Religion and Human Rights An Introduction

The relationship between religion and human rights is both complex and inextricable. While most of the world's religions have supported violence, repression, and prejudice, each has also played a crucial role in the modern struggle for universal human rights. Most importantly, religionsprovide the essential sources and scales of dignity and responsibility, shame and respect, restraint and regret, restitution and reconciliation that a human rights regime needs to survive and flourish in any culture.This volume provides authoritative examinations of the contributions to human rights of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and indigenous religions. Each chapter grapples with the concept and origins of "human rights," and offers insight into the major human rightsissues that confront religious individuals and communities. These include core issues of freedom of religious conscience, choice, exercise, expression, association, morality, and self-determination. They also include analysis of the roles of religious ideas and institutions in the cultivation andabridgement of rights of women, children, and minorities, and rights to peace, orderly development, and protection of nature and the environment. With contributions by a score of leading experts, Religion and Human Rights provides authoritative and accessible assessments of the contributions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Indigenous religions to the development of the ideas and institutions of humanrights. It also probes the major human rights issues that confront religious individuals and communities around the world today, and the main challenges that the world's religions will pose to the human rights regime in the future.

John Witte, Jr., Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University, is a world authority on legal history, marriage law, religious liberty, and human rights. He has published 25 books, 15 journal symposia, and 200 articles, and lectured throughout the world. His writings have appeared in ten languages, and he has won dozens of awards for teaching and research.

M. Christian Green is a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. She has taught at Emory, Harvard, and DePaul. Her specialties include law and religion, feminism and the family, human rights, comparative religious ethics, and religion and international affairs.