'Introduction,' to John Witte, Jr. and Johan D. van der Vyver, eds., Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives

At the close of the second millennium, the world is torn by crisis and tumult — by a moral Armageddon, if not a military one. With the memories of world wars, gulags, and the Holocaust still fresh in our minds, we see the bloody slaughter of Rwanda and the Sudan, the tragic genocide of the Balkans, the massive unrest of the Middle East, Western Africa, Latin America, and the former Soviet bloc. On every continent, we see clashes between movements of incremental political unification and radical balkanization, gentle religious ecumenism and radical fundamentalism, sensitive cultural integration and rabid diversification, sensible moral pluralization and shocking moral relativism. Even in the ostensibly peaceful societies of the West, bitter culture wars have aligned defenders of various old orders against an array of social, legal, and cultural deconstructionists. "Cultural conflicts are increasing and are more dangerous today than at any other time in history," Czech President Vaclav Havel declared in 1994. "The end of the era of rationalism has been catastrophic, [for now] the members of various tribal cults are at war with one another. . . . The abyss between the rational and the internal, the objective and the subjective, the technical and the moral, the universal and the unique constantly grows deeper." Religious beliefs and believers have suffered miserably in these "culture wars."1995, the United Nations Year of Tolerance, is becoming just another dark year in a dark decade of religious intolerance. Religious nationalism and fundamentalism have conspired to bring violent death and dislocation to hundreds of religious believers around the world each year. Political secularism and cynicism have combined to bring civil denial and deprivation to religious believers of all faiths. Temples and mosques are denied entrance to neighborhoods. Churches and charities are denied autonomy of governance. Clerics and charities are denied licenses to minister. Pilgrims and missionaries are denied visas and charters. Natives and refugees are denied totems and homelands. Parents and children are denied liberties of education. Employers and employees are denied opportunities to exercise their faiths. To be sure, the collapse of many authoritarian regimes in the past decade has begun to open new venues and avenues for religion to flourish. International and local laws have begun to embrace more generous religious rights provisions. Religious communities have begun to apply their theological learning and moral suasion to the cause of religious rights. But today, by common estimates, more than two billion people still enjoy only partial freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. It is time for us to take religious rights seriously — to shake off our political indifference and parochial self-interest and to address the plight and protection of people of all faiths. It is time to "exorcise the demons of religious intolerance"that have beset both religious and non-religious peoples around the world and to exercise the "golden rules" of religious rights — doing unto other religious believers and beliefs what we would have done to us and ours.