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Is there a God of Human Rights?
International Studies
in
Religion and Society

VOLUME 2
 Is there a God of
Human Rights?
The Complex Relationship between
Human Rights and Religion:
A South African Case

by
Johannes A. van der Ven
Jaco S. Dreyer
Hendrik J.C. Pieterse

AEGID
B
E
TA SU

..
P AA LL LL AA S

..
TU

.
S

BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2004
 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Translated by M. Manley

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Ven, J.A. van der, 1940–

Is there a God of human rights?: the complex relationship between human
rights and religion: a South African case/by J.A. van der Ven, J.S. Dreyer,
H.J.C. Pieterse
p. cm. — (International studies in religion and society, ISSN 1573-4293; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 00) and indexes.
ISBN 90-04-14209-6 (pbk.)
1. Human rights—Religious aspects. 2. Human rights—South Africa. I.
Dreyer, J.S. II. Pieterse, H.J.C. III. Title. IV. International studies in religion
an society; 2.

BL65.H78V46 2004
261.7’0968—dc22 2004058069

ISSN 1573-4293
ISBN 90 04 14209 6
© Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic
Publisher, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior
written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted
by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to
The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,
Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
printed in the netherlands
 CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................ ix
Introduction ................................................................................ xi

PART ONE

HUMAN RIGHTS

Introduction to Part One .......................................................... 3

Chapter One: The Social Constitution of Human Beings
and Human Rights ................................................................ 11
1.1. Retribution and Reciprocity .......................................... 14
1.2. Mutual Recognition and Perspective Exchange .......... 18
1.3. Mutual Recognition, Law and Human Rights ............ 24
Chapter Two: Society, Law and Human Rights .................... 33
2.1. The Choice of a Theory of Society ............................ 34
2.2. System and Life World .................................................. 36
2.3. Politics, Law and Human Rights .................................. 54
2.4. Deliberative Democracy and Human Rights .............. 68

Chapter Three: Human Rights Culture and Human

Rights Attitudes ...................................................................... 77
3.1. Human Rights Culture .................................................. 81
3.2. Human Rights Attitudes ................................................ 96
3.3. Social Location of Human Rights Attitudes ................ 127

PART TWO

HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGION:

A COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP

Introduction to Part Two .......................................................... 141

Chapter Four: Context of Origin ............................................ 151
4.1. Religious Particularism and Universalism:
Genesis, Isaiah and Romans ........................................ 153
vi contents

4.2. Moral Particularism and Universalism:

Law Books and the Synoptics ...................................... 183
Chapter Five: Context of Codification .................................... 215
5.1. Hegemony and Natural Law ...................................... 219
5.2. Resistance, Democracy and Natural Law .................. 230
Chapter Six: Context of Legitimation ...................................... 255
6.1. Human Dignity ............................................................ 265
6.2. The Human Being as the Image of God .................. 280
6.3. Human Dignity and the Image of God .................... 294

PART THREE

EFFECTS OF RELIGION ON HUMAN RIGHTS:

A SOUTH AFRICAN CASE

Introduction to Part Three ........................................................ 307

Chapter Seven: Effects of Religious Attitudes on

Human Rights Attitudes ........................................................ 315
7.1. Religious Attitudes ........................................................ 315
7.2. The Effects of Religious Attitudes on Human
Rights Attitudes ............................................................ 330
7.3. Research Population .................................................... 337
7.4. Research Questions ...................................................... 345
Chapter Eight: Human Rights in the Name of God ............ 347
8.1. Images of God .............................................................. 350
8.2. Does God Make a Difference in the Area
of Human Rights? ........................................................ 361
Chapter Nine: Evil of Violence as a Trigger for
Human Rights ........................................................................ 379
9.1. Evil of Violence ............................................................ 385
9.2. Evil of Violence as a Contrast Experience
Leading to Human Rights? ........................................ 400
Chapter Ten: Imitation of Jesus in the Perspective
of Human Rights .................................................................... 409
10.1. Faces of Jesus ................................................................ 415
10.2. Disciples of Jesus as Propagators of Human
Rights? .......................................................................... 441
 contents vii

