the state, or the state from directing theology.
8

The second view is that the origins of human rights are found in a variety of religio-cultural sources
whose antecedents stretch far back into history. Christianity, from this viewpoint, forms one of
these sources, but by no means the only, or even the most prominent of them. In general, scholars
in this stream hold that there were several aspects of Christianity which needed to be transcended
for human rights to emerge. Micheline Ishays The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times
9
to the Globalization Era (1997) presents this argument, stating that her approach looks at the
cumulative historical progression towards human rights. Through a process of development
10
which stretches from the Code of Hammurabi, through the Hebrews and Greeks, to the teachings
of Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, Ishay argues the modern conception of human
rights was eventually prepared for its emergence in the Enlightenment era and nal, secular
codication in the UDHR. To Ishay, among others, Christian teachings were thus an important step
along the way, but ultimately one of many contributors to a collective developmental morality.

The apparent strength of this view is that it includes the ethical contributions of other cultures and
thus seems to account for the universality of human rights. However, as even Ishay admits, the fact
that echoes of human rights can be found across cultures and in the teachings of major religions
should not obscure the truth that it has been the inuence of theWestern concept of universal
rights that has prevailed. In this light, the danger of the cumulative view is that in seeking to nd
11
universal principles which support human rights, it tends to obscure the fact that the human rights
movement only actually emerged in the West out of what was a Christian cultural milieu.

In support of this, critical scholars such as Jack Donnelly point out that there is often a confusion
made in this reading between values shared between cross-cultural, religious teachings, which are
3
Schama, Simon, The American Future, (London, 2008), p.147.
8
Ishay, Micheline, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era,
9
(London, 1997), p.7
Ibid, 2
10
Ibid, 7
11
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millennia old, and much later social practicessuch as rightswhich aim to realise those values.
12
Samuel Moyn argues that not only is this misled, but if human rights are treated as inborn, or long
in preparation, people will not confront the true reasons they have become so powerful today and
examine whether those reasons are still persuasive. If Donnellys observation is correct, and the
13
social practice of human rights only developed in the West, this leads us to consider our nal
viewpoint.

The third, and potentially most controversial, position is that human rights nd their immediate
origins and theoretical seedbed only in a Judaeo-Christian heritage. Max Stackhouse argues that
recognising this is a matter of intellectual honesty, as principles of basic human rights developed
nowhere else than out of key strands of the biblically-rooted religions. According to this
14
argument, the foundation was the Jewish and Christian doctrine of the imago dei, that humanity is
made in the image of God, endowed with inherent dignity and inviolable status.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, in his inuential work Justice: Rights and Wrongs (2008), offers perhaps the
most cogent and nuanced defence of this position. His argument is that in Christian thought
humans are of inherent dignity because God loves them in the mode of attachment, conferring
value which is not earned or merited, and therefore not able to be lost by us in any way.
15
Establishing true universality alongside the doctrine of imago dei, Christianity also provides the
conviction which gave rise to what he terms our moral subculture of rights, namely that God holds
us accountable for how we treat each other and how we treat God. Without this Christian
16
conviction, founded on what Jesus referred to as the two greatest commandmentsloving God and
loving neighbourhe argues even human rights based on the imago dei can easily be corroded.
Christianity, to Wolterstorff, therefore not only provides the actual historical basis, but also
represents the most coherent and healthy grounding for a robust theory of universal human rights.

This position has been treated with some skepticism by scholars who suspect an air of Christian
triumphalism in its claim. However, the historical accuracy at least has been supported by scholars
who make no pretence to defend Christian ideology. For example, Charles Villa-Vicencios work
correlates with the historical interpretation of Stackhouse and Wolterstorff. But while emphatically
4
Donnelly, Jack, The Relative Universality of Human Rights, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 29
12
(2007), p.284.
Moyn, Samuel, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, (Cambridge, 2010), p.12.
13
Stackhouse, Max, A Christian Perspective on Human Rights, Society, (Jan, 2004), pp.25.
14
Weithman, Paul, Nicholas Wolterstorffs Justice: Rights and Wrongs: An Introduction, Journal of
15
Religious Ethics, Vol. 37, No. 2 (2009), p.180.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, (Princeton, 2008), p.393.
16
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denying being driven by a need to promote Christian ideology, he afrms that his work simply
identies within Christianity the ethical trajectories which led to human rights. Indeed, to argue
17
that human rights developed out of Christian moral principles is not to claim that this was inevitably
so, nor is it to deny that principles supporting human rights can be found in other religions. It is not
even to claim, as would be foolish to argue, that Christians have always been faithful to the
implications of their own heritage. It is merely to recognise that even if there were multiple
18
potential seedbeds, Judaeo-Christian civilisation is the only one in which the tree actually grew. It is
therefore essential to recognise that this is the religio-cultural heritage which allowed for the human
rights discourse to emerge, and as we shall see, was in fact the ideology largely driving the
formation of the UDHR.

