Religion, Human Rights and Post-Secular Legal Theory

Abstract:     
This paper proposes that the fundamental challenge for religious legal theory is the question of the secular and, in particular, a certain mode of secular reason that has shaped the idea of law within modernity. The fundamental ambition of modern legal thought was to sever law from a connection to a sacred cosmic and intellectual order. The idea of human rights, at least in its regnant expression, embodies this project most fully in that it has increasingly been defined as a moral tradition that stands over and against religion. This paper, by contrast, argues that the destabilization of secular meaning creates the space, and indeed the necessity, for a pluralist theological turn within the idea of human rights.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 27

Keywords: Human Rights, Secular, Secularism, Post-Secular, Religion, Pluralism, Theology, Religious Legal Theory

Accepted Paper Series