MODERN RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS OF HUMAN RIGHTS: THEOLOGICAL AND LEGAL APPROACHES COMPARED

Religious teachings have played a significant role in the development of human rights, but nowadays, they do not exert any serious influence on the latter. In recent decades, the major religions focus on developing their own human rights concepts which are compared to modern liberal theories. Such religious teachings differ in several relevant aspects. The beginnings of Buddhism and Protestantism do not reject the democratic and liberal understanding of human rights, but the Orthodoxy and Islam focus on opposing their attitudes to such interpretation. The question as to the possibility to take into account religious views within the framework of human rights legal theory remains open.