Christianity and Human Rights Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Christianity and Human Rights - Essay Example The Christian faith has been very instrumental in ensuring that the universal human rights are respected and that everybody is born with a certain inalienable rights that cannot be taken away from them. This means that everybody is equal irregardless of their races, color, sex and religion. Although Christianity has been cited by some people as being oppressive in various instances in the history, the role it has played in promoting human rights can be overly underestimated and this is because the religion from its inception have considered everybody as being created by one Supreme Being, God and that everybody is equal before the eyes of the lord (Tierney, 1997). However, the religion has also been culprit of gross human rights violation in various instances in history and especially the Pre-Christian period whereby some people were considered to have more rights than others. However, even at this time the religion still advocated for human rights in various aspects. The most import part to note is that the foundation that was laid by the religion have been very instrumental in today’s humanism and this can be evidenced by the fact that today’s secular humanism have adopted some of its aspects from Christianity (Jack, 2008). History Christianity has been very instrumental in furthering the ideology of universality and this means that since the Pre-Christian era to the modern time Christianity, the Christians have been very vocal in issues surrounding the human rights. In this respect, the Christians have also been involved in various issues that are concerned with human rights and this can be evidenced by various sentiments that have been aired by the Christians in various periods in the history. During the Pre-Christianity period the Jew advocated for the equality of all men (Richard Tuck, 1973). However, their views towards women were deeply discriminating and this can be attributed to the fact that their laws grossly violated the rights of the women. This can be evidenced by the various laws that were put in place whereby the women were not recognized as independent entities and they could not be allowed to attend some ceremonies and also perform some religious activities. All the leaders at that time were men and only few women assumed leadership roles. However, during that period, all people were considered to be created by God and with that came various inalienable rights which could not be violated by other people. In this period all people were considered equal before the eyes of God (Thomas, 2005). In the Christian period, all men were considered equal before the eyes of God and they were all considered to be the children of the almighty. During this period the rights of the women were also highly lobbied for and this was mainly through the teachings of Jesus Christ who asserted that all people were equal before the eyes of God irregardless of their sex, color or race. At this time, through the teachings of Jesus Christ even the slaves were deemed to have some rights and this meant that there was the promotion of the universality ideology. These sentiments however, were not felt by various races especially the Romans who deemed other races as inferior. This can be evidenced by the fact that the Romans being the ruling class enacted laws that were discriminative of other races especially the taxes. Still in this period there was gross abuse of human rights because there were people who were deemed as slaves and they were treated as inferiors (Elizabeth, 2005). In the Secular period, the human rights of all individuals have greatly been lobbied for by various organizations and this has played a very important role in ensuring that there is a gross protection of human rights. The secular world have deemed that every human being was born with a certain inalienable rights and these can be observed by the fact that such things as slavery were abolished and women have been afforded equality in various fronts as politics and