Overview

The relation between religion and human rights is a contested one, as they appear to compete with one another. Religion is often considered to represent a tradition of heteronomy and subordination in premodern times. Human rights emerged from early modern and modern times and stand for principles like human dignity, autonomy, equality. The first question in this book is how to define religion, its meaning, functions and structures, and how to study it. The second question is how to understand religion from its relation with human rights in such a way that justice is done to both religion and human rights. These questions are dealt with using a historical and systematic approach. The third question is what the impact of religion might be on attitudes towards human rights, i.e. human rights culture. For an answer, empirical research is reported among about 1000 students, Christians, Muslims, and nonreligious, at the end of secondary and the beginning of tertiary education in the Netherlands.

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Reviews

This intensely creative and learned book will be of great interest to scholars of human rights and of secular and religious ethics. -James V. Spickard, University of Redlands

""This intensely creative and learned book will be of great interest to scholars of human rights and of secular and religious ethics."" -James V. Spickard, University of Redlands

Author Information

Johannes A. van der Ven, PhD Radboud University Nijmegen (NL), Doctor honoris causa University of Lund (sweden), occupies the chair of comparative empirical science of religion, especially in relation to religion and human rights, at Radboud University Nijmegen. He is chair of the International Empirical Research Program ‘Religion and Human Rights’. He wrote 15 books in Dutch, German, and English, among which Entwurf einer empirischen Theologie (1990) [Practical Theology: An Empirical Approach (1993)], Suffering: Why for God's Sake?(together with H. Vossen) (1995), Ecclesiology in Context (1996), Formation of the Moral Self (1998), God Reinvented? (1998). Education for Reflective Ministry (1998), Is There a God of Human Rights (together with J.S. Dreyer and H.J.C. Pieterse) (2004). He edited 18 books, and published about 400 refereed articles in ten languages.

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