Once again it is the time of year when my family events and teaching duties squeeze out the little time I do have for blogging. I’ve got a bunch of half-written posts in the wings waiting for me to find serious time to finish them. A couple more that are “waiting for the other shoe to drop” running around in my head and will be put down on electronic paper when an anticipated event happens. Similarly, I’ve got a few more that I’m turning over in my mind and sort of waiting for any one of them to reach “critical mass.” (What follows is one of those.) Finally, there are a whole bunch that are just in the idea stage and 90% of them will never see the Publish button. Well, this one finally reached critical mass in my mind…
When the “Evangelical Manifesto” came out on May 7 it was heralded by numerous media articles and blog postings. Now, about a month later, I wanted to add a few comments of my own as well as reflect on a couple other things that have come out.
The Evangelical Manifesto itself is a 20 page document that is sub-titled “A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment.” If you want a summary there is a six page executive summary available. In the third paragraph of the Manifesto they state their purpose:
The two-fold purpose of this declaration is first to address the confusions and corruptions that attend the term Evangelical in the United States and much of the Western world today, and second to clarify where we stand on issues that have caused consternation over Evangelicals in public life.
The italics on “Evangelical” are theirs and the point is made in a footnote that they use this as a proper noun, not as an adjective like in “evangelical Christian.” More on that later.
The Manifesto’s definition of an Evangelical has seven points and covers much of what would be considered the traditional standards of Christian theology, often in general terms. These include the fully dual nature of Jesus and the uniqueness of salvation through Jesus. Salvation by Jesus’ death and resurrection covering our human sinful nature and the saving power being “faith through grace.” New life through spiritual regeneration via the power of the Holy Spirit. The authority of the Bible as “God’s inspired word.” The lordship of Jesus means serving him in every aspect of our lives, including reaching out to those less fortunate. The hope of the “personal return of Jesus” at the end of time. And that followers are called to worship Jesus. In the terms stated it is pretty general, but still basic Christian doctrine a lot of followers could affirm.
From these seven points come seven “defining features.” Among these are the value of creeds and historic Christian faith from the “great ecumenical councils.” But faith is also expressed in worship and deeds as much as in creeds. Third, Evangelicals are not limited to certain churches or movements but can be found across the denominational spectrum. Next, “Evangelicalism must be defined theologically and not politically; confessionally and not culturally.” Also, the good news is “overwhelmingly positive and always positive before it is negative.” The sixth feature is “Evangelicalism should be distinguished from two opposite tendencies to which Protestantism has been prone: liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism.” And finally, Evangelicalism looks equally to both to the past and the future. In these defining features there are concepts that more Christians might disagree about.
The Manifesto then goes on to sections on how these points and features force us to “Reform our Own Behavior,” “Rethink our Place in Public Life,” be neither “Privatized Nor Politicized,” be a “Civil rather than Sacred or a Naked public square,” and to look to “The way of Jesus, not Constantine.”
This gives you a flavor for the document which tries to claim public and political life as a response to the call to follow Jesus. It is interesting that the authors have tied each of the seven definitional points to Jesus Christ in their statement of the point. And reading through the Manifesto it is clear certain “typical elements” usually associated with evangelical Christians are missing. Jargon, like “Born Again” is definitely not found in the definition section and it appears that it is nowhere to be found in the whole document. And what is not said is probably telling: The shortest of the definition sections is the one on Scripture. Besides lifting it up as authoritative and the final rule since it is “God’s inspired Word,” it goes no further in discussing the nature of Scripture and avoids any of the inerrancy/infallibility questions. Similarly for the part on the end times, there is no real detailing of the end times and Jesus’ return and in fact makes no mention, either by name or reference, to Heaven, Hell, Satan or the other characters you might expect. And the Manifesto only mentions “an undying kingdom,” but not even a scripturally based description like “new heaven and new earth.” In a similar manner the creation account and the fall of humans to a sinful state is not mentioned. While this may disappoint some people, there is clearly a sense in the document of focusing on life in the here and now and only saying as much as necessary about other features. If you want to go into the document in more detail the group has put together a study guide which is longer than the Manifesto and executive summary combined.
The driving force was a steering committee of nine members including Os Guinness, John Huffman, Rich Mouw, David Neff and Dallas Willard. The comments seem to suggest lead authorship by Mr. Guinness with support by this team.
