Toward the “Rights of the Poor”

NOTE: Full article available upon request to Mark Engler.

ABSTRACT:

In this article, the author traces the response of liberation theologians to human rights initiatives through three distinct stages over the past thirty years: from an initial avoidance of the concept, to an early critique, and then to a nuanced theological appropriation. He contends that liberation theology brings a thoroughgoing concern for the poor and an innovative methodology of “historicization” to the discussion of human rights. In clarifying the treatment of human rights within a specific religious movement, the author also addresses larger questions about the specific role of human rights language. To this end, the article shows how liberation theologians have grappled concretely with the divisions among different “generations” of rights, various rights discourses, and diverse options for rights advocacy.

KEY WORDS: historicization, human rights, liberation theology, rights discourse, rights of the poor

Contents

1. The Early Avoidance of Rights Discourse

2. Emerging Criticism: Human Rights and the Logic of Imperialism

—2.1 Criticism of the United States

—2.2 Criticism of the notion of universal human rights

—2.3 Four dangers

3. The Shift to Appropriation

4. Appraising the Rights of the Poor

—4.1 Partiality for the poor

—4.2 The four dangers reconsidered

5. Historicizing Ethical Analysis

REFERENCES

NOTE: Full article available upon request to Mark Engler.