Niels’s Reviews > Introducing Christian Ethics > Status Update

"In the modern era, by which we mean the era bequeathed by the Enlightenment, it was no longer possible for Europeans to imagine the world as a seamless Christian whole, in the way that had been more common in the medieval period. Not only was there a split between Catholics and Protestants, there were increasingly vocal elements who rejected a theological frame of reference as a ground for ethics in at least the public sphere, and sometimes in the personal sphere too. Meanwhile, as we saw in Chapter Two and Chapter Four, huge economic, social and political changes were taking place across Europe, to which churches, theologians, and philosophers were seeking to adapt." (p. 145)

"Not everyone has proven to be a supporter of human rights. It is common in Islam to regard human rights as a secularized form of Judeo-Christian ethics, and thus to resist the universal claims generally associated with the tradition. Major figures in the utilitarian and virtue strands of ethics, such as Jeremy Bentham and Alasdair MacIntyre, respectively, have criticized the human rights tradition as based on a fiction that has no objective reality." (p. 152)