A Dickensian era of religious rights: an update on religious human rights in global perspective.

• Author: Witte, John R.

1. DICKENSIAN PARADOXES

   I was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair....(1) Charles Dickens penned these famous words to describe the paradoxes of the late eighteenth-century French Revolution fought for the sake of "the rights of man and citizen."(2) These same words aptly describe the paradoxes of the late twentieth-century world revolution fought in the name of human rights and democratization for all.

   The world has entered something of a "Dickensian era"(3) in the past two decades. We have seen the best of human rights protections inscribed on the books, but some of the worst of human rights violations inflicted on the ground. We have celebrated the creation of more than thirty new constitutional democracies since 1980, but lamented the eruption of more than thirty new civil wars. We have witnessed the wisest of democratic statecraft and the most foolish of autocratic belligerence. For every South African "spring of hope," there has been a Yugoslavian "winter of despair."

   These Dickensian paradoxes of the modern human rights revolution are particularly striking when viewed in their religious dimensions. On the one hand, the modern human rights revolution has helped to catalyze a great awakening of religion around the globe. In regions newly committed to democracy and human rights, ancient faiths once driven underground by autocratic oppressors have sprung forth with new vigor. In the former Soviet bloc, for example, numerous faiths such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam have been awakened alongside a host of exotic goddess, naturalist, and personality cults.(4) In postcolonial and postrevolutionary Africa, these same mainline religious groups have come to flourish in numerous conventional and inculturated forms alongside a bewildering array of traditional groups.(5) In Latin America, the human rights revolution has not only transformed longstanding Catholic and mainline Protestant communities, but also triggered the explosion of numerous new Evangelical, Pentecostal, and traditional movements.(6) Many parts of the world have seen the prodigious rise of a host of new or newly minted faiths, including Adventists, Bahi'as, Hare Krishnas, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Scientologists, and Unification Church members, among others--some wielding ample material, political, and media power. Religion today has become, in Susanne Rudolph's apt phrase, the latest "transnational variable."(7)

   One cause and consequence of this great awakening of religion around the globe is that the ambit of religious rights has been substantially expanded. In the past two decades, more than 150 major new statutes and constitutional provisions on religious rights have been promulgated--many replete with generous protections for liberty of conscience and freedom of religious exercise, guarantees of religious pluralism, equality, and nondiscrimination, and several other special protections and entitlements for religious individuals and religious groups.(8) These national guarantees have been matched with a growing body of regional and international norms, notably the 1981 UN Declaration on Religious Intolerance and Discrimination Based Upon Religion and Belief and the long catalogue of religious-group rights set out in the 1989 Vienna Concluding Document and its progeny.(9)

   On the other hand, this very same world human rights revolution has helped to catalyze new forms of religious and ethnic conflict, oppression, and belligerence that have reached tragic proportions. In some communities, such as the former Yugoslavia, local religious and ethnic rivals, previously kept at bay by a common oppressor, have converted their new liberties into licenses to renew ancient hostilities, with catastrophic results.(10) In other communities, such as Sudan and Rwanda, ethnic nationalism and religious extremism have conspired to bring violent dislocation or death to hundreds of rival religious believers each year, and persecution, false imprisonment, forced starvation, and savage abuses to thousands of others.(11) In other communities, most notably in North America and Western Europe, political secularism and nationalism have combined to threaten a sort of civil denial and death to a number of believers, particularly "sects" and "cults" of high religious temperature or of low cultural conformity.(12) In still other communities, from Asia to the Middle East, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, when in minority contexts, have faced sharply increased restrictions, repression, and, sometimes, martyrdom.(13)

   In parts of Russia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America, this human rights revolution has brought on something of a new war for souls between indigenous and foreign religious groups. This is the most recent, and the most ironic, chapter in the modern Dickensian drama. With the political transformations of these regions in the past two decades, foreign religious groups were granted rights to enter these regions for the first time in decades. In the early 1990s, they came in increasing numbers to preach their faiths, to offer their services, and to convert new souls. Initially, local religious groups--Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Sunni, Shi'ite, and traditional alike--welcomed these foreigners, particularly their foreign co-religionists with whom they had lost contact for many decades. Today, local religious groups have come to resent these foreign religions, particularly those from North America and Western Europe that assume a democratic human rights ethic. Local religious groups resent the participation in the marketplace of religious ideas that democracy assumes. They resent the toxic waves of materialism and individualism that democracy inflicts. They resent the massive expansion of religious pluralism that democracy encourages. They resent the extravagant forms of religious speech, press, and assembly that democracy protects.(14)

   A new war for souls has thus broken out in these regions, a war to reclaim the traditional cultural and moral souls of these new societies, and a war to retain adherence and adherents to the indigenous faiths.(15) In part, this is a theological war: rival religious communities have begun to demonize and defame each other and to gather themselves into ever more dogmatic and fundamentalist stands. The ecumenical spirit of the previous decades is giving way to sharp new forms of religious balkanization. In part, this is a legal war: local religious groups have begun to conspire with their political leaders to adopt statutes and regulations restricting the constitutional rights of their foreign religious rivals.(16) Beneath shiny constitutional veneers of religious freedom for all and unqualified ratification of international human rights instruments, several countries of late passed firm new antiproselytism laws, cult registration requirements, tightened visa controls, and adopted various other discriminatory restrictions on new or newly arrived religions.(17)

   Such Dickensian paradoxes have exposed the limitations of a secular human rights paradigm standing alone. They also have inspired the earnest search for additional resources to deter violence, resolve disputes, cultivate peace, and ensure security through dialogue, liturgical healing, reconciliation ceremonies, truth commissions and other means.(18) Human rights principles are as much the problem as they are the solution in a number of current religious and cultural conflicts. In the war for souls in Russia, for example, two absolute principles of human rights have come into direct conflict: The foreign religion's free exercise right to share and expand its faith versus the indigenous religion's liberty-of-conscience right to be left alone in its own territory.(19) Or, put in Christian theological terms, it is one group's right to abide by the Great Commission ("Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations"), versus another group's right to insist on the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have done unto you.").(20) Further rights talk alone cannot resolve this dispute. Likewise, some of the nations given to the most belligerent forms of religious nationalism have ratified more of the international human rights instruments than the United States has and have crafted more elaborate bills of rights than what appears in the United States Constitution.(21) Here, also, further rights-talk alone is insufficient.

   These paradoxes of the modern human rights revolution underscore an elementary but essential point that human rights norms need a human rights culture to be effective. "[D]eclarations are not deeds," John Noonan reminds us: "a form of words by itself secures nothing ... words pregnant with meaning in one cultural context may be entirely barren in another."(22) Human rights norms have little salience in societies that lack constitutional processes that will give them meaning and measure. They have little value for parties who lack basic rights to security, succor, and sanctuary, or who are deprived of basic freedoms of speech, press, or association. They have little pertinence for victims who lack standing in courts and other basic procedural rights to pursue apt remedies. They have little cogency in communities that lack the ethos and ethic to render human rights violations a source of shame and regret, restraint and respect, confession and responsibility, reconciliation and restitution. As we have moved from the first generation of human rights declaration following World War II to the current generation of human rights implementation, this need for a human rights culture has become all the more pressing.

   These paradoxes, when viewed in their religious dimensions, further suggest...