It is no longer justifiable to allow the distorted characterizations of the three main Christian types. The many Eastern Orthodox Christians are not committed to support the caesaro-papism as it once prevailed under the emperor or czar. Roman Catholics do not allow the obsequious attitude which prevails in the Vatican curia to dampen their zeal for human rights in various countries where they are strong-especially in view of the great encyclicals of recent popes which have sounded the clarion call for universal respect of human dignity, rights, and development. And Protestants as a whole are not always the freedom loving contenders for a genuinely democratic society, although many of them continue to be such.
The reason for the breaking down of these traditional images and the consequent blurring of distinctions among Christian churches and among theologies of human freedom is simply the powerful effect of the varying social and political theories which are implemented in the economic systems and structures of government. Protestants are numerous and strong in Finland, as well as in Switzerland, South Africa, Tanzania, and the German Democratic Republic. How does that fact signify what their understanding of human rights may be? only mores in these countries can fair reading be made of their religiously conditioned views of human rights.
Another necessity for accurate understanding in the discerning of great differences between two kinds of human rights. One may be called "rights to be secured", the other, "rights to be provided for and satisfied." The important distinction was boldly drawn by the General Assembly of the United Nation in 1966, when it adopted the two covenants: the International Covenant of civil and Political Rights and that of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These covenants (again using the Calvinistic nomenclature) are still in the process of being ratified by member states.
A reading of the Universal Declaration of 1948 reveals both categories. However, the civil and political rights are manifestly dominant in twenty-three of the thirty articles .These twenty-three express the basic freedoms and expectations of all persons which, according to the Declaration, must be secured by every national government for its citizens. In the philosophy of the Declaration, these rights are inherent in human life as such, although history quickly teaches us that only in modern times have they been widely so recognized. these are the individual's claims upon society and civil government for protecting and guaranteeing free exercise of the rights of speech, press, assembly, religion, mobility, privacy, legal defense, and marriage and family life. They are the civil and political rights which are protected, at least in word, by many national constitutions. For the most part they articulate the general Protestant concern for individual freedom and civic responsibility within a parliamentary, democratic society. In particular, Article 18 declares the religious right to a free conscience, belief, worship, teaching, and voluntary change of faith. (According to the account of the late Dr.Elfan Ress of the World Council of Churches’CCIA, this article was included in the Declaration only because of the persistent and diplomatic pressures of his ecumenical group in Paris. The Roman Catholic Church had not yet made its remarkable volte face on the subject of religious liberty, even though the Papal Nuncio, Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, used his personal influence in Paris to impress upon the United Nation authorities his convictions about human rights which later appeared in his great encyclical when he became Pope John XXIII)