In turning attention to the framing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we will examine
the role of Christianity in the underlying philosophy, drafting of the document, and the political lobby
groups which helped effect its ratication. Christians were present and inuential in all three areas.
There will be a particular focus on Moyn in what follow, as according to Johannes Paulmann, his
work in this area has been key in uncovering religious aspects of the history which had been
largely forgotten. In terms of historical detail, there appears to have thus far been been little
19
scholarly criticism of the Christian elements Moyn highlights. Critical reection will therefore focus
on the implications Moyn draws from his study.

The rst way that Christianity inuenced the process of forming the UDHR was in shaping its
underlying philosophy and in dening the early discourse on human rights. According to Moyn, the
gure most instrumental in solidifying the meaning of human rights by the late 1930s was Pope
Pius XI. Adopting the language in his famous 1937 encyclicals denouncing the fate of religion
under the Nazi regime, he simultaneously imbued human rights talk with strongly religious and
anti-totalitarian associations. As scholars such as Mary Ann Glendon and Thomas Williams
20
conrm alongside Moyn, Catholics effectively dominated the rights discourse in these earliest
years and were essential in raising the political prole of the movement.
21

5
Villa-Vicencio, Charles, Christianity and Human Rights, Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 14,
17
No. 2 (1999), p.584.
Stackhouse, 2004: 25
18
Paulmann, Johannes, Human Rights as History, History Workshop Journal, Vol. 76, No. 1
19
(2013), pp.336.
Man, as a person, possesses rights that he holds from God and which must remainbeyond
20
the reach of anything that would tend to deny them. Quoted in Moyn, 2010: 50
Moyn, 2010: 55
21
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However, the Catholic who was to be most important in the forming of the UDHR directly was
Jacques Maritain. The noted Thomistic philosopher, who was intimately involved with the United
Nations in UNESCO and in some key discussions of the Human Rights Committee, based his
promotion of human rights rmly upon the philosophy of Personalism. This philosophy in turn
would affect the major framers of the UDHR, especially Charles Malik.
22

Although an umbrella term describing any system which takes the idea of the human person as a
primary reality, Williams relates that Personalisms most well-known strain derives from the works
of Thomas Aquinas. As a philosophy, it stressed the inviolable dignity of the individual person and
at the same time his social nature and vocation to communion. These emphases are directly
23
reected in the language of the UDHR, such as in making the human person the central
protagonist of the document. As a movement, Williams argues it has nearly always been
24
historically linked to Biblical theism, and in the person of Maritain it found a prominent Catholic
apologist, whom scholars agree was central to the direct formation of the UDHR.
25

As Williams and Moyn concur, the Personalism of Maritain, and by inuence the UDHR, was also
an inherently conservative political ideology as it expressly reacted against forces it considered
dehumanising both in nineteenth-century liberalism and communism. Echoing the later
26
sentiment of Pius XI, the tagline of perhaps the earliest personalist political manifesto in 1932 had
been, We are neither individualists, nor collectivists, we are personalists! Sometimes accused
27
of being an anti-philosophy, it aimed to recover the spiritual side of humanity, salvaging the value
of the individual person from collectivism while emphasising community interdependence in
contrast to liberal atomism. The implication of this, Moyn argues, is that the branch of
28
Personalism to which Maritain belonged was essentially a conservative project trying to redirect
wayward revolutionary forces in a Christian direction. Thus, forming the primary philosophical
29
6
Moyn, 2010: 65
22
Williams, 2005: 112
23
Moyn, 2010: 65
24
Williams, Thomas, Who Is My Neighbour? Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights,
25
(Washington D.C, 2005), p.108.
Williams, 2005: 113
26
Moyn, Samuel, Personalism, Community, and the Origins of Human Rights, in Hoffmann,
27
Stefan-Ludwig, ed., Human Rights in the Twentieth Century, (Cambridge, 2011), p.87.
Moyn, 2011a: 88
28
Ibid, 88
29
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input to the UDHR, Christian Personalism both determined its particular language and its implicit
political emphases.