Chapter Eleven: Salvation as a Motive for Human Rights .... 453

11.1. Salvation ........................................................................ 455
11.2. Salvation Leading to Human Rights? ........................ 467
Chapter Twelve: Christian Communities for
Human Rights ........................................................................ 477
12.1. Christian Communities .................................................. 479
12.2. Christian Communities as Mediators of
Human Rights? ............................................................ 499
Chapter Thirteen: Interreligious Interaction as a
Contribution to Human Rights ............................................ 507
13.1. Interaction with Other Religions ................................ 511
13.2. Interreligious Interaction Leading to
Human Rights? ............................................................ 550
Chapter Fourteen: Conclusion: A God of Human Rights?
Which God of Which Religious Attitudes and Whose
Human Rights? ...................................................................... 565
14.1. Effects of Religious Attitudes on Human
Rights Attitudes ............................................................ 566
14.2. Differences between Multicultural and
Monocultural School Students .................................... 578
14.3. Effects of Population Characteristics on
Human Rights Attitudes .............................................. 583

Appendix .................................................................................... 589

About the authors ...................................................................... 595
Literature .................................................................................... 597
Index of subjects ........................................................................ 627
Index of names .......................................................................... 635
 PREFACE

While the interim constitution, which contained a bill of rights, was

being negotiated at Kempton Park in South Africa in 1993, on the
eve of the crucial year of 1994 when South Africa’s first democra-
tic government under president Nelson Mandela took power, we con-
ceived of a plan to research the relation between human rights and
religion. Our motive was that what was happening in South Africa
could be seen as a kind of experiment for global society: the dismant-
ling of a racially qualified constitutional order during three hundred
years of colonialism, segregation and apartheid and the establish-
ment of a democratic constitutional order in a country characterised
by a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual population struc-
ture where the Western and African civilisations meet. More specifically
the study was motivated by the revolutionary effect of the interim
constitution, which replaced the principle of parliamentary sover-
eignty with the principle of constitutionalism based on a bill of rights
on the one hand, and on the other by the powerful influence of reli-
gion that continues to permeate South African society. We decided
to undertake an extensive historical and systematic study of the rela-
tion between human rights and religion generally, and of that rela-
tionship in South Africa in particular, by conducting an empirical
case study of two large groups of grade 11 students at multicultural,
Anglican and Catholic private schools and predominantly monocul-
tural Afrikaans medium public schools.

The tasks and activities of such a multifaceted, historical, systematic

and empirical research project were beyond the capacity of three
authors, all of whom had a host of other tasks to perform in the
areas of university teaching, research and administration. Hence we
are grateful to many people who were there to advise us and offer
practical assistance.
For the organisation of the fieldwork and data collection we thank
Kobus Gerber, Anthony Nderitu, Bikitsha Njumbuxa and members
of the Department of Practical Theology at the University of South
Africa.
x preface

Over the years Ms Berdine Biemans of the Radboud University

of Nijmegen, The Netherlands has assisted us in word and deed with
statistical analyses. We are grateful for the advanced learning expe-
rience she provided in this area.
Parts of this book were submitted for critical reading and com-
ment to colleagues at the Radboud University of Nijmegen: Ulrich
Berges, Patrick Chatelion Counet, Georg Essen, Willem van Genugten,
Christoph Hübenthal, Hans Schilderman, and Jean-Pierre Wils, and
colleagues at the University of South Africa: Danie Goosen, Gerhard
van den Heever and Danie Veldsman. We are grateful for their
expert observations, which does not imply that we do not assume
full responsibility for any possible errors in the text.
With astounding diligence and accuracy Marcelle Manley provided
a competent translation of the book, for which we thank her sincerely.

