Despite mountains of paper, oceans of ink, and general support for civil rights, civil rights legislation remains controversial. This article summarizes the key parts of the current US civil rights legislation, including the Constitutional basis and disparate impact. It touches on the relationship between morality, religion, and rights. Finally, the article addresses some key ideas in the Bible about civil rights and their source.

By Mark D. Harris

What are civil rights?

A common definition is “Civil rights refer to the fundamental rights and freedoms granted to individuals by a government and are protected by law.”[1] This definition invites several questions.

1. What are rights? Things that people are allowed to do? Things that people are allowed to abstain from doing? How do rights interact between individuals and groups?
2. What rights are fundamental? The US Declaration of Independence includes the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Are there others? The US Supreme Court and International Courts have interpreted fundamental rights broadly. For example, the term civil rights now includes a right to privacy, which was never mentioned in any of the founding documents but came from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1976).
3. What are freedoms? The ability to do whatever you want? The ability to do whatever God created you to do? Who decides, the individual, the society, or someone or something else?
4. Who “grants” civil rights? God? The king? In a government of, by, and for the people, wouldn’t the people be “granting” such rights to themselves?
5. What is “government?” Definitionally, it is “the action or manner of controlling or regulating a nation, organization, or people.” What are the jurisdictional limitations? Does the US government “grant” civil rights to residents of Mauritania? Is the United Nations a government, and does it grant civil rights?
6. Who are individuals? Citizens? Visitors? Men? Women? Members of a certain race or socioeconomic class? No civilization in history has granted equal rights to every member of society. No society in history has ever held that every person should have exactly equal civil rights (criminals and the physically incompetent often have their rights limited by governments). Ancient civilizations from Rome to Xian to Tenochtitlan have held the emperor to be divine, thereby exercising rights far beyond anyone else. In Hammurabi’s Babylon, the Amelia (elites) had far greater protections than the Mushkenum (freemen) and the Ardu (slaves).
7. Which law protects civil rights? English common law? Muslim Sharia law? Christian canon law? Hindu Manu Smriti? Buddhist Sangha regulations? Something else?
8. Should certain groups be protected? If so, which ones? How do you define these groups? Under Sharia, Christians and Jews are dhimmi, not enjoying the same rights and liberties as Muslims. Under the Hindu caste law, each caste has more rights than those below.
9. What is the relationship between civil rights law and other categories of law, such as civil liberties law? Does a statute or regulation requiring people to use preferred pronouns in addressing a transgender individual violate the US Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech?

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