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TechnoratiThe obvious backdrop to this is the 2008 presidential race and the group's assertion that Evangelicalism is too wedded to the Republican Party. Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw, one of the speakers at the press conference, explained this to National Public Radio:
"Well, I think that we have seen, in the last 30 years or so - you know, the evangelicals, really became prominent in American political life around 1980 with the formation of the Moral Majority, and I think that many of them have a vested interest in promoting and using their religious leadership to promote a certain kind of political agenda. And when there are those of us who want to say we claim the label, even though we don't necessarily identify with that political agenda, that ideology, this obviously will create some tension."
That agenda surely is clarifying. There can be no doubt that far too many Evangelicals have confused the Gospel with a political agenda – and even with the Republican Party. This can be even worse than theological confusion – it can represent idolatry.
But what the document never makes clear is how to hold to deep moral and political convictions, based in biblical principles, without running the danger of identification with a political agenda – at least to some extent. Does the Manifesto suggest a Gnostic form of political engagement?
Finally, the document is, in essence, a call to civility. Indeed, civility is perhaps the main thrust of the document. The Manifesto seeks to define a civil public space where persons from all belief systems are welcome to contend for their own beliefs and convictions. This public space is a "civil" rather than a "sacred" or "naked" public square.
This "civil public square" stands against the theocratic yearnings of the "sacred public square" and the secularism of the "naked public square." In the Manifesto's words:
"In contrast to these extremes, our commitment is to a civil public square – a vision of public life in which citizens of all faiths are free to enter and engage the public square on the basis of their faith, but within a framework of what is agreed to be just and free for other faiths too. Thus every right we assert for ourselves is at once a right we defend for others. A right for a Christian is a right for a Jew, and a right for a secularist, and a right for a Mormon, and right for a Muslim, and a right for a Scientologist, and right for all the believers in all the faiths across this wide land."
This is a good and helpful statement . . . as far as it goes. The Manifesto is brave in calling for and end to "culture warring" that threatens to unravel the society and shut down civil conversation and deliberation.
But its bravery does not extend to any specific proposals about how this can be done. The foundation for this part of the Manifesto appears to be Os Guinness' book, The Case for Civility, which makes precisely the same arguments in precisely the same elegant language – and with precisely the same limitations. Guinness is a brilliant social analyst and should be counted among the most insightful thinkers in the Evangelical world. But the brilliant insights found in The Case for Civility are, in the main, the same brilliant insights found within an earlier project that was, by his own account, largely his conception – The Williamsburg Charter of 1988. Continue »
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