There were 72 other “Charter Signatories” of the Manifesto and the list of additional signatories now appears to be as much as ten times that. While I will not reprint all 72 names, many did jump out at me for either their celebrity or their Presbyterian connections. These include Kay Arthur, Mark Bailey, Leighton Ford, Jack Hayford, Roberta Hestenes, Max Lucado, Gordon MacDonald, Sam Moffett, John Ortberg, Vic Pentz, Mark Roberts, Marguerite Shuster, Ronald Sider, and Jim Wallis. There are reports that Rick Warren helped draft it but chose not to sign the final product.
From these contributors and Charter Signatories it is clear that there was a presence of members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the development and initial endorsement of this document. And in the additional signatures many more PC(USA) individuals can be found and there are a few who self identify as Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church in America, and one Reformed Presbyterian. And it should be no surprise that with Rich Mouw on the steering committee there seems to be significant acceptance by individuals from Fuller Seminary and Princeton Seminary faculty and students are also evident.
So, while this is primarily marketed as a document for the American culture at large it might also be seen as a message to the Presbyterian, at least PC(USA), community.
A lot has also been made of the fact that many individuals who are closely associated with the title “Evangelical,” including James Dobson, Charles Colson, and Tony Perkins, were not invited to give input on the docum
ent and have not signed it. And for the most part those in this category have not volunteered opinions or comments and have only issued terse statements when asked for comment. But for a more interesting take on the document you can check out those that Deepak Chopra made on the Washington Post/Newsweek On Faith web site. As you might expect his point-by-point discussion of the seven definitional points moved between new age universalism and references to points now being discounted by liberal Protestantism. He apparently had not read the next section on defining features where this is discussed at length. Well, if the document was too general for some it was too specific for him.
While I discussed the definitions for evangelicals before, and the Barna Group has their own nine-point definition that only a small percentage of Christians actually fulfill, with documents like this the attempt to pin down the term becomes even harder. Among the signers, Rich Mouw, Mark Roberts, and Jim Wallis have talked about the Manifesto in their blogs, and Albert Mohler talks about why he did not sign it. And I would note that a Google search turns up the fact that this was not the first Evangelical Manifesto, there being at least one other by the National Association of Evangelicals in 1996 discussed in a Christianity Today article. While I can not find reference to it on the NAE web site, it has been preserved on the Cephas Library web site. (I should note that the current president of the NAE was one of the charter signatories.)
One interesting tie-in is a recent post on the blog GetReligion. (If you are not familiar with this blog it does a great job analyzing media reporting of religion and how those in the media often do not “Get Religion.” It is a good read.) Anyway, in a recent post they were analyzing an L.A. Times article about a zoning issue for a Chabad Jewish preschool. What the author of the GetReligion article pointed out was that this Jewish Lubavitch sect is know for outreach, often viewed as “evangelizing.”
If the outreach is to bring people back into the church that is probably one thing, but the problem is related to recruiting people to the Jewish religion with its membership usually determined by birth. Also, evangelizing has a bad connotation because of Christian groups trying to convert Jews. And so the author says that the label of “evangelizing” is a “slur” in Jewish culture.
Now, I have made a jump here from “Evangelical” to “evangelizing.” But in our American cultural mindset we so often associate the action of evangelizing with those who are evangelical Christians. Maybe it is just because the words come from the same root. In Europe this association is not necessarily so as demonstrated by the fact that in Germany and some other countries what we call the Lutheran Church is just know as the Evangelical or Evangelical Reformed Church. This is a point that the writers of the Manifesto point out in a general sense.
Returning to the concept of Jews evangelizing, it should also be remembered that frequently in the early church “christian,” that is “little christ,” was used as a pejorative by those outside the church. In the early church the term “Christian” was not a way the believers referred to themselves. (I could not find which book of mine has this in but I’ll post the citation here as soon as I can locate it.)
Finally, there is a parallel mindset here about evangelizing between some of these Jews and some Christians in their view of Calvinism. Just as some Jews believe that membership in God’s chosen people is decided by birth, for some Christians if in election or predestination God has already decided who will be saved why is there a need for evangelizing those outside the church.
Anyway, there is plenty out there on the Evangelical Manifesto, both in the media and in the blogosphere. I decided not to try to pick and chose between the various takes on this that are available but rather just to look at it from my particular blogging niche.
) My family sometimes jokes that we are C&E (Christmas and Easter) Christians — while we are active in the church and attend worship weekly the Holy Days are a big deal for us with more activities and multiple services per day. In case you wonder where my blogging has been, I sometimes wonder what I’m doing at six worship services in the last four days when I’m not clergy.