Christianity was also key in a second direct way, as it formed the worldview of the main drafters of
the UDHR themselves. As Moyn observes, in one sense, given the general consensus over the
principles it contained, there seems to be little need to emphasise any one ideology in forming the
UDHR, were it not for the striking prominence of Christian social thought among the framers and
even in larger UN debates. To illustrate this point, Moyn points out that in distinct ways,
30
Christianity primarily dened the worldviews of all three of the main [UDHR] framers. These
31
included John Humphreys (director of the UN Human Rights Division for two decades who was
responsible for assembling the rst draft of the list of rights), Charles Malik (a Lebanese Christian
perhaps the key gure in the negotiationswho personally hoped for a Christian future in the
Middle East), and Eleanor Roosevelt herself (the chairwoman of the committee and a lifelong
Episcopalian). While it might not be surprising that American and European representatives
32
derived from Christian backgrounds, even those main actors who could be said to be non-
Western, such as Malik or Carlos Romulo (Filipino delegate to the UN), were most deeply
committed to a Christian worldview. Again, to point this out is not to claim that Christianity was
33
the only inuence upon the drafting of the UDHR, but given the foundational worldview of the key
gures, it was certainly a central one.

Thirdly, not only were Christians involved in shaping the philosophy and framing the content of the
UDHR, but Christian groups, especially the Protestant ecumenical movement churches, were
foremost in lobbying the United Nations and United States government in pushing for human rights
to form part of the post-war international order. John Nurser, on whom Moyn relies for this part of
his narrative, is the preeminent scholar in highlighting this history, which he says, has remained
almost wholly unrecognised.
34

In 1946, John Foster Dulles, formative U.N representative, and later U.S Secretary of State,
commented that the character of the United Nations had been largely determined by organised
7
Moyn, 2010: 64
30
Ibid, 64
31
Ibid, 64
32
Ibid, 64
33
Nurser, John, The "Ecumenical Movement" Churches, "Global Order," and Human Rights:
34
1938-1948, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2003), p.842.
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Christian forces. One example of the major contribution of these groups, such as the World
35
Council of Churches (WCC) and the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), was that they ensured
amendments to the October 1944 Dumbarton Oaks draft of the U.N charter which included a
Commission on Human Rights. Their central concern was especially towards establishing a right
36
to religious freedom. In what Nurser calls a remarkable period of success for Christians in the
international political arena, this had been achieved through the recommendations prepared by the
Commission for a Just and Durable Peace, set up by the FCC in 1940. To underline the centrally
37
of this contribution, had this clause not been included in the charter, it is unlikely that human rights
would have featured on the agenda for the 1945 San Francisco Conference where the nal U.N
charter was ofcially signed. Thus, in quite a concrete way, what Dulles had called Christian
38
forces were at the driving centre of the processes which brought the UDHR into being.

Given the contributions covered above, Moyns contention is that human rights could not help but
pick up Christian conservative associations, which when coupled with the vigorous Christian
promotion of them, gravely hampered their reception on the global, emerging Cold-War scene.
Claiming to solve the mystery of why human rights failed to ourish for decades after the UDHR,
he argues they were simply too Christian and too conservative to catch on. In considering this
39
claim, we will look at ways in which Christians principally promoted the idea, leading to what Moyn
sees as human rights lack of universal appeal, as well as possible criticisms of this argument.

