Social justice and religious rights
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the duty of Christians to promote the dignity of the human person, given that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Modern society typically codifies the practical dimension of this dignity in the forms of legal charters, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In such charters, there is usually an operational equivalence principle, in that the legal text does not elevate one right or freedom over another (i.e. they are held in a legal balance with each other). While this works as a legal principle, however, it makes for poor philosophy: certain rights DO necessarily govern others, or else the system itself does not make sense. For example, the right to life is often quoted as an ontologically supreme right, for if a person’s life is terminated all other rights disappear at the same time.
In reflecting on this situation, however, I am increasingly convinced that the right to life is not actually the supreme human right, but rather a particular package of religious rights. This is because the supreme human duty is to live according to one’s conscience: to do otherwise is to be a hypocrite, and a certain measure of moral honesty is one of the foundations of a stable society. Corresponding to the living according to one’s conscience, however, is the duty to inform one’s conscience by the sincere seeking of Truth: after all, if we must adhere to our conscience as a supreme duty, we owe it to ourselves to make sure that the specific duties and interdictions our conscience imposes upon us are actually founded on more that just habit or socialization.
This duty to live according to our conscience gives rise to a corresponding right: the right to live according to our conscience, especially the right to be free of coercion with regards to the specific duties and interdictions discerned by our conscience. This does not mean that we can claim the right to behave however we choose, simply because our inner voice of conscience says something is ok; but it does mean that, while society may have the right to proscribe certain *actions* on our part, if they affect the common good, that same society does not have the right to regulate our *beliefs*.
It is the consequences arising from this set of duties that elevates religious rights beyond even the right to life: because while the right to life concerns our physical life, the right to freedom of conscience concerns our eternal life. Within the Christian understanding, for example, a Christian has the *duty* to accept martyrdom for his faith in Jesus Christ, were it to come to that, rather than deny Christ and continue to live. From God’s point of view, then, the right to life (in this case) is trumped by the duty of fidelity to the Son of God. The reward, of course, is immediate entry into Heaven, while the penalty for the opposite (if left unrepented) is damnation. The stakes could not be higher, and so Christians *must* struggle to see religious rights secured throughout the world, even for non-Christians.
In practical terms, though, what are these religious rights? UNESCO has an excellent page on the Internet devoted to exactly this question, and in particular I’d draw your attention to the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief as a good starting point for the study of the question.
Finally, I’d like to suggest that the acceptance of the supremacy of conscience as arising from the positive duty to seek the Truth is the basis for the civic acceptance of religious beliefs. A religion or sect that claims that it is possible to “get to heaven” simply by following outward forms, without living a corresponding inner sincerity, is a religion that is basically promoting a sort of tyranny. Since “getting to heaven” is the supreme good, such a religion would be able to justify the worst forms of barbarism (such as torture) in the supposed promotion of salvation. There can be no genuine dialogue of faith with a group that does not believe in the freedom of conscience, because the duty to pursue Truth has no real value either. It would be interesting to see how the different religions of the world view the issue of salvation and the relationship between salvation, conscience and truth. I suspect we would discover some surprising viewpoints, which in turn would help us navigate the waters of the religious pluralism we see today.
