As I draw this series of articles on human rights toward my conclusion I want to ask a practical question: What are our essential duties and priorities if we are to define and defend human rights from a Christian perspective? How then should we live out a deep concern for human rights in a way that will actually influence what we say and do?

Human rights discussion has become almost ubiquitous in modern Western culture. Popular references are made to one’s “rights” routinely. But this does not mean most people understand human rights at all, either what the term means or why it is so important. Rarely can a person who defends these two words even begin to explain them. But it seems to be increasingly imperative that Christians become conversant about this discussion. We ought to be able to explain why we embrace human rights and then become some of the leading advocates of human rights in our time. Father Richard McCormick, S.J., is right when he concludes, “Unless the church at all levels is an outstanding promoter of the rights of human beings in word and deed, her proclamation will be literally falsified.” This statement lies behind the reason I am writing this summer series of ACT 3 Weekly articles.

The modern cultivation of human rights began in the 1940’s when Christianity and the Enlightenment seemed incapable of delivering on the promises made by their best proponents. Both talked about protecting liberty and freedom but neither had fully delivered, in a modern way, the fruit of their talk. John Witte, Jr. writes of this period of history by saying:

Last week I concluded by addressing what the New Testament does, and doesn’t say, about civil government. I then referred to our time as a modern diaspora. The term diaspora (Greek) literally means “a scattering of seeds.” It is a people movement in which persons of a common national and/or ethnic identity are relocated. I am not using the term in this normal sense but rather to describe the role that Christians should have as a scattered people in a post-Christendom culture. The term diaspora refers to a displaced people, a people who live outside of their historic location or home. There is a growing sense in which this is true of Christians in the West.