Epiphany, 6 January 2004

The authors
 INTRODUCTION

Human rights would appear to be an obvious principle for the polit-

ical structure of relations within countries, as well as for the politi-
cal structure of relations between countries, but they are not. Instead
they are a contested issue. They not only serve as an ideological
tool for groups pursuing conflicting interests. Often they are them-
selves a direct source of conflict, as may be seen from debates on
the rights to non-discrimination, freedom of expression, privacy, reli-
gious freedom and cultural identity.

Human rights: individualism and collectivism,

particularism and universalism

When one examines human rights on a global scale, one finds that
these phenomena not only occur in all countries, but that the prob-
lems go far deeper and assume mammoth proportions. It boils down
to two problems. The first is the following. Are human rights not
characterised by a Western type of individualism which has eroded
the traditional collectivism that prevailed in the premodern West and
is currently threatening to erode, and is actually eroding collectivism
in (large parts of ) non-Western civilisations? To be sure, ‘eroding’
may be putting it too strongly, for this individualism – inasmuch as
there is a polarity between individualism and collectivism – is not
really a product of human rights. It is a result of economic and
political processes, whereas human rights are the judicial translation
and ideological legitimation of these processes. But in view of this
one might ask whether they do not contribute to the erosion of the
polarity between individualism and collectivism and hence to the
erosion of various forms of solidarity in groups and communities.
The second problem is as follows: are human rights not charac-
terised by a Western type of particularism with its own interests, val-
ues and norms, which under economic and political pressure are
being disseminated all over the world as though it were the only
politico-judicial system worth introducing universally? Are human
rights not a perpetuation of Western hegemony by different means?
If one pays any heed to representatives of other civilisations, one
xii introduction

cannot fail to discern noises of this nature. The Islamic world is

resisting this (alleged) Western pressure, expressing it in religious
terms by calling for re-Islamisation and insisting, as in the Cairo
Declaration on Human Rights in Islam of 1990, that human rights
should be interpreted “in accordance with Islamic Shari"a”. This
could lead to a different kind of exegesis than one is accustomed to
in non-Islamic countries. African countries react to the (alleged)
Western hegemony in secular terms and call their populations to
join in an African renaissance. Again one might ask whether human
rights are not assigned too much weight, since they do not them-
selves give rise to Western hegemony – at least not inasmuch as it
amounts to a universalisation of Western particularism – but are
actually the judicial translation and justification of processes that
actually derived and derive from the economic and political spheres.
And again one might ask whether human rights do not contribute to
the erosion of the polarity between particularism and universalism,
and hence to Western supremacy that results from it.

Human rights and religion

But this book is not about these two problems per se. It deals with
these two problems insofar as they relate to religion, more particu-
larly the Christian religion. This compounds the problem, for the
relation between human rights and the Christian religion is a con-
tested issue in itself. One need merely dip into the history of both
the Christian religion and human rights to discover that the rela-
tion between the two is fraught with great ambivalence. One could
argue that the values of the Christian religion – following those of
Judaism – constitute the moral basis of human rights, but the man-
ner in which Christian churches actually dealt and (at least in some
cases) still deal with human rights leaves little or no scope for an
unqualified, wholly positive evaluation. Instead the churches display a
mix of sometimes positive influence on human rights, sometimes –
in some churches almost exclusively – negative influence, so that the
overall outcome is suspended in a haze of ambivalence. Obviously
this assessment is far too general and desperately in need of
differentiation – which we attempt to provide in this study.
But if we take another look at the relation between human rights
and religion in terms of the two problems we have outlined – erosion
 introduction xiii

