Introduction: Special Forum on Christianity and Human Rights

Greenberg and Steinmetz-Jenkins cite that the intellectual roots of human rights have been a source of much debate, but Christianity's role in shaping the language of universal equality has been especially controversial. Historians agree that prominent Catholic philosophers, such as Jacques Maritain, were crucial in crafting and popularizing theories of rights, and that Protestant activists, such as American Protestant Frederick Nolde, were instrumental in drafting the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet the lessons that scholars draw from this genealogy are diverse. Exploring the ways in which Christian thinkers grappled with rights helps chart the dramatic shifts that characterized Christianity in the modern era. While the nature and meaning of Christianity had never been stable and was always contested, the centuries that followed the French Revolution brought a new kind of turmoil. Protestants and Catholics confronted a proliferation of ideological projects rooted in nonreligious and even atheist assumptions, such as utilitarian morality, racial science, and socialist revolution.