Politics & Power Quote by Hans Kung

Kung’s line reads like a moral inventory, and that’s the point: it’s built to leave no socially acceptable loopholes. The rhythm is bureaucratic on purpose, borrowing the cadence of human-rights charters and postwar constitutions. By piling up categories - sex, age, race, language, religion, politics, origin - he doesn’t just name prejudice; he anticipates the usual excuses for it. The list performs a kind of preventative theology: before any listener can carve out an exception for “those people,” the sentence has already walked the perimeter and locked the doors.

The key move is his fusion of sacred language with legal language. “Inalienable” and “untouchable” are not warm, fuzzy words; they’re hard-edged terms of restraint, aimed as much at institutions as at individuals. Kung is quietly disciplining power. He’s telling states, churches, and majorities: you don’t get to vote on this. Dignity isn’t earned by virtue, productivity, citizenship, or doctrinal correctness. It’s not a reward; it’s a boundary.

Context matters: Kung spent his career arguing that a credible modern faith must be ethically legible in pluralistic, post-Holocaust Europe - and, famously, he took on the Catholic hierarchy when it tried to monopolize truth. The subtext here is ecumenical and political: if religion wants a public role, it has to underwrite universal dignity, not tribal belonging. The sentence is less a pious sentiment than a demand for nonnegotiable solidarity.