of the polarities between individualism and collectivism and between

particularism and universalism – one cannot but conclude that this
is an area full of pitfalls that are difficult to avoid and in which one
can easily be trapped. Indeed, the question that leaps into one’s
mind is whether the Christian religion has contributed – and if so,
to what extent – to the imbalance in the polarities between indi-
vidualism and collectivism and between particularism and universal-
ism. Defining these problems is easier than solving them. A lot of
historical and empirical research is still needed to unravel their com-
plexity and to clarify their implications for different continents and
countries and for different periods, right up to the present.
It would be sheer arrogance to attempt even a bash at resolving
these problems in this study. We simply do not have the necessary
historical and empirical data to do so. What we can do, however,
is to interpret the two problems in such a way that they can serve
as some fort of framework for the empirical research we conduct on
a modest scale among a specific population in a specific country: a
specific student population comprising grade 11 students, in South
Africa, more specifically in the Johannesburg/Pretoria region. Our
questions are the following: what effect does the Christian religion
have on human rights in this student population and, more partic-
ularly, what effect do these students’ religious attitudes have on their
human rights attitudes? Can one discern a trend towards individu-
alism rather than collectivism in this effect, and a trend towards
Western particularistic universalism rather than complex, polycentric
universalism?

Human rights and religion: a South African case

Why did we decide on grade 11 students and on South Africa? To

start with the second question, the social revolution in South Africa
since the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 prompted this study,
from several perspectives. From a global perspective the South African
revolution put an end to the dominion of a white minority, analo-
gous to the decolonisation process that had been taking place all
over the world since the end of World War II. From a national per-
spective the revolution has brought a fundamental realignment of
relations between South Africa’s population groups, aimed at demol-
ishing the almost symbiotic link between ethnicity and the economy,
xiv introduction

so that white no longer inevitably goes with wealth, nor black with
poverty. From a democratic perspective the revolution marks the
start of a learning process in which the sovereignty of the people
must find adequate expression in the principle of constitutionalism,
the rule of law, the separate institutions of legislative, executive and
judicial power, and other democratic institutions such as the fran-
chise and a multiparty system. Finally, from a human rights per-
spective, the interim constitution of 1993 and its bill of rights, in the
wake of which we started the preliminaries to our study, and the
new South African constitution of 1996, especially the Bill of Rights
in chapter 2, attest a new basis for South African society, in which
the dignity of the human person is focal and the striving for free-
dom and equality is paramount.
Against this background it is easy to see why we settled for grade
11 students. These youths are the future of the new South Africa,
its future leaders who have to take the actualisation of democracy
and human rights further. They epitomise the generational chain:
they are being prepared and moulded for their social function. If
they do not display the required human rights attitudes and the nec-
essary positive effects of their religion on these attitudes, then the
future society will be the poorer and will end up in trouble in all
the domains affected by human rights: the civil, political and judi-
cial domain, the socio-economic domain and the domain of collec-
tive needs and interests. But if they have sufficiently positive attitudes
towards human rights and their religion has a positive effect on these
attitudes, this is bound to have an impact on the future develop-
ment and well-being of South Africa.
The reason for investigating the effects of grade 11 students’ reli-
gious attitudes on their human rights attitudes specifically in South
Africa is that this country is still intensely religious. A study of this
nature in a country where religion is a distinctly minority phenom-
enon would be pointless. True, the South African constitution observes
a separation between church and state, evidenced by religious free-
dom, but this does not extend to separating religion from society.
On the contrary, census data from both 1996 and 2001 indicate
that the country is broadly influenced by religious aspirations (People
of South Africa Census 1996, 1998; Hendriks 2000). Firstly, in 1996
74.1%, and in 2001 79.8%, of the South African population defined
themselves as Christian. Not that those who define themselves as
Christian necessarily see themselves as members of a Christian church,
 introduction xv

