This Evangelical Manifesto first came on my radar last week and has quickly garnered a fair share of media attention this week.
According to the Washington Times article today
A panel of 77 evangelical Christians issued a "manifesto" at the National Press Club yesterday ostensibly to clarify "the confusions and corruptions surrounding the term 'evangelical' "
The article also says evangelicals make up about 26% of the U.S. population.
Probably the best definition of "evangelical" you'll find in a modern dictionary for the modern usage of the term is this: "emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual."
In political discussions of recent years, the term has almost become synonymous with "conservative Christian" or "fundamental Christian."
While some who fit the dictionary definition of evangelical may bristle at this association, the reality is that most evangelicals do hold a conservative ideology. It may be unhappiness at being identified with "conservatives" that has spurred some to come up with this manifesto.
An interesting thing about this "evangelical manifesto" is that a number of noteworthy evangelicals haven't signed it.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council isn't on there. In fact, according to the Washington Times article, he says:
"Theirs is an ivory tower perspective," said Mr. Perkins, who was not asked to sign. "It's an age-old problem with people who are concerned with being spoken well of. They want to rid the world of evil but they don't want to get their hands dirty. It's not true that you can't preach the Gospel and be engaged in taking on the culture."
Christian pollster George Barna isn't on it. Richard Land, Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, wasn't asked to sign it. Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America, says there are contradictions in the document. Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family said he has "myriad concerns." Also missing are Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, American Values president Gary Bauer, Rick Scarborough of Vision America, Phil Burress of Citizens For Community Values, Concerned Women for America president Wendy Wright, and Janet Folger of Faith2Action.
I read the manifesto and found little to disagree with...on the surface.
On the surface, the manifesto calls for what one might call a balanced approach to the Christian faith. It says Christians shouldn't be about "single-issue politics."
Interpreting this from recent political discussions, this is almost certainly a criticism of the attention given by conservative Christians to the issues of abortion and the homosexual agenda.
First of all, a great degree of attention to these issues is not inordinate. Since human life is created in the image of God, and we are commanded by God to "be fruitful and multiply," the taking of innocent human life in the womb demands our utmost attention.
And since God laid out his design for human sexuality at the same time he created human beings, the blatant and public misuse of human sexuality (i.e. homosexual behavior) and the attempted counterfeiting of marriage (homosexual "marriage") also demands a high level of attention.
Even if these issues were not critical and foundational to the life and health of our society, it is unfair to infer that conservative Christians are only concerned about these issues. Most conservative Christians I know are also concerned about freedom, crime, justice, protection of the innocent, national defense, the poor, and the role of government in our society, to name a few.
Another area which might sound harmless at first glance is in the area of science and intellect. The manifesto says that some evangelicals have
fallen into an unbecoming anti-intellectualism that is a dire cultural handicap as well as a sin. In particular, some among us have betrayed the strong Christian tradition of a high view of science, epitomized in the very matrix of ideas that gave birth to modern science, and made themselves vulnerable to caricatures of the false hostility between science and faith.
None of us wants to champion ignorance and stupidity, do we? None of us wants to stand in the way of scientific advances that will improve our world and make our lives better, do we? So this must mean something else.
I can't mistake this as anything other than criticism of the belief that the Bible actually means what it says when God created the earth, and all life on it as we see it today.
That is not anti-intellectualism, but is instead anti-evolutionism or anti-naturalism, or simply belief that God meant what He said. There is nothing anti-intellectual or unscientific about that. Many of the great scientists including Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo were all creationists. God created the universe to operate according to scientific principles; how can one believe in God and His creative work and be anti-science? Creation scientists want to understand how God engineered the universe, even as evolutionists want to understand a universe they believe came about through random chance.
Evolution, naturalism and materialism are not science, but philosophies or interpretations of science. Creation scientists study the same science that evolutionists do; they simply approach the science from a different worldview. The drafters of the manifesto seem to have fallen for the evolutionist lie that naturalism=science and materialism=science.
Conservative Christians are also not anti-intellectual from the educational or philosophical perspective, either. People cut from the same philosophical cloth as today's conservative Christians founded the great Ivy League colleges like Harvard and Yale, and have today founded exceptional institutes of learning like Patrick Henry College.
Further, most conservative Christians I know greatly appreciate the thinking of great minds like that of C.S. Lewis. Lewis w