Out of Egypt:

thoughts on the Manhattan Declaration: a response to Brian McLaren

I may be the only person in the world who follows both World Magazine and Sojourners on Twitter, but that is because I'm not satisfied with simply shifting from the traditional Christian Right agenda to a Christian Left one. I have seen the narrowness of the Christian Right agenda, and its captivity to the Republican party, but I don't think simply going over to more socially acceptable causes, such as the environment or opposing corporate greed, is really the way forward.

When I first heard about the Manhattan Declaration, it was from Brian McLaren's post on what it gets wrong. From reading that, I thought, "Well, maybe McLaren is right - maybe this is simply another attempt by the Christian Right to impose their morality on everyone else." But then I read the actual declaration, and I saw that McLaren has completely misunderstood it.

Those who signed the Declaration appear particularly concerned to ensure that Christians in today's society will continue to have the liberty to follow their conscience in the face of the prevailing social attitude that abortion is a necessary option for women and homosexual relationships are on equal footing with heterosexual marriage. The third point of religious liberty, which McLaren thinks they "[define] rather oddly in relation to the first two", is actually central to the Declaration. Liberty of conscience is not a theoretical matter - as the Declaration states, Catholic Charities has stopped providing adoption services in the state of Massachusetts because they would not place children in the homes of homosexuals in civil union. And, as World magazine reports, soon they may be forced out of Washington, D.C. entirely.

Some may call this a sign of Catholic Charities' "intolerance" - but what we really see here is a fundamental conflict of values. Christians traditionally have believed that marriage is an institution of God, in which a man and a woman unite to reflect His character and, typically, to give birth to children. Christians traditionally have also believed that God is the Lord and giver of life, from conception until the natural time of death. These are basic realities of the universe which God has made, and human autonomy, while a true moral value, cannot be privileged over them.

McLaren makes a good effort at identifying three evil cultures more basic than the "culture of death" that the Manhattan Declaration warns against - his "culture of lust", especially, is insightful. However, in his effort to see the best in everyone, he fails to see that Christians stand in antithesis to the ways of life that characterize this world. No one may be saying, "Yes, we want a culture of death," but as long as our society is characterized by the choice of self over God, then death is what we will have. The essence of sin is to say, "I have the right to choose what I want regardless of God's Law," and the wages of sin is death.

In supporting the Manhattan Declaration, am I saying that Christians can only focus on the three issues it highlights? I don't believe so. Like McLaren, I say "everything must change" in light of Christ's proclamation of the Kingdom, and I believe that the Word of God has as much to say about the environment, global conflict, international development, and economic policy as it does about the issues that the Declaration highlights. Yet, at the same time, I don't believe that you can coerce compassion, and I question whether the State can play a leading role in the revelation of the Kingdom.

For Christ to be glorified in the world, His people must take the lead in fighting the evils of our time. That requires standing in opposition of the government-imposed freedom that leads to death, and also working constructively to restore the marginalized in our society and around the world. We should work to ensure that our government provides an adequate social safety net, but we shouldn't expect that the government can transform individuals, culture, or other nations. For that work, the Church must rely on the Holy Spirit's power.

I pray that we may have an increasingly broader vision of how we - as individuals in the Body of Christ - are called to fulfill Christ's commission to "preach good news to the poor." I pray that more and more Christians might be willing to give our lives to walk with the poor He loves, to practice the "ministry of reconciliation" that no government program can accomplish. Though it may hardly be imaginable, I pray that for all the conferences on the end times that Christians now attend, there might be ten times more on Christian community development, and that for all those Christians who stand on their constitutional rights as defined by Glenn Beck, there might be a hundred times more who lay down their lives for their brothers and sisters. If the Church were categorized by such radical and personal love, there would be no need for an activist State. I hope that this vision might be the middle ground for which the Christian Right and Christian Left are searching.