certainly not of a mainline church. All mainline churches experienced

a major rise in membership between 1910 and 1960 and a major
drop between 1960 and 1991, while ‘other Christian churches’ –
notably African Independent and Pentecostal churches – experienced
marked growth in the 1980s (Goodhew 2000). Furthermore, in 1996
7.7%, and in 2001 3.8%, of the population belonged to other reli-
gions, especially Islam (in the southern provinces) and Hinduism
(along the east coast). Lastly, in 1996 18.3%, and in 2001 16.5%,
refused to answer the relevant question or were nonreligious. Refusal
to answer the question could imply uncertainty about which church
or religion to choose. It could also be that the information was con-
sidered too private – partly on account of (experienced or anticipated)
reactions from the environment – and that was why these respon-
dents refused to declare their belief. The fact that a fairly large group
of the aforementioned 18.3% in 1996 and 16.5% in 2001 may have
considered themselves nonreligious or refused to answer the ques-
tion is not surprising. Some of them would be members of the sec-
ularised, westernised, agnostic and religiously indifferent elite; others
would belong to those traditional communities (individuals and even
whole tribes) who have ceased to believe in their own traditional
myths and ritual practices (Metogo 1997).

This book, then, is about the effects of grade 11 students’ religious

attitudes on their human rights attitudes. But that is not all. We are
also interested in possible difference in these effects between various
groups of grade 11 students. Initially we wanted to conduct our
research among four different groups: grade 11 students at Anglican
private schools, Catholic private schools, English medium public
schools and Afrikaans medium public schools. In the first phase of
our survey project, the 1995/1996 period, we managed to do so,
but in the second phase, the 2000/2001 period, we could not as a
result of a change of policicy by the Gauteng ministry of education,
as will be explained in chapter 7. We were able to maintain the
comparative structure of our research, but it had to be confined to
determining similarities and differences between two student popu-
lations: grade 11 students at multicultural, Anglican and Catholic
private schools (abbreviated to multicultural schools) and grade 11
students at predominantly monocultural, Afrikaans medium public
schools that have always maintained close ties with the Afrikaans
Reformed churches (abbreviated to: monocultural schools). Here our
xvi introduction

question was whether there were discernible difference in the effects

of religious attitudes on human rights attitudes among students at
multicultural schools and those at monocultural schools. Are the pos-
itive effects greater among the former group (multicultural Anglican
and Catholic schools) or in fact less than among the latter group
(monocultural schools, related to the Afrikaans Reformed churches)?
Naturally two of the three authors of this book, Jaco S. Dreyer
and Hendrik J.C. Pieterse, are directly concerned about how South
African students regard human rights and religion and what the rela-
tion is between them: they are South Africans born and bred, they
live and work there; their lives are bound up with South Africa’s
lot, and they are concerned about South Africa’s destiny and that
of its children and grandchildren. But the third – in fact the pri-
mary – author, Johannes A. van der Ven, is no less concerned, albeit
indirectly. As a distant descendant of the mid-17th century Dutch,
who – after the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck and his burghers at the
Cape in 1652 – permitted the Dutch East India Company, a multi-
national before the event, to go its colonising way, he is bound up
with one of the country’s languages and cultures and shares their
historical responsibility.1

Structure of the book

The book comprises three parts. Part I and II explore the frame of
reference we referred to earlier: the polarities between individualism
and collectivism and between particularism and universalism. Part I
deals with the tension in human rights between individualism and

1
The official name of the Dutch East India company, which existed alongside
other East India companies in other countries, like the British and the Swedish East
India Companies, was Generale Vereenichde Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie (abbr.:
VOC). It originated from a merger between similar companies in two states of the
then Dutch Republic (Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden), Holland and Zeeland, and
was chartered by the government (Staten-Generaal ) in 1602 so as to wield a monop-
oly in the trade of spices, tea and materials like cotton and silk, as well as certain
powers in the commercial, military and political fields. Although a private company
financed by share issue, it could enter into trade contracts in the name of the Staten-
Generaal, build forts, buy and sell slaves, declare war and sign peace treaties, espe-
cially with indigenous peoples: sovereign rights that are normally the prerogative of
the state (Van Gelder 2003, 163–164). The territories the VOC conquered from
the indigenous peoples in South Africa, the Khoi and the San, where the Dutch
burghers were to live, were not a Dutch colony but the colony of a trading com-
pany (Terreblanche 2003, 153–156).
 introduction xvii

