(The following was originally posted at Front Porch Republic on December 11th.)
The Manhattan Declaration is almost a month old and it still a statement I regard with great ambivalence. My discomfort owes partly to the name. As a native of Southeastern Pennsylvania and a fan of Philadelphia’s college and professional sports teams, I am congenitally disposed to animus (I am hoping within the bounds of the sixth commandment – Protestant numbering) against all things New York City. At the same time, I like old fashioned cocktails and think beer and wine have too readily displaced drinks like the venerable Manhattan.
One other factor is pride. Why do the instigators of these projects keep losing my name when the invitations go out for signatures of Very Important Persons? It could be that I recently moved. It could also be that I’m not very important. Both are true but the older I get the more I realize the limits of my import.
But deeper down come other reservations about the Manhattan Declaration which put me seemingly at odds with many of the signers whom I respect and want to encourage in their own convictions about morality, civil society, and the common good. My questions do not concern the sanctity of human life, the nature of marriage, or religious liberty. I am more than comfortable with the specific items affirmed in the Declaration. But like any good conservative who may like planks in the GOP’s platform and then votes for a different candidate because of the mechanisms associated with Republican policies, I resonate with the concerns of Timothy George, Robert George (I don’t think they are brothers) and Chuck Colson but wonder about the methods they employ by drafting and circulating this statement.
First, I wonder what function such declarations serve? I am open to instruction here, broadminded fellow that I am, but has any such a declaration (other than Mr. Jefferson’s) ever amounted to a real change in ordinary affairs? I think, for instance, of the recent declarations that Evangelicals and Catholics Together have produced. For all the seeds of unity these statements may have sown between a certain class of Roman Catholics and born-again Protestants, those statements have also created controversy – at least in conservative Protestant circles – by raising questions about the doctrinal position of the statements’ signers. Meanwhile, declarations produced by evangelical Protestants – such as For the Health of the Nation or The Evangelical Manifesto – don’t seem to have amounted to much, aside from the comfort given to those who sign that they are on the right side and are public about it.
I do not mean to question the motives of anyone who signed, but isn’t it possible that a measure of moral grandstanding goes into these statements, along with very little policy or legislative reform, because these statements are so far removed from the legislatures, courts, and chambers of elected officials? Meanwhile, such statements do function to throw down yet another gauntlet in the culture wars, thus inviting as much opposition as support for the stalemate that already exists between the parties of morality and license.
Second, the Manhattan Declaration troubles me because of the progressive narrative that introduces the affirmations about life, marriage, and religious liberty. The history the authors invoke is one that goes from early Christians down to the suffrage movement and Civil Rights. This is not much of a variation on the old American Protestant whig interpretation of western civilization and the assumption that the right kind of Christianity was on the side of social, political, and economic progress. This kind of progressivism (and the Social Gospel that accompanied it) should trouble any American conservative worthy of the name. Indeed, highly ironic is the reality that now some Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians have identified with such whiggery. I guess, one question is if the narrative is true, why not affirm it? One answer is that the narrative leaves out a host of other contributors to this “progress,” among them the Enlightenment and other less orthodox outlooks about the true, the good, and the beautiful. Another answer involves the irony already mentioned – namely, that it was used once by Protestants to exclude Roman Catholics and other “outsiders” from the mainstream of American society. The Manhattan Declaration appears to employ it again to do the same to Americans who do not share Christian morality.
This leads to a third concern, namely, how do believers and non-believers co-exist in a religiously diverse society, in one, in fact, where religious freedom also means freedom for the non-religious? I do not have an answer and I doubt that any readers of FPR do that will achieve consensus for Americans. One way to negotiate this diversity, once upon a time, was through the autonomy or local governments and communities to regulate their own affairs. But now that the United States matters more as a collective than as a union of states, that political option seems impossible. In the meantime, conflating Christian morality with the common good and the foundations of civil society not only seems to discount the contributions made by non-Christian traditions, but the Manhattan Declaration also seems to conflate the involuntary and voluntary aspects of civil society. In the involuntary realm Christians must try to get along with a number of other believers and their skeptical neighbors. In the voluntary realm of private associations, Christians may legitimately be concerned to protect the prerogatives of church, school, and organization. But because the Declaration vacillates between the common good and a private morality, it fails to acknowledge that making Christian norms the basis for American public life will exclude non-Christians. (Some Mormons have even complained that the Declaration needlessly leaves them out.) In other words, it would have been one thing for the Declaration to call upon Americans to respect the convictions and practices of Christian institutions. But the Declaration goes beyond this defensive posture and makes claims about Christian norms being the basis for civil society and the common – period. So where does that leave an Abraham Lincoln, an H. L. Mencken, or even a Leon Kass?
