Reimagining the human : the role of the churches in building a liberatory human rights culture in South Africa today.
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Abstract
The relationship between religion and human rights is receiving renewed attention by many
scholars today who emphasise the need for practical collaboration around building a human
rights culture. This shapes my research question as to how churches in South Africa can play
a more active role as authentic allies in building a liberating human rights culture today. I call
them beyond offering social capital to find liberating spiritual capital to build internal
religious legitimacy for human rights that places the currently rightless and a right relation to
one another as vulnerable human beings at the heart of this culture. This thesis offers an
interdisciplinary lens for this task in current day South Africa where the gap between legal
visions and social realities remains significant. It brings together human rights scholarship
with theological reflection and historical contextualisation in a post-foundational approach.
My thesis is shaped by the methodology of Abdullahi An-Na’im to convene a constructive
conversation on South African soil for improved human rights realisation in the lives of the
most vulnerable. This requires critical attention to both the abuse of dominating power at the
heart of human rights and the paradox of the power of human rights themselves. I translate
this concern into a theological key through the work of Jürgen Moltmann to suggest that his
Trinitarian praxis for human rights and imaginative search for a liberating anthropology offer
a counter to the power-laden images of God that can legitimate abuse. It reconnects human
rights into radical relational responsibility to offer a liberating Christian hermeneutic for
human rights and shows its creative appropriation by South African theologians. It concludes
that the hermeneutical retrieval of prophetic voices of dissent is needed to nurture theologies
for human rights that can be embodied and enacted by local churches as a core part of their
identity. This can play an irreplaceable role in nurturing a human rights culture here located
in Christological solidarity with those who suffer and allied in Spirit with many who hope.
Description
Ph. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2016.
Keywords
Human rights -- South Africa -- Religious aspects., Christianity and culture -- South Africa., Theses -- Theology.