collectivism in the overall context of a deliberative democracy, includ-

ing opinion formation and will formation for the sake of the devel-
opment of a human rights culture. Part II deals with the tension in
human rights between particularism and universalism, with special
reference to the influence of the Christian religion on this tension,
both historically and systematically. We shall see that the two polar-
ities are distinct but not separable, since they constantly overlap. The
difference is one of emphasis rather than of two strictly separate
areas. In this frame of reference Part III focuses on the empirical
study of the effects of the grade 11 students’ religious attitudes on
their human rights attitudes. There it will be evident that the effects
could be either positive, negative or ambivalent, while it could also
be that the two sets of attitudes have nothing to do with each other,
resulting in zero effect.

As we have said, in Part I the is accent on the antinomy between

individualism and collectivism. We do not dismiss the charge of
Western individualism, for even though Marx may have been exag-
gerating when he claimed that human rights were inspired purely
by bourgeois self-interest, he certainly hit on an important aspect.
Instead of offering a direct defence of human rights against this
charge, we delve a little more deeply by showing that human rights
in themselves are not individualistic but relate to the social consti-
tution of the human being. This is explained with reference to the
concepts of reciprocity, mutual recognition and perspective exchange
(chapter 1). At the same time we want to show that human rights
are not a kind of bludgeon citizens’ can use to get even with soci-
ety with a few well-directed swipes. They are far rather a fragile
social instrument, not only to promote the freedom of individual
human beings by liberating them from foreign domination and oppres-
sion, but also to promote equality between people in order to enhance
their solidarity. Human rights are a fragile entity because they func-
tion in the framework of a deliberative democracy and provide its
basis, while deliberative democracy itself is under constant fire from
the systems of the economy and state bureaucracy (chapter 2). So
fragile an entity is human rights that it requires ongoing, punctilious
nurture. That is why we often refer to the need for an adequate
human rights culture and why we conduct concrete empirical research
into our grade 11 students’ human rights attitudes as a necessary
condition for such a culture (chapter 3).
xviii introduction

In Part II the accent is on the antinomy between particularism and

universalism. Again, we do not dismiss the charge of Western impe-
rialism but examine it in the framework of the following question:
how can the universalistic claim inherent in human rights be har-
monised with the fact that different peoples in the their different
contexts have diverse needs and interests and want their (human)
rights developed in terms of these? Western countries have tended
to ignore this, as witness the hegemonic way in which they have
sought to impose their interpretation of human rights on non-Western
countries in the recent past, in the process hypocritically turning a
blind eye to certain dictatorships out of economic and/or political
self-interest. Such imperialistic behaviour by Western countries turns
human rights law into hegemonic law (hegemoniales Recht), and hence
into corrupt law (korruptes Recht); it also remains a particular form of
colonial law (Kolonialrecht), albeit using different means (Brunkhorst
2001, 614–626). But it is equally apparent that non-Western coun-
tries increasingly tend not to yield to Western pressure, and are
busily engaged, in a coalition context or otherwise, in following a
course of their own. Thus, following the Vienna Declaration on
Human Rights of 1993, an Asian critic of the West commented:
“For the first time since the Universal Declaration was adopted in
1948, countries not thoroughly steeped in the Judaeo-Christian and
natural law tradition are in the first rank” (quoted in Huntington
2002, 196–197).
Because the universalism proclaimed by the West often conceals
Western hegemony and this political hegemony often went (and prob-
ably still goes) hand in hand with religious hegemony, we devote
necessary attention to the problem of religious, and more specifically
Christian, hegemony. It is a complex issue with many exegetical
problems in regard to the biblical sources of the moral tradition on
which the human rights movement partly draws. The question is
whether or not the biblical sources contribute to religious imperial-
ism, or should we differentiate more subtly between biblical texts
(chapter 4)? But the problem also entails historical complexities, such
as the natural law tradition referred to in the quotation from the
Asian critic: we argue that the natural law tradition had (and still
has) an ambivalent effect when it comes to human rights (chapter 5).
In addition there are systematic issues, such as basing human rights
on the principle of human dignity and whether or not this princi-
ple is linked with the Judaeo-Christian theme of the creation of
 introduction xix

