In The Twentieth Century
In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance
Even though not formally legally binding, the Declaration has been adopted in or influenced many national constitutions since 1948. It also serves as the foundation for a growing number of international treaties and national laws and international, regional, national and sub-national institutions protecting and promoting human rights including the freedom of religion.
In 1965, The Roman Catholic Church Vatican II Council issued the decree Dignitatis Humanae (Religious Freedom) that states that all people must have the right to religious freedom.
In 1986, the first World Day of Prayer for Peace was held in Assisi. Representatives of one hundred and twenty different religions came together for prayer to their God or gods.
In 1988, in the spirit of Glasnost, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev promised increased religious toleration.
Read more about this topic: Toleration
Famous quotes containing the words twentieth century and/or twentieth:
“A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious “retreat” of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)