Escribe James Chappel en "The Mythical Connection between Natural Law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. James Chappel":

p. 88 In the 1940s, the most prominent historian of human rights was a Protestant conservative named Gerhard Ritter. And in the 1990s, the most prominent historian was likely Mary Ann Glendon, a Catholic conservative. Both of them stood in for much larger constellations of religious thinkers making the argument that, in the end, Christian doctrines of natural law were the predominant moral and philosophical origin of human rights as an idea.22 Gerhard Ritter, ‘Ursprung und Wesen der Menschenrechte’ (1949) 169 Historische Zeitschrift 233. Glendon has made this argument in many fora, most clearly in Mary Ann Glendon, ‘Knowing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (1998) 73 Notre Dame Law Review 1153.

p. 99 The basic narrative propounded by these scholars is something like this: Christianity is committed to the fundamental dignity and equality of every human being,  and has been since its origins. This in itself does not a human rights doctrine make, of course: Stoicism had a similar claim. And yet Christianity had, especially through the long tradition of natural law theorising, been concerned with how abstract claims to dignity and equality might be translated into positive state law. Christianity, not Stoicism, made the step of turning ethical universalism into concrete rights claims that might accrue to individuals, and not only to institutions. Christianity thus stands at the threshold of modern rights discourse. This deep historical claim is coupled with a more contingent and recent one. Christians, they argue, played an important role in the drafting of the UDHR: a document that, while putatively universal, was in fact largely drafted by Europeans or Americans raised in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. For these twinned reasons, Christians deserve pride of place in claiming responsibility for, and even interpretive rights over, the UDHR.

The idea that human rights are, in some deep capacity, a ‘Christian’ or perhaps ‘Judaeo- Christian’ ideal has been influential far beyond the Notre Dame Law Review. Pope John Paul II was committed to this story, and made it a linchpin of his anti-Communist activism.