This was a paper delivered at a the Society of Vineyard Scholars which in 2014 was held in Columbus, OH. Stanley Hauerwas is one of America's most influential theologians and public intellectuals, and it struck me when I was reading him that he could see no theological justification for human rights. In his view, they are the product of the secular Enlightenment and now also the symptom of all that is wrong with market capitalism and its attendant consummerist society. It is a sign of our postmodern hyper-individualism. In this paper I examine his views of human rights, and those of influential lawyer and writer Steven L. Carter, who as a Christian takes Hauerwas to task on this issue, but from a different angle. I end with a brief look at Pope Francis' first public document Evangelii Gaudium and its teaching on human solidarity. I conclude (unsurprisingly for those who follow my blog) that the Chistian doctrine of creation (Muslim and Jewish too) provide ample grounding for a theology of human rights.
This is the longer version (about twice the length) of a case study that begins my fifth chapter in Justice and Love: A Muslim-Christian Conversation. Having taught an introductory course in Islam at the West Africa Theological Seminary as a two-week intensive course on three occasions, I have been eager to read more about the history of that nation's sectarian tensions. This is a very brief introduction to the question, but one I believe will be useful for anyone trying to grasp how the 1999 Sharia controversy irrupted and why it has been somewhat resolved since then. That is the focus of this paper and not the issue of Boko Haram. It is mentioned in passing, but that would be a separate topic.