Equality

Overview

Recall questions on religious and secular grounds for equality, the gender debate, racial equality and the models of disability, Martin Luther King and Joni Eareckson Tada as religious campaigners, and how far law changes social attitudes.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Where do religious arguments for human equality usually start?

   Model answer

   Most often with the claim that every person bears the image of God, so worth is given rather than earned. Christians add that in Christ the usual social divisions lose their force; Muslims appeal to the ummah and to the teaching that no ethnic group is superior; Sikhs point to Guru Nanak's teaching that all are equal before Waheguru, expressed in the shared langar meal.

2. 2

   What does a secular case for equality look like?

   Model answer

   Kantians argue that every rational agent must be treated as an end and never merely as a means, which rules out ranking people. Utilitarians argue for equal consideration of interests: a pain counts the same whoever feels it. Both feed the modern human rights framework, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 to the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010.

3. 3

   How has the gender debate divided religious communities internally?

   Model answer

   Sharply, and along different lines in each tradition. The Church of England ordained women as priests in 1994 and consecrated its first woman bishop in 2015, after legislation passed in 2014, while the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches reserve ordination to men; Reform and Liberal Judaism ordain women rabbis, Orthodox Judaism does not; Muslim communities differ over whether a woman may lead mixed prayer. Feminist theologians argue the traditions must be reread, and traditionalists reply that the practice reflects revelation rather than prejudice.

4. 4

   Name some events that mark progress on racial equality.

   Model answer

   The Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 to 1956, the March on Washington in 1963, the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, the British Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968 and 1976, the end of apartheid and Mandela's election in 1994, and the Macpherson report of 1999 into institutional racism.

5. 5

   What is the difference between the medical and the social model of disability?

   Model answer

   The medical model locates the problem in the impaired body and seeks to treat or cure it. The social model locates the problem in a society built for non-disabled people: a wheelchair user is disabled by stairs, not by legs. The social model shaped the duty to make reasonable adjustments in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Equality Act 2010, and shifts the moral demand from pity to access.

6. 6

   Explain how Martin Luther King's Christian convictions shaped his campaigning.

   Model answer

   King was a Baptist minister who grounded non-violent direct action in agape, a love that seeks the good of the opponent and refuses to answer hatred with hatred, drawing on Jesus' teaching and on Gandhi's tactics. In the Letter from Birmingham Jail he defended breaking segregation laws by distinguishing just from unjust laws in the natural law tradition of Augustine and Aquinas: a law that degrades human personality is not binding. He also rebuked moderates who preferred order to justice.

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