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Kahn, Paul W. --- "A Civil Religion of Human Rights?" [2012] ELECD 286; in Porsdam, Helle (ed), "Civil Religion, Human Rights and International Relations" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Civil Religion, Human Rights and International Relations

Editor(s): Porsdam, Helle

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781000519

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: A Civil Religion of Human Rights?

Author(s): Kahn, Paul W.

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

3. A civil religion of human rights?
Paul W. Kahn

Can we have a civil religion of human rights? In an interesting chapter in
this volume, Helle Porsdam notes that the American civil religion is
founded in a `reverence for law' ­ Lincoln's term. She suggests that Europe
too may now be moving toward a civil religion of human rights law. She
connects this newly emerging civil faith to Robert Bellah's speculations,
some 40 years ago, concerning the possibility of a global civil religion that
would transcend yet incorporate the American practice.1 In good Hegelian
fashion, Bellah saw this as a third moment of the development of an
American civil religion: the first moment was the Hebraic giving of the law
following the Revolution; the second was that of Christian sacrifice in the
Civil War. In the third moment, the American civil religion is to resolve its
tension between the universal and the particular by becoming global.
Bellah was not just describing the American civil religion, he was
pursuing the terms of that faith. One of its tenets has always been that
America has a mission to the world. It is to be the city on the hill that will
lead by virtue of its example. This is the old Puritanical faith in the
community of saints, coupled to the messianic conviction that America has
hold of a universal truth. This is the `good news' of our civil religion. This
should immediately make one wary of any proposals ...