New Bill of Rights must be ‘based on Christianity’

Mar 17, 2016 by

from Grassroots Conservatives:

The proposal for a new British Bill of Rights is so fundamental that it should not be rushed. MPs, Lords and media attended a House of Commons Committee Room on March 9th for the launch of a unique contribution to this debate – Religious Approaches to Human Rights, by Dr Martin Davie, commissioned by the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life with Grassroots Conservatives. This report examines the views on human rights of  six major religions. Thirty four Parliamentarians accepted Fiona Bruce MP’s invitation, but the vote on Sunday Trading during the meeting necessarily kept some away.

International agreements on Human Rights provided accountability for how states treated their own citizens which had not existed before 1948 by agreeing a set of negative rights ( not to be tortured or illegally imprisoned).  Dr Vinay Samuel, the director of OCRPL, noted that what had started as introducing a moral basis above politics for the powerless had now so expanded its range into positive entitlements which defined human flourishing that it had now turned into a political programme of the powerful.  In so doing human rights now come into conflict with freedom of religion and undermine the very rights they claim to support.

Stephen Timms MP argued further that while the source of British Values was religion and in particular the Christian faith, religious faith was now subject to British values which owed their origin to the same faith.

A sharply focused debate emerged between Keith Porteous-Wood, the director of the National Secular Society and Dr Martin Davie on the relative merits of secularism and Christian faith in providing a framework for human rights.

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