The official reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on December 7, over five-and-a-half years after the devastating Easter 2019 fire that came close to consuming the beloved and universally recognized cultural landmark, was a lavish and glittering but also a profoundly moving affair. After Archbishop Laurent Ulrich ritualistically struck the cathedral’s doors three times, the building became once again officially a house of worship. Its famous bells rang out, its organ’s great pipes sang, and the results of its over $1 billion restoration went on live display for the world. Leaders and dignitaries from 100+ countries, scores of French clergy members and President Emmanuel Macron packed the gloriously restored interior of soaring cream-coloured stone columns, gleaming pipe organ, ornately carved woodwork and sparkling stained-glass windows, with Ulrich performing the first formal rituals.
Notre-Dame’s revival marks not only the restoration of a 12th-13th century architectural masterpiece but the enduring legacy of Christianity in shaping Western civilization. Its monumental Gothic towers, intricate stonework, famous flying buttresses – key to sustaining the interior’s breathtaking 141-foot height – and mesmerizing stained-glass windows reflect humanity’s ongoing quest for the divine and the cultural roots that sustain us. After the horrific fire, initial (and ominous) calls to add novel postmodern design elements were ditched in favour of historical and cultural exactitude. Authentic stone was sourced from quarries throughout France. Over 1,000 oak trees were felled to rebuild the cathedral’s singular spire, annihilated in the fire, and the lumber was milled, shaped and fitted using the tools and techniques of the building’s original construction. More than 1,200 people worked on the restoration, which was overseen by a French army general.
The great cathedral’s rebirth, therefore, transcends mere physical reconstruction; it represents a profound act of reclaiming a vital symbol of Christian heritage – not only France’s Christian heritage, but all of Western civilization’s and indeed of Christians the world over. Christian ideas and principles have decisively shaped modern society’s understanding of human dignity, equality and the intrinsic worth of every individual. They set the foundation for the development and universalization of human rights – which became among the core values underpinning modern democracies.
The restoration of Notre-Dame to all its Medieval glory is also a triumph in an era when architecture prioritizes abstract (and often politicized or ideological) concepts over classic design and traditional messages. It thereby powerfully reaffirms the animating spiritual and cultural values of European civilization since the end of the Dark Ages. Rooted in Christian thought and tradition, these values created the moral, intellectual and legal frameworks for societies across Europe – and eventually beyond. As descendants of these societies and beneficiaries of this rich inheritance, nations like Canada remain influenced by their deeply embedded principles of dignity, justice and community. The revival of Notre-Dame accordingly invites us to reflect on these enduring ideals and the transformative principles that still play a decisive role in our contemporary world.
This might seem like an implausible reach to contemporary audiences, especially younger readers. The word “Christianity” is as likely to evoke contempt from elites of all stripes – sometimes thinly veiled, more often sneering – as it is sympathy, let alone admiration and respect. The faith has been largely driven from the public square. Over 100 church burnings across Canada have gone barely investigated and almost entirely unpunished. Church worship was ruthlessly suppressed during Covid-19 – to widespread public approval. Christian organizations and adherents endure almost unending accusations that their conduct fails to measure up to their ideals – whether that be sexual misconduct by clergy, abuses in Indian Residential Schools or complicity in colonialism. The current Roman Catholic Pope falls all over himself apologizing for traditional Christianity.
Not surprisingly, many Western countries – Canada as much as any – have come to act as if society can dispense with Christianity. But it can’t. The aforementioned transformative principles may lie deeply buried. They may have been, in effect, “rebranded” by state institutions eager to claim credit for and ownership over them. But they are there nonetheless.
Deeply rooted in the doctrine of imago Dei, Gratian’s bold vision also advanced a related Medieval doctrine, that of natural law. Natural law asserts that individual rights are not bestowed by human authority but are inherent, deriving directly from eternal, God-given principles.
At the heart of it all lies the Christian doctrine of imago Dei – the belief that all human beings are created in the image of God. This principle thereby asserts the inherent worth of every individual, regardless of social status, race, ethnicity, religion or gender, laying the foundation for human rights and their eventual universalization. St. Paul’s declaration in Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” – proclaimed a radical equality that challenged the entrenched social hierarchies of the ancient world. It was a genuinely revolutionary assertion that provided the moral impetus for the concepts of human dignity and individual rights, eventually to be enshrined in Western legal and political thought.
Essential in this process was Gratian, a 12th-century jurist and monk from Tuscany who became renowned for his monumental work, the Decretum Gratiani. It harmonized centuries of often-conflicting ecclesiastical rules and theological principles into a coherent legal framework, becoming the cornerstone of canon law and a central reference for the Catholic Church. Gratian emphasized that every individual – king or commoner, noble or peasant, man, woman or child – possessed intrinsic dignity, moral worth and equality before God, and that human laws must align with divine justice.
