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Not long ago, I joined a Washington luncheon with Shashi Tharoor, an under-secretary general at the United Nations. Tharoor, a candidate to replace Kofi Annan last year as head of the UN, speaks with the polish and assurance of the quintessential UN diplomat. But when asked why repressive states such as China and Saudi Arabia should be allowed to serve on the UN's premier human-rights body, he hesitated. "You don't advance human rights," Tharoor insisted, "by preaching only to the converted."

Here on display is the flawed idealism of the UN's human-rights agenda, as if having human-rights abusers judging human-rights cases is the way to convert them. It is the same utopian impulse that lies behind multilateralism (the idea that nations should always act in concert) and its cousin multiculturalism (openness to the traditions and values of other cultures) and causes such confusion about human rights. Though helpful in some contexts, these ideas are slavishly applied in international politics in ways that assault the concepts of natural rights and moral norms enshrined not only in our Declaration of Independence, but also in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The unconverted states, of course, have hijacked human-rights ideals for their own despotic purposes. A 2004 UN task force report lamented a "legitimacy deficit" in the organization's commitment to human rights. A year later, Kofi Annan admitted that the United Nations was "passing through the gravest crisis of its existence" because of its tarnished record. He finally recommended that the Human Rights Commission be abolished and replaced by a reconstituted Human Rights Council, an idea approved by the General Assembly last year. It appears, however, that the Human Rights Council already shares in the foibles of its discredited predecessor.

In the midst of the UN's moral havoc, evangelicals—because of our theological and political commitment to human rights, especially religious freedom—have a unique and important role to play.

The UN's corruption can be traced to the 1940s, when it first took up the issue of human rights. The original Human Rights Commission, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, drafted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), now considered the Magna Carta of the modern human-rights movement. The original sin of that document, however, was that it confused "inalienable" human rights with social and economic aspirations. The Western idea of rights as moral claims against the coercive power of the state was put on the same footing as social benefits and government entitlements. Thus, the Universal Declaration ranks the right to "periodic holidays with pay" (Article 24) no differently than the right to life, freedom from slavery, and freedom of religion (Articles 3, 4, and 18).

No wonder people such as Charles Malik, the Lebanese delegate to the commission, were so troubled by the result. Speaking in 1952, just four years later, he warned that "a quiet revolution" had overtaken its work. "The archetype of what we were trying to ensure was freedom from discrimination and from arbitrary arrest, and freedom of religion and speech. It never occurred to us that anything else was as important as these were," Malik said. "Today, the emphasis has shifted. Economic, social, and cultural rights have come into their own." He went on to call this "the materialistic revolution of the times."

Every materialistic revolution in modern times—socialism, communism, fascism—has held a utopian vision. By definition, utopians deny the deep sinfulness of human nature. At the same time, they lose sight of the sacred basis for human dignity, the imago Dei. The result is a confusion (and ultimately a denial) of inalienable human rights. The UN version of this revolution is no different: Its multicultural creed has produced a torrent of treaties and conventions, with ever-expanding categories of rights. Nations even claim an "inalienable right" to nuclear technology (see the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Article IV). When human rights are confused with social or economic goals, human dignity is debased—and basic rights become more politically tenuous.

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February 2007, Vol. 51, No. 2