The Manhattan Declaration is a historic proclamation promoting the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty. Within a short time after it was released in November of 2009, 500,000 Christians from multiple denominations signed the document. I am among those Christians. Co-authors of this document include Charles Colson. He writes,
“Christianity is more than a religion. And it is more than a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Christianity is an all-encompassing worldview that shapes how we think and how we live in the world. It could not be otherwise.”
Colson continues, quoting from God’s Word in John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. “Word,” writes Colson, “is the English translation of the Greek Logos. And as a translation, Word falls far short of the richness and totality of Logos. For Greek speakers (like St. John) all the way back to Plato and beyond, Logos meant ultimate reality, all that was known or could be known, the glue that holds the universe together.
“Jesus Christ,” confesses Colson, “is more than a founder of a religion. He is more than my personal savior (and I thank God every day that He is). He is the Logos . . . If Christ cries out ‘Mine’ about every aspect of life – medicine, music, literature, science, family, law, politics, and so on – then we, the Church when we look at every aspect of life, must cry out ‘HIS’!”
The faithful Christian has both the duty and privilege of bringing Christ’s truth to bear on every aspect of life. And, says Colson and the authors of The Manhattan Declaration, right now “is a vitally important time to do so.” Why? Because we are witnessing a “titanic struggle between two antithetical worldviews: secular naturalism and Christianity. The one side holds there is no God, that we humans are nothing but . . . glorified germs whose ancestors arose from the primordial soup. The other holds that God created the universe, that His physical and moral laws are observable and knowable, and that He created man in His image – endowing man with a sacred dignity . . ..”
Colson notes that “we see the struggle all around us: in the classroom, in the courtroom, and on Capitol Hill. If man is nothing special, then why not abortion? Why not cloning? Why not experiment with human embryos? If there is no moral law, no ultimate truth, why not ‘same-sex marriage’? Why not enshrine individual preference as the ultimate arbiter of human conduct? Why not borrow money you cannot repay – and who really cares how that might impact others?”
The Manhattan Declaration is grounded in Scripture and the creeds all Christians confess. It is a “wake-up call to the Church.” It focuses on three issues: the sanctity of human life, marriage, and religious freedom. Why not other pressing issues such as social justice or the environment? Because, explains Colson, “these three issues are so foundational, so critical, that every other Christian concern – indeed, every human concern – flows out of them.”
Colson explains, “It is the belief in the sacredness of human life that led the early Church to fight the Roman practice of infanticide and abortion; it is this belief that put Christians in the forefront of fighting slavery; it is this belief that led Christians to lead in the promotion of civil rights. And, today, it is this belief that has charged Christians to fight human trafficking all around the globe. The sanctity of human life is the foundation of true social justice.”
The Manhattan Declaration proclaims, “Marriage — is the first institution of human society – indeed, it is the institution upon which all other human institutions have their foundation.” Colson notes, “It is the bedrock institution that no society can survive without.”
The third foundational issue is religious freedom, or freedom of conscience. It is under assault every day. It might be the Methodist camp losing its tax-exempt status because it refused to allow a “same-sex marriage” ceremony or the Catholic adoption agency threatened from its ministry because it wouldn’t place orphaned children with same-sex couples. It might be the steadfast refusal of Congress to protect the religious freedom of medical providers in the current debate of health care “reform” legislation. “More is coming,” writes Colson. “These are not political issues. These are profoundly moral issues that affect the common good.”
How can we love God and serve our neighbor by sitting idly by? As human dignity, marriage, and religious freedom are under increasing assault, will you visit The Manhattan Declaration to read, prayerfully sign, and then share with others?
Ezerwoman's Blog 
The Church Has Failed the Culture
Posted in Commentaries of others, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Life issues, Parenting & Education, tagged " homosexuality, Biblical worldview, Christianity, church, environment, hymns, Jesus Christ, judgment, millennials, religion, sexuality, sin, social justice, the Cross, worship on August 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Recently, the Presbyterian Church (USA) dropped the hugely popular hymn, “In Christ Alone,” from its hymnal after its authors, Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, refused to omit a reference to Jesus satisfying the wrath of God.
In a powerful response over at First Things, which we’ll link to at BreakPoint.org, Colson Center chairman Timothy George quotes Richard Niebuhr who, back in the 1930s, described this kind of revisionist Protestantism as a religion in which “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
The response from the PCUSA, that their problem was not with God’s wrath but with the idea that Christ’s death satisfied God’s wrath, doesn’t change the fundamental problem of what George calls “squishy” theology. Theology is supposed to be true, not palatable.
Along these lines, maybe you’ve seen the recent viral opinion piece on CNN by
my friend, Christian blogger and author Rachel Held Evans. In it, Evans offers her answers to the truly important question, “why are millennials leaving the Church?”
To counter the exodus of young people from American churches, Evans says it’s time to own up to our shortcomings and give millennials what they really want—not a change in style but a change in substance. The answer to attracting millennials, she writes, is NOT “hipper worship bands” or handing out “lattés,” but actually helping them find Jesus.
Amen. I couldn’t agree more.
Then she goes on, “[the Church is] too political, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to [LGBT] people.” Well, okay—anytime political programs co-opt our faith, or we ignore the needy and fail to love those with whom we disagree, we do the Gospel of Christ great harm.
But when she writes that attracting millennials to Jesus involves “an end to the culture wars,” “a truce between science and faith,” being less “exclusive” with less emphasis on sex, without “predetermined answers” to life’s questions, now I want to ask–are we still talking about the Jesus of biblical Christianity?
The attempt to re-make Jesus to be more palatable to modern scientific and especially sexual sensibilities has been tried before. In fact, it’s the reason Niebuhr said that brilliant line that I quoted earlier.
He watched as the redefining “Jesus Project” gave us mainline Protestantism, which promotes virtually everything on Evans’ list for millennials. The acceptance of homosexuality, a passion for the environment, prioritizing so-called “social justice” over transformational truth are all embodied in denominations like the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA).
But religious millennials aren’t flocking to mainline Protestant congregations. Mainline churches as a whole have suffered withering declines in the last few decades—especially among the young. What gives?
Well, in an another essay which appeared in First Things over twenty years ago, a trio of Christian researchers offered their theory on what’s behind the long, slow hemorrhage of mainline Protestant churches:
“In our study,” they wrote, “the single best predictor of church participation turned out
to be belief—orthodox Christian belief, and especially the teaching that a person can be saved only through Jesus Christ.” This, said the researchers, was not (and I add, is still not) a teaching of mainline Protestantism. As a dwindling denomination rejects a hymn which proclaims salvation “in Christ alone,” this research sounds prophetic.
Evans is right that evangelical Christianity is responsible in many ways for the exodus of millennials. But ditching the Church’s unpalatable “old-fashioned” beliefs to become more “relevant” to the young won’t bring them back.
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