This paper will analyze the human rights advocacy of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the preeminent institutional embodiment of the largely Protestant ecumenical movement. While Eurocentric at the time of its founding in 1948, the WCC became increasingly global and politically progressive in the 1970s. Throughout this period, during which international affairs were marked above all by the global Cold War, the WCC sought to shape the concept of human rights along Christian lines. Its representatives influenced the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and initially wielded its provision on religious freedom to advance the interests of missionaries and Christian minorities. By the 1970s, however, the WCC aligned itself with attempts at the United Nations to redefine human rights in favor of the Third World. Its human rights engagement thus sheds light on both the changing nature of international human rights politics and of a globalizing Christianity.