Human Rights, Jesus Style

The UK general election surprised many pundits as we ended up with a majority government, many say that it does not matter who gets in really, but does it? Shortly after the election I was sitting in my study reading an Oxford undergrads paper on human rights, and I must say she has done a very good job of it. Next read some case law involving the Human Rights Act, not quite so gripping as the former reading material. Some of you very sensibly are asking; why, what is wrong with this man, has he nothing better to do with his time? Well no actually this is what I do, so get used to it.

            Many of my friends know that I that I am a keen student of law, more sad facts, and also a disability advisor and campaigner. So human rights sit at the very heart of everything I am and do. As a Christian I know all people are equal and have the same rights as each other regardless of where we are born, our skin colour and the many differences God has gifted us with. Of course this also includes our religion and indeed denomination within that religion. Yet we still seemingly have to create laws to establish that very basic fact of equality. Abraham Lincoln in the 1860’s when dealing with a war, and ensuring that at the end of the war slavery would be no more, had to turn to law. At Gettysburg after such terrible loss of life he said of the United States “… a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. We must note that women’s full equality in law had yet to come. But Lincoln was a true politician, perhaps even one of the first of his kind. He understood before so many the importance of the role of politics in the everyday life of citizens; and he knew that the outworking of politics was by law, and in law; and that it was in law that all people could achieve true equality.

            How does this fit with the UK’s recent general election? Well the current Government promised before gaining power that if it was returned it would sweep away the Human Rights Act and replace it with something different. Many of us who are either academic lawyers or practice law worry about this. Even though it was not mooted in the Queens speech the threat is still there, so fortunately for the present nothing is happening, however we watch with concern. Particularly those of us who are also ‘disabled’ for we have lost much over the past five years, to lose some legal protections is something very much to worry about.

           

Jesus saw through all of this, He recognised the importance of equality, that imbalance could