“One in Christ Jesus”: The Christian doctrine of imago Dei – the belief that all human beings are created in the image of God – asserts the inherent worth of all individuals, and was first declared by St. Paul. Shown at top, The Creation of Man, by Michelangelo; at bottom left, Christ between the Apostles John and Paul, by John LaFarge, Boston College, McMullen Museum of Art; at bottom right, Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, by Nicolas Tournier, Blaffer Foundation Collection, Houston, Texas. (Sources of images: (top) Pierre Metivier, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0; (bottom left) John LaFarge, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
“With God, there is no acceptance of persons. For all souls are equal, and all are created in the image of God,” Gratian wrote, challenging the rigid hierarchies of the feudal era, where worth was tied to status, wealth and lineage in a doctrine known as the Great Chain of Being. “The law is not established for the privilege of the powerful, but for the defence of the weak,” Gratian further declared, placing the protection of the vulnerable at the heart of legal and moral systems.
Deeply rooted in the doctrine of imago Dei, Gratian’s bold vision also advanced a related Medieval doctrine, that of natural law. Natural law asserts that individual rights are not bestowed by human authority but are inherent, deriving directly from eternal, God-given principles, i.e., divine law. These laws, governing the universe and accessible through human reason, established the idea that rights are immutable and transcend temporal or state-imposed power and societal hierarchies.
By providing an authoritative moral basis for holding earthly rulers accountable to a higher, divine authority, natural law directly challenged the growing absolutism of feudal hierarchies. In doing so, it blazed the trail towards constitutionalism and the genuine rule of law. Canon law further developed the doctrine of rights by introducing practical protections for the marginalized, such as the right to seek sanctuary in churches and safeguarding widows, orphans and the indigent. These legal innovations represented a slow but tectonic shift towards a more inclusive understanding of justice, one in which even the most vulnerable members of society were granted at least a modicum of protection against oppression and exploitation.
Through the further development of canon law over the long centuries of the Medieval Period, the Catholic Church codified these transformative ideas, shaping Medieval legal thought and creating an intellectual basis for the universal principles of justice and equality that became central in the modern West. By weaving these principles throughout the fabric of Western legal systems, the Church advanced the concept of human dignity that became instrumental to modern human rights doctrine.
This approach – rooted in natural law and divine authority – would face an existential challenge with the 18th-century Enlightenment, as thinkers sought to reframe these principles within a rationalist (i.e., secular) worldview. The Enlightenment’s motto, sapere aude – “dare to know” – was meant to liberate the individual from the dogmas of religion and superstition. Yet its ideals were deeply indebted to the Christian tradition it sought to transcend. Enlightenment philosophers’ calls for justice and championing of the rights of the oppressed, for example, reflected longstanding Christian teachings.
So while it was long celebrated as a secular intellectual movement, the Enlightenment stood upon Christian shoulders. Thinkers such as John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Immanuel Kant(1724-1804) and Edmund Burke (1729-1797) articulated ideas that, though increasingly divorced from explicit references to canonical texts, were profoundly shaped by Christian ethics. Locke’s conception of natural rights – life, liberty and property – was grounded in the belief in God-given individual human dignity. Burke’s defence of tradition and social order underscored the indispensable role of Christian morality in sustaining societal cohesion.
Kant’s moral philosophy formed much of the core of Enlightenment thought. Emphasizing the intrinsic worth of every individual, its central idea is the famous “categorical imperative”. It demands that the individual behave only in ways that they would consider acceptable in any other person: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788-1860) critique of Kantian ethics made the continuity between Christian moral principles and ostensibly secular Enlightenment ethics strikingly clear. As Schopenhauer famously remarked, “Kant’s ethics is the starry firmament of the categorical imperative, but when the veil is lifted, it is seen to be secretly supported by the doctrines of Christianity.” Although Kant sought to anchor his philosophy in pure reason, Schopenhauer contended that Kant’s concepts of duty, universalizability and moral worth were thinly disguised Christian theology.
The United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights epitomized the apparent triumph of the idea that rights transcend borders and affiliations. Shown, Eleanor Roosevelt (widow of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt) holding a poster of the declaration, November 1949. (Source of photo: FDR Presidential Library & Museum, licensed under CC BY 2.0)Schopenhauer was trying to stop the tides, however, and efforts to erase God from Western intellectual life only became more aggressive. Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) declaration, “God is dead,” though celebrated by many as a bellow of triumph, was also a dire warning. Nietzsche foresaw that the collapse of the Christian moral edifice would leave a moral void, destabilizing ethical systems and paving the way for unprecedented ideological conflict and brutality.