human beings in the image of God. Is this link rightly considered

a necessary basis of human rights, and if so, does that not make it
a sign of religious imperialism? To our mind this is one reason for
severing the link, at any rate in public debate where one is dealing
with a plurality of religions and world-views, but without detracting
one iota from its importance as an abiding feature of the Christian
religion (chapter 6).

This permits us in Part III to conduct our empirical research unshack-

led. It is not a question of what religion, in this case Christianity,
should contribute to a human rights culture and human rights atti-
tudes, but of what actual effect religious attitudes have on human
rights attitudes, on the premise that these effects could be positive,
negative or zero (chapter 7). Just as we classify attitudes towards
human rights into civil and political rights, socio-economic rights and
collective rights, so we make a distinction in the area of religious
beliefs on the basis of certain fundamental themes in the Christian
religion. These are taken from the fundamental symbolism that read-
ers encounter in every myth and story in the Bible, which has formed
the basis of the Christian religion through the ages, which perme-
ates it through and through, and which has acted as a formative
power in Christian civilisation, both in the West and, later, in sub-
Saharan Africa: the symbolism of creation, alienation and salvation.
We break down this symbolism into four themes: God, the alien-
ation of evil, Jesus, and salvation. Thus we deal with them in sequence.
First we study the effects of the students’ belief in God on their
human rights attitudes (chapter 8). Then we investigate the students’
attitudes towards the evil of violence and examine whether they func-
tion as a trigger for human rights (chapter 9). Next we deal with
the imitation of Jesus and research its consequences in the perspec-
tive of human rights (chapter 10). Lastly we turn to the theme of
salvation and study its relevance as a source of human rights (chap-
ter 11). To these we add two other themes: Christian communities
and interreligious interaction. We want to know to what extent
Christian communities, comprising both transformation-oriented and
conservative Christians, have a positive, negative or zero effect in
the field of human rights, for Christian communities could be influential
when it comes to the values and norms underlying human rights
(chapter 12). Because of the hegemonic impact that Christianity had
and may still have, we include the theme of interreligious interaction
xx introduction

in our empirical study: does Christianity still adopt an imperialistic

stance, that is, do our students adopt an imperialistic stance vis-à-vis
other religions, or are they open to taking an impartial perspective
and engaging in dialogue? That is why we include the theme of
interreligious interaction as a contribution to human rights (chapter
13). The book concludes with a chapter based on its title, Is there a
God of human rights? The conclusion elaborates on this title by asking
the more specific question: which God, of which religious attitudes and
whose human rights? This question allows adequate scope for a differen-
tiated answer (chapter 14).

Goals of this study

The goals of this study can readily be inferred from the foregoing.
They can be categorised as direct and ultimate goals. The direct
goal has to do with the scientific relevance of the study, the ulti-
mate goals with its social and ecclesiastic relevance.

Direct goal
I. To acquire scientific knowledge about the effects of religious atti-
tudes on human rights attitudes;

Ultimate goals
II. To contribute to a human rights culture in society at large within
a deliberative democracy;
III. To contribute to a human rights culture in religious communi-
ties, with a view to the diaconal service they have to render in soci-
ety at large;
IV. To contribute to a human rights culture in religious communities
with a view to promoting human rights within these communities.

The Authors
The first author, Johannes A. van der Ven, wrote the text of part
one, part two and part three. Part three is based on empirical research
by the three authors, and is a substantial reworking of earlier arti-
cles by the authors. Together the three authors critically discussed
the text of the whole book.
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