To look at some of the most prominent conditions of contemporary politics, is in fact to identify the circumstances within which the Churches must work in trying to promote human rights. Human rights may be identified abstractly, but they do not exist abstractly. Tbey exist, where they exist at all, within political confines; and these same confines suggest what the proper role of the Churches may be. If this seems a harshly limited basis for defining the Churches' role, it is not because this writer seeks to limit, but rather because the limitations are genuinely there, and the Churches are unlikely to do effectively even their limited task unless they concentrate their energies on these channels.