While Christian thought thoroughly inculcated the individual’s inherent dignity and worth into the Western worldview, the concept of universal human rights as we understand them today remained largely undeveloped. Only in the aftermath of the Second World War, driven by the horrors of global conflict and a collective yearning for peace, did the modern language of human rights gain prominence. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the nascent United Nations in 1948, boldly asserted, “The recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.” This marked a decisive shift from earlier, more limited notions of rights tied to specific communities or traditions.
MacIntyre’s theory of ‘emotivism’ proposes that ‘moral’ judgments are not based on objective truths but are mere expressions of individual emotional preference. Declaring someone’s behaviour morally praiseworthy is no more significant than saying, ‘Hooray for X!’ Consequently, universal human rights are as substantial as thin air.
In The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Yale University law professor Samuel Moyn argues that the idea of universal human rights only gained broad appeal in the 1970s, when “the moral world of Westerners shifted, opening a space for the sort of utopianism that coalesced in an international human rights movement that had never existed before.” But whether this occurred in the late 1940s or not until the 1970s, it marked a break from earlier traditions of human rights tied to nations or religious communities, heralding a new moral order that transcended borders and affiliations.
Yet as Moyn emphasizes, framing these rights as “timeless” obscured their contingent historical origins and recent rise as the dominant proposition for addressing global injustice. Before this shift, rights discourse was anchored in specific contexts: citizenship within a nation-state or the moral obligations dictated by religious tradition. Universal human rights, by contrast, transcended these boundaries, elevating the individual to the ultimate bearer of rights independent of community, faith or national allegiance. This conceptual evolution greatly widened the moral imagination, inviting both celebration and critical scrutiny. Rights may be indispensable for protecting individual dignity, but they can also foster a corrosive individualism, erode community bonds and undermine the sense of shared responsibility.
Already before the UN’s 1948 Declaration, the universal applicability of human rights had come under attack, with skeptics questioning the vagueness, abstraction and absolutism of rights discourse. Enlightenment-era philosopher Jeremy Bentham dismissed natural or inalienable rights as a misleading and dangerous basis for political philosophy and law. In Anarchical Fallacies (1796), Bentham famously declared them “nonsense upon stilts”. Rights, Bentham argued, are not pre-legal or metaphysical – i.e., derived from natural law – but solely the creations of human laws and institutions. Wittingly or not, Bentham also thereby unmoored rights from their critical anchors: human dignity and inherent worth.
A modern critic, Scottish-American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, argues in his influential book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory that the language of rights is simply a form of emotivism. This theory proposes that “moral” judgments are not based on objective truths but are mere expressions of individual emotional preference. Declaring someone’s behaviour morally praiseworthy is no more significant than saying, “Hooray for X!” Consequently, universal human rights are as substantial as thin air.
Such critiques highlight the need to ground human rights in a rich moral and cultural soil and to provide never-ending intellectual nourishment – the need that Christianity historically fulfilled. The critiques and challenges continued unabated, of course – not least from the 20th century’s great scourge, totalitarian movements. But it is in our era that the traditional conception of human rights faces probably its gravest threat, a bitter irony given the unprecedented frequency with which the word is uttered or the idea employed to amplify a grievance or anchor a new policy.
The contemporary era’s challenge is the increasing secularization of human rights and detachment from their Christian roots. In Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians, the Italian philosopher and politician Marcello Pera argues that this risks reducing human rights to abstract principles vulnerable to manipulation. Pera asserts that the foundational ideas of liberal societies – such as the human being’s inherent dignity and the individual’s moral centrality – are inherently Judeo-Christian. Removing these religious underpinnings jeopardizes the very structure of open societies.
In What’s Wrong With Rights? Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar cautions that a purely secular understanding of rights lacks the moral depth necessary to justify their universality. Detaching rights from their theological basis reduces them to mere subjective claims. When this happens, Biggar argues, rights risk degenerating from enduring moral principles into tools of political expediency – a devolution that is all-but complete, with seismic implications for the trajectory of Western societies.
The need to derive rights from transcendent principles was recognized in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, whose preamble states, “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God…” This did not, however, stop the country’s judiciary, human rights bureaucracies and legislatures from simply behaving as if the preamble didn’t exist.
The dangers of severing rights from a transcendent source are evident in the proliferation of “rights talk”, wherein every social or political claim is framed as a matter of individual rights. As Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon observes in her seminal 1991 book Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, this habit reduces typically complex moral issues to binary, legalistic conflicts requiring “winners” and “losers”. Moreover, the emphasis on individual autonomy often overlooks communal responsibilities and shared values, eroding the social cohesion necessary for a just and flourishing society.