My last and biggest reservation is related to the Social Gospel aspects of the Declaration – that is, the idea that Christianity leads to and promotes a just society. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to be heard to be saying that Christianity promotes injustice, though, of course, Christianity’s record in human history has not been free from embracing tyranny and injustice (at least as defined by the likes of Kant). But do the authors of the Declaration believe that Jesus and the apostles would have signed a Rome Declaration if one were available to them? In other words, is the purpose of Christianity to progress this world or is it to prepare believers for the next? Is the purpose of the gospel to yield the common good or eternal salvation? I understand that Protestants and Roman Catholics (I have interacted less with Orthodox about this) differ on questions of continuity and discontinuity between temporal and eternal goods. Will truth and justice and prosperity in this world be like the truth and justice and prosperity that believers will experience in the new heavens and new earth?
If it is legitimate to raise this question, then the Manhattan Declaration needs to address the concerns of those Christians who believe that the gospel has a higher aim than simply the right ordering of this world. This doesn’t mean that necessarily that the Christianity of which I speak is opposed in fundamentalist, docetist, or gnostic fashion to a good society, or to ordered liberty. But I do worry that by directing so much attention in the name of Christ to the great moral concerns of this age, Christians will lose sight of the eternal truths that older professions of the church recognized (and encourage non-Christians to look to the church for solutions to society’s problems. Older expressions of Christianity put the problems and even the evils of this life into a perspective that saw them as not ultimate but temporary. It is an outlook that my own communion, the OPC, for some a hangnail in the body of Christ, professes in the following terms:
The liberty which Christ hath purchased for believers under the gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the moral law; and, in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin; from the evil of afflictions, the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation; as also, in their free access to God, and their yielding obedience unto him, not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and willing mind. All which were common also to believers under the law. But, under the new testament, the liberty of Christians is further enlarged, in their freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law, to which the Jewish church was subjected; and in greater boldness of access to the throne of grace, and in fuller communications of the free Spirit of God, than believers under the law did ordinarily partake of.
I understand that this liberty will not fix the woes that ail our society. But if something like this is true of Christianity, and if statements like the Manhattan Declaration do not address the links and gaps between the common and ultimate goods, then I think my Christian profession requires me to thank the Lord that I was not included among those invited to sign.
It was simply a “Declaration”, not a creed, etc. The Church collective and somewhat conservative must start somewhere. But a month or so in, and the MD appears to be without steam? Who does speak for the Church today? And where is it? As Postmodernism continues to eat the West!
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Irishanglican, every Sunday the Lord’s undershepherds step into the pulpit and speak for Christ and his church. Why isn’t this good enough? By what standard to you evaluate “spokesmen”? It appears to be more influenced by the world’s standard of influence than by by what Paul called the folly of preaching the cross.
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dgh,
I am not sure what you are asking me? I also as St. Paul, preach “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2) As the hymn writer wrote: ‘Mine the ordination of the pierced hands!’ I am an Anglican by choice and calling I feel, but always before the Lord of Glory! Also “preaching” should be the apostolic “kerygma”, it is this that saves and changes men and people. For this is the proclamation of Christ and the Good News or Gospel. As Paul says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Rom. 1:16)
Fr. Robert (Anglican)
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My point, it is the Gospel itself that makes the Church, but it must be the “Christ” of the gospel also. As St. Paul, “For to me to live is Christ..” (Phil. 1:21) Christ Jesus is always the value of the Gospel. HIS person makes the efficiency and power of the Atonement. When we lose this, we also lose the Trinitarian nature of the Gospel…”For through him we both (Jew & Gentile) have access in one spirit to the Father.” (Eph. 2:18)
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Even the R. Catholic Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote: Whoever removes the Cross (Death of Christ) and its interpretation by the N.T. from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as a new center, no longer stands in continuity with the apostolic faith.
Indeed the Gospel is Christ, crucified, risen and ascended!
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My point was to answer your question: “Who does speak for the church today?” God’s undershepherds do. Why do we need PR?
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If the Church of Christ is to recover itself from this depth of postmodern thought and deconstruction, it simply must relate biblical theology to preaching, but never doctrine for itself, but doctrine-attached-to-Christ; in terms of Christ, but in the power of Word & Sacrament! But the man, or preacher must too be subject here.
