This paper wants to suggest that we must not ask the question about religion and human rights in terms of “foundations”. Following Hans Joas’ notion of human rights as a specific form of sacralisation of the person, I would like to argue that we must not ask whether specific religious or intellectual traditions can or cannot “bring forth” a viable idea of human rights, but we should instead ask how such traditions relate to human rights as concept and as legal standard manifest in a precise period of global history (chiefly: from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the most recent legislation of the European Court of Human Rights). Looking at the document “The Russian Orthodox Church’s Teaching on Human Dignity, Liberty and Rights” (2008) I will exemplify how a religious tradition makes use of/appropriates the concept of human rights beyond the liberal conception of the rights of the autonomous individual. I then go on to ask the question how such a religious position can be brought to interact with secular and other religious viewpoints in democratic deliberation, pointing out as a concrete example the “traditional values”-debate moved forward by the Russian Orthodox Church at the level of the United Nations. My research on the “traditional values”-debate makes me sceptical about the idea of cosmopolitan thinking on a religious basis.
