Looking Backward

THE 2018 STATE-SPONSORED execution of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, was a brazen violation of his right to life by a repressive regime, yet the U.S. executive branch responded with near indifference. Then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had already said that advancing U.S. interests should come before promoting U.S. values—such as defending human rights—and his successor Mike Pompeo has followed suit.

The Trump administration has disavowed the longstanding commitment to human rights by the U.S. in foreign policy. It has withdrawn from the U.N. Human Rights Council, ceded a voice on the U.N. body addressing racial oppression, and ignored the chorus of international condemnation of its family separation policy.

So when Pompeo announced the creation of a new State Department commission to revisit philosophical questions at the heart of the U.S. commitment to human rights, public outcry has been fierce, and rightfully so. Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, tasked with “fresh thinking about human rights discourse”—based on “our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights”—provoked objection from secular and religious advocates alike. The advisory body’s mission, membership, and origin story all sparked concern, despite the proviso that it would speak to principles, not policy.

People of faith have further reason to oppose the commission: Its backward-looking terms of reference impose an unconscionable constraint on theological reflection about matters of justice.

The founding of the United States was not the last word on human rights—not for those who fought to abolish the blasphemous and bloody scourge of chattel slavery, eradicate the brutality of child labor, or afford women a voice in our democracy. Every decisive social justice movement in the United States has involved a public theological contest in which the radically egalitarian theme of Christ’s teaching eventually triumphed. That each liberation struggle is celebrated in the clear hindsight of history testifies to the expansion of God’s reign through greater justice for an ever-widening circle of humanity.

The adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights heralded a global recognition of universal human dignity. It safeguards equality more consistently and understands rights more expansively than does the U.S. Constitution. It endowed human rights with import apart from the nation-state, whose power was relativized in favor of the individual’s sanctity. It is the framework that lets shared denunciation of Nazism and apartheid speak wisdom to contested contemporary struggles for gender and LGBTQ equality. A transnational coalition of Protestant and Catholic leaders, alongside Jewish and black freedom advocates, urged this historic achievement. The Christian worldviews of key contributors helped shape the Universal Declaration. Building on common ethical ground across religions and cultures, it gained unparalleled international adherence and effect.

Questions posed to the Pompeo commission are profound: “Why do we have human rights? Who or what grants them?” For Christians, these questions invite sacred conversations about human dignity rooted in God’s love for each person, Christ’s example of inclusive neighbor love, our status as divine image-bearers, and more. A deeper understanding of our faith-inspired commitments supports the cross-cultural dialogue on which a global system of human rights depends.

We must not submit such sacred conversations to a government office—least of all to one that has made power politics, not human rights, its priority. Nor should we accept 1776 as the ethical touchstone, and thus hinder the salutary movement of the spirit toward equality and liberation.

We must hold our leaders accountable to respecting the Universal Declaration. It reflects Christian ethical commitments far better than this new commission can.