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My question was of course rhetorical. I am still wondering where the Church is? As an Anglican, this question becomes even more important, as we see great apostasy in and all around!
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It is important that the Gospel be lived not simply preached. If we claim to love Christ but do nothing to help those in need then what witness have we proclaimed. “Christ crucified and risen” is the reason for our joy, but Christ himself chastised severely those who proclaimed their faith publicly but did not allow their faith to change their hearts. The parable of the Good Samaritan being case and point.
We have a duty to proclaim our faith and we must know the reasons for our joy. But if we stand idly by while the world continues to slaughter the innocent, if we do not reach to help the victim traumatized by the robber, if we do not bend to open the eyes of those who work to their own demise, then how can we call ourselves followers of the Christ who came to save us? This was focus of his teaching. Love one another.
The value of the Manhattan Declaration lies in the uniting of Christians into one voice for the grave concerns of the matters involved upon which we can agree.
My question would be, if these matters are not worthy of the united voice of Christianity, then how should we have responded to any serious crisis in world history? Is it the job of the the Christian to leave his faith at the door of the tent of the just war? Should we have allowed Nazism or Communism to triumph because of our doctrinal differences? Would the world be a better place for Christianity had Islam conquered all of Europe without resistance?
Secular tyranny is no trifle enemy. Do not underestimate our earthly foe, even as you trust in the ultimate power of our Divine ally.
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Well I have fought against some of the enemies of freedom myself, as a Royal Marine Commando. And I would do it again, not for love of the ideal, but for each other, and those that want freedom. Just that simple. And make no mistake radical Islam is the ememy of any free conscience, as was communism. But the freedom that Christ gives is above all the ‘pearl of great price’, and He too is that freedom! (Matt. 13: 45-46)
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Darryl,
I appreciate your general concerns. I too am concerned about the language of historic Protestant progressive whiggish-ness serving as a foundation for unity between Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. Christianity does not equal progressive.
I am not certain what the purpose of such declarations are, but can they hurt? Can it hurt to speak to the culture on moral issues that transcend denominational boundaries?
Also, on the issue of who speaks for the church, even you would admit that PR bodies beyond the Ministry of the Word are appropriate. The General Assembly of the OPC has numerous declarations of the like, no?
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Thank you and God Bless you for your service Fr. Robert. Indeed true freedom is in Christ!
And as you say, radical Islam is a great threat to our Christian culture and life. It is easy to sit in our current state of religious freedom and theologize as if our freedom to do so is inconsequential to our faith. Those who have lived under tyranny have spoken otherwise. Christianity did survive under Communism but the damage to individual souls was, and still is, severe.
And it will be the secular tyranny and anti-Christianity of the West which will allow radical Islam to take over Europe. The low birth rates caused by abortion and contraception have combined to make this perhaps already a forgone conclusion. It’s simply a matter of time.
We need Christian unity now in opposition to this great threat of our time. Tyranny is tyranny no matter what name it is given. Dr. Birzer’s DRC piece last month on President Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Solzhenitsyn (“The Priest, the Prophet, and the King”) reminds us how important even a few individuals can be when united for truth and in Christ.
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Indeed as long as we live in this fallen and broken world, we who believe in both moral and spiritual freedom must be vigilant! Allways willing and hopefully spiritually, mentally and physically able. Semper Fi as the American Marines have it, in this our Judeo-Christian worldview.
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Bill, I do think it’s a mistake to make statements like this for the reason that Kevin McCormick unintentionally gives: “if these matters are not worthy of the united voice of Christianity, then how should we have responded to any serious crisis in world history?”
Are the matters of marriage and abortion on a par with the eternal destinies of bodies and souls? I don’t think so. That doesn’t mean they are not a problem. But too many Christians have lost sight of the enemies of sin and death in order to preserve “our Christian culture.”
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dgh,
I don’t think it quite that easy to separate them? And “our Christian culture” has been fractured for longer than we realize. One must not judge this by American standards. But yes certainly ‘sin & death’ are almost in a place of denial even in a postmodern church. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23) This reality is still God’s judgment!
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BTW dgh, For what it’s worth, this old Irish born toehead is 60 years old. I have lived too in both the UK and the USA.
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Let me quote K. Barth here, “Faith in God’s revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo.” I quote this is a general sense and for us all! And whatever one thinks of Barth (pron. Bart), he was a modern Church Father type. And helps us to think!
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*in a general sense
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An interesting write-up in the NYT about Robert P. George, in connection with the Manhattan Declaration.
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[…] What Does it Declare? […]
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