Melanie Phillips on How, Counterintuitively, It's the Secular Religion of "Human Rights"--and Not Judeo-Christian Morality--That's Oppressive

The invaluable Ms. P. writes:

The idea that ‘oppressive’ Christian morality and ethics have been replaced – hurrah! – by a nirvana of freedom and tolerance is very wide of the mark. Traditional moral codes have merely been replaced by the modern religion of human rights, of which the English judiciary is its high priesthood.

For far from secularism being value-neutral, it promotes hyper-individualism. And far from expanding freedom, this diminishes it. For it sets up a perpetual fight for supremacy between interest groups, arbitrated in the courts by judges promoting secularism. 

This actively and aggressively destroys the common bonds of history, tradition and morality that keep a society together. And it means that the weakest groups, of whom Christians are paramount, often find that their rights to uphold their own religious traditions are trampled down. For as a former Lord Chief Justice once remarked, human rights law inescapably favour minorities over the majority, which is seen (wrongly) as innately oppressive. Thus blind justice is replaced by a culture of human wrongs. 

The reality – counter-intuitive as it may seem to some – is that individual liberty is only upheld and safeguarded by legal, social and cultural traditions embedded in the ethics of the Bible. Indeed, western liberty is unique in the world precisely because of those biblical roots.