The rst important observation in the reception of human rights and the UDHR is that apart from
the U.N itself, the majority of those who championed them in the rst three decades were
Christians. This was true on the institutional and individual level. Organisationally, the Protestant
ecumenical churches of the WCC and FCC continued in the following decades to advocate
passionately, primarily for right to religious liberty. On one level they saw this as a rst order right
due to its internal nature in the realm of conscience. However, some scholars have claimed a
measure of self-interest in this for the sake of protecting Christian missions initiatives, especially to
the Muslim world. Indeed, as Villa-Vicencio and others have pointed out, having been so
40
8
Nurser, 2003: 842
35
Ibid, 846
36
Ibid, 843
37
Ibid, 860
38
Moyn, 2010: 74-75
39
Rieffer, Barbara, Religion, Politics and Human Rights: Understanding the Role of Christianity in
40
the Promotion of Human Rights, Human Rights and Human Welfare, Vol. 6 (2006), p.39.
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inuential in the framing of the UDHR, it was not until the late 1960s that the ecumenical churches
began to seriously pursue programmes ghting for the full range of human rights.

However, as Mary Ann Glendon has argued, it was at this time that the Catholic church became
the most inuential champion of human rights, through its advocacy in the UN, and through its [by
1998] 300,000 educational, health care and relief agencies serving mainly the poorest and most
disadvantaged people in all parts of the world. Not only this, but in its teachings, the Second
41
Vatican Council (1965) made human rights a focus of Catholic doctrine, especially in response to
Latin American liberation theology.
42

Individually, in the political square, scholars highlight the role of John Foster Dulles, who as a key
Christian statesmen continued to speak for human rights as President Eisenhowers Secretary of
State. In the intellectual realm, another important example can be taken from Moyns article The
43
First Historian of Human Rights (2011), which outlines the works of Gerhard Ritter. The German
historians Historische Zeitschrift (1949) was the earliest, and for a long time the only, attempt to
provide a history of human rights. Ritter, who was aligned with the German, Confessing Church
44
and had been imprisoned as part of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, sought to maintain the
memory of human rights Christian roots to protect against totalitarianism. His work thus rst
45
claimed Christian intellectual ownership and heritage for human rights, a fact important because,
as Moyn points out, few serious non-Christian intellectuals were theorists or partisans of the new
idea of human rightsor even rights generallyuntil several decades later.
46

The implication of this passionate Christian conservative advocacy, Moyn argues, is it necessarily
meant that others could not help but regard it as a deeply partisan idea. Coupled with the fact
47
that, if the analysis is accurate, it probably looked like a deeply Western idea also, this serves to
9
Glendon, Mary Ann, Rights Babel: Thoughts on the Approaching 50th Anniversary of the
41
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Reverend Thomas J. Furphy Lecture (DeSales University,
1996), p.8.
Villa-Vicencio, 1999: 592
42
Nurser, 2003: 842
43
Moyn, Samuel, The First Historian of Human Rights, The American Historical Review, Vol. 116,
44
No. 1 (2011), p.59.
Moyn, 2011b: 65
45
Ibid, 73
46
Moyn, 2010: 75
47
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offer an explanation as to why human rights did not catch on ideologically except in certain
Western European circles.
48

However, not all scholars have fully accepted Moyns interpretation on this point. While he does
acknowledge other problems with human rights, such as the fact that they did not help to decide
between a welfarist or communist statethe greatest political struggle of the erahe nonetheless
seems to emphasise the stagnating effect of religious associations more than others. There are
49
several other considerations which may contradict this view. For one, Nathan Clemens, in The
Changing Face of Religion and Human Rights (2009), argues that many Christian groups did not
support human rights in this period and some even taught against them, for example in relation to
capital punishment. On another front, Eric Weitz contends that, while not denying a surge in
50
human rights popularity from the 1970s, the language was also used by secular, anti-colonialist
movements in earlier decades to argue their case for self-determination. While conceding that we
51
cannot take this merely at face value, as Moyn argues their usage of human rights was different to
the contemporary sense, Weitz says we should also not ignore that they did explicitly used the
language.
52