Despite such severe challenges, the Christian vision of human dignity continues to inspire transformative social movements. From the abolition of slavery to the fight for women’s rights, Christianity’s emphasis on equality before God has driven efforts to combat injustice and uphold the inherent worth of every person. Jesus’ teachings, particularly his call in Matthew 25:40 to care for “the least of these,” have shaped an ethic of compassion and service that remains a cornerstone of human rights advocacy.
From the abolition of slavery to the fight for women’s rights, Christianity’s emphasis on equality before God has driven efforts to combat injustice and uphold the inherent worth of every person. Shown at top left, Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848, by François-Auguste Biard, 1849; at top right, African-American women picket for unionization; at bottom left, men signing a petition supporting women’s suffrage, 1916; at bottom right, women supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert H. Lehman promote voting, 1935. (Sources of photos: (top right) Kheel Center, Cornell University Library, licensed under CC BY 2.0; (bottom left) Missouri Historical Society, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; (bottom right) Kheel Center, Cornell University Library, licensed under CC BY 2.0)The movement to abolish the trade in slaves and, eventually, slavery itself was deeply rooted in Christian ethics and led by Christian activists. Figures such as William Wilberforce and Frederick Douglass drew upon Biblical teachings to denounce the dehumanization inherent in slavery. Similarly, early campaigns for women’s suffrage and labour rights were often spearheaded by individuals and groups motivated by Christian convictions about justice and the equality of all souls before God. These movements demonstrate the enduring capacity of Christian principles to challenge systemic injustices and promote human flourishing.
In his recent book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, British historian Tom Holland argues that values often seen as secular – compassion, equality and human dignity – are embedded in Christian thought. Holland traces how these once-revolutionary principles became the moral bedrock of Western civilization, in turn shaping its vision of universal human rights. “To live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions,” he writes. “The ambitions of universal human rights, the expectation that the wealthy should look after the poor, the notion that society should be ordered to protect the vulnerable, all of these are deeply and distinctively Christian.”
Notre-Dame’s soaring spire and sublime aesthetics proclaim a worldview recognizing humanity’s dual nature: finite yet transcendent, capable of great achievements yet reliant on divine grace. The vision that inspired the builders also shaped the moral imagination that gave rise to universal human rights.
Contemporary human rights discourse, however, often struggles with internal contradictions. As Moyn observes in The Last Utopia, elevating human rights in the 20th century to the dominant concept in justice systems often obscured their historical and theological origins. Like Pera, Moyn warns that severing rights from their moral foundations risks reducing them to hollow abstractions. In such a state, human rights become mere instruments of power, wielded by those who can, often for self-serving purposes. Moyn’s critique highlights the urgency of attaching rights to a cohesive ethical framework – such as the Christian tradition – to restore their moral depth and reinforce their practical relevance.
As well as being a glorious triumph in itself, the restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral (on which further work will continue until at least 2027) is a vivid metaphor for the need to reconnect with the ur-values that have shaped Western civilization. Just as the cathedral’s intricate beauty and spiritual resonance have been painstakingly revived – the first formal mass was celebrated on December 8, the morning after the grand reopening, and Notre-Dame has been going nonstop ever since – so must we reclaim the Christian heritage that underpins our understanding of human dignity and universal rights. This architectural marvel is more than a masterpiece of craftsmanship; it is a living symbol of the morality and culture that shaped the West and continues to sustain it, if only from deep below and ever more faintly.
Notre-Dame’s soaring spire and sublime aesthetics proclaim a worldview recognizing humanity’s dual nature: finite yet transcendent, capable of great achievements yet reliant on divine grace. The vision that inspired the builders also shaped the moral imagination that gave rise to universal human rights. At the heart of Christianity lies the affirmation of the intrinsic worth of every individual, rooted in the belief that all are created in the image of God – imago Dei. This revolutionary theological assertion gave rise a millennium later to an ethical framework that, nearly another millennium later, furnishes the core for contemporary ideas of justice and equality.
As we reflect on Notre-Dame’s grandeur, we are reminded of the enduring power of ideas to shape civilizations. Its restoration invites us to rediscover the deep sources of our moral commitments and reaffirm the values that unite us as a human family. Even in a world fractured by ideological divides, shared cultural and spiritual heritage can be a powerful force for unity. By safeguarding this iconic structure, we not only pay tribute to the craftsmanship and faith of its creators but also reaffirm the eternal relevance of the Christian teachings that inspired them. Notre-Dame calls us to look beyond the immediate and material and to reconnect with the transcendent values that sustain human dignity.
Patrick Keeney is a Canadian writer who divides his time between Kelowna, B.C. and Thailand.
Source of main image: Shutterstock.
