Link: Come On, You Call This a Manifesto? - WSJ.com.
At the bottom of page 15, these words appear: "The Evangelical soul is not for sale." This is what is called "burying the lead." Had the Evangelical Manifesto begun with this affirmation, it could have been a manifesto indeed -- a declaration of political, cultural and intellectual independence. "We're fed up with being the Republicans' lapdogs, but don't think we're joining the Democratic kennel" -- if only the document had spoken so clearly, so forcefully! If only it had given us some sense of whom it is speaking to, and why; if only it had been as bold as DADA, or Marx and Engels. Moderation is all well and good, I guess; but for my money, the fearless spirit of the true manifesto is just what an increasingly somnolent evangelical movement needs.
Link: Melissa Rogers: The Religious Freedom Plank of the Evangelical Reform Movement.
We have long needed more Christians, and more evangelicals in particular, to preach and teach that there should never be any governmental or civic hierarchy of faiths and to take stands against policy proposals and rhetoric that suggest otherwise. Too many Christians have been reluctant to take this stand, seeing it as somehow contradictory to the belief that the Christian faith is the one true faith. There is no contradiction. One does not have to believe that all religions are equally true in order to believe that the government should treat all religions equally. It is both a Christian and a civic obligation to protect equal rights of conscience for all. Greater acceptance of this equality principle clearly would not end all church-state debates, and the principle itself does not represent the full scope of religious freedom. But it can serve as a crucial point of unity amidst our disagreement about other church-state issues. A philosophical commitment to this principle is good; a pledge to act on that commitment is better. The next step is to pledge to go to bat for this principle in some specific debates about policy and law over the next year. If more evangelicals take this step, the cause of religious freedom will be advanced in important ways.
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