These, and other potential criticisms, beg the question as to why Moyn emphasises the religious
aspect to the extent that he does. While he is certainly successful in showing not only the intimate
involvement of Christians in the formation of the UDHR, but also their continued and prominent
appropriation of human rights in the subsequent decades, his analysis is underlain by the
suggestion that this genealogy should cause his readers to be deeply unsettled. As the title of his
53
primary book on human rights suggests, the overall intention of his work is to show that human
rights are not a necessary, nor in any particular sense true, movement, but merely the latest, and
perhaps not the last, in a long chain of utopian ideologies. In what seems to reect a very
Foucaultian approach, Moyns conclusion is that his revelations of deeply Christian origins in the
history of the UDHR expose that they are no more than another, subjective political perspective.
10
Moyn, 2010: 78
48
Ibid, 73
49
Clemens, Nathan, The Changing Face of Religion and Human Rights, (Leiden, 2009), pp.
50
139-147.
Weitz, Eric, Samuel Moyn and the new history of human rights, European Journal of Political
51
Theory, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2013), p.90.
Weitz, 2013: 89
52
See for example Moyn 2011b: 59
53
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Therefore, this underlying motivation is the reason for his insistence that to ignore the true history
of the emergence of human rights is perilous for our contemporary context.

However, in turning to think about the place of Christianity in the human rights movement today, it
is worth challenging Moyn as to why these revelations should make us so suspicious. To assert
that the origins of human rights are heavily inuenced by Christianity, and that this should unsettle
our condence in them, is to assume that there is little of universal value in them. The views of
many scholars, coupled with the fact that the UDHR was indeed ratied by representatives of most
world cultures might suggest otherwise. But Moyns operating assumption seems to be that if they
emanate from a particular religious tradition they must be particular in themselves and not
reective of universal values. What scholars such as Wolterstorff might challenge Moyn on, is that
the realisation of the true foundation of human rights should not cause us to be unsettled, but
rather induce us to explore the philosophical and practical ramications of that grounding.

As we have seen in Wolterstorffs arguments above, he sees the Christian basis for human rights
as providing a robust and universal grounding which also provides the conviction to carry it out.
Without this, as the scholarly debate has shown thus far, it seems hard to provide any other
adequate theoretical justication, even if the historical origins can be ignored. From a wide
54
variety of perspectives, a number of scholars thus agree that religion, especially, but not only
Christianity, can play a key part in the continuing human rights movement. As Louis Henkin points
out, rights are essentially the minimum level of respect that is needed. But on their own, they
cannot provide the basis for the good society. This is where religions can bridge the gap and, from
the rich soil provided by human rights, encourage humanity to ourish in positive action.
55
Furthermore, in considering the particular role of Christianity, Villa-Vicencio concludesI that while
Christians are required to ght for human rights, the message of the gospel should always
challenge them to go much further rights to loving neighbour as self.

In conclusion, this essay has attempted to offer a broad view of the different ways in which
Christianity inuenced the formation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the
discussion of the origins of human rights, we have seen that three possible views have been taken.
However, when the secularist and cumulative origins theories are examined, they fail to take full
account both of the intentions and the historical provenance of human rights. Instead, what several
important scholars recognise, is that human rights only actually emerged out of a Christian milieu.
Furthermore, it is possible to argue that human rights only nd a truly universal grounding and
11
Wolterstorff, 2008: 393
54
Henkin, Louis, Religion, Religions and Human Rights, The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 26,
55
No. 2 (1998), pp.229-239.
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motivation in the context of a Judaeo-Christian worldview. Following the work of Moyn, we have
seen that Christians were key in the early emergence of human rights in the twentieth century,
shaping the UDHR by the guiding philosophy of Christian Personalism, forming a key part in
central group responsible for drafting the document, and in the political advocacy which allowed
human rights to form part of the U.N charter in the rst place. As to Moyns claim that this Christian
conservative involvement was to blame for the initial lack of wide acceptance of human rights,
while there is certainly some good evidence for this argument, it is clear that other factors were
also key in this delayed adoption. Overall, what emerges from the discussion, is that some of
Moyns particular emphases on the religious aspect of this history, derive from his motivation to
challenge human rights at the level of discourse. However, the newly revealed history of close
Christian involvement in the UDHR need not necessarily be unsettling. On the contrary, it may
encourage the contemporary world to explore the resources of a Christian grounding for human
rights. A grounding which not only emphasises true universality and inviolable dignity based on the
worth-conferring love of God, but also continually challenges us to go beyond mere rights and
pursue seless love of others.


12
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