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henny -> RE: Evangelical Manifesto (5/9/2008 8:33:17 PM)
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quote:
Jhud
We repudiate on the other side the partisans of a naked public square, those who would make all religious expression inviolably private and keep the public square inviolably secular. Often advocated by a loose coalition of secularists, liberals, and supporters of the strict separation of church and state, this position is even less just and workable because it excludes the overwhelming majority of citizens who are still profoundly religious. Nothing is more illiberal than to invite people into the public square but insist that they be stripped of the faith that makes them who they are and shapes the way they see the world.
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.
I'm pretty liberal, yet I really don't see anything I would disagree with here.
Although, at the same time, perhaps that's what they intended. I think their use of the term "public square" is vague enough that a liberal and a conservative could both look at it and basically agree with it "in general," given that no real specifics are given (which maybe gets to your point about it "saying very little").
In that sense, I think you are right that it's not much of a "manifesto." Politically speaking it really seems to be more of an "anti-manifesto." Although, I still think this is what the evangelical movement needs at this point (if it can be said that there even is a unified "evangelical movement" -which is debatable). Whether the association is accurate or not, when most people hear the word "evangelical" they automatically think of the Falwells and the AFA's of the world as well as a specific political agenda/wing of the country, an association I am willing to bet most evangelicals on this site don't like much. So even if it seems a bit apolitical on the surface, I actually think it's a calculated move to take back the name "evangelical" from these sorts by pushing them to the extreme fringes (and when the AFA denounces this, they are really just pounding the nails in their coffin by willingly placing themselves on the "fringe").
quote:
On a side note, I applaud Dobson in his desire to have more people of color to sign the document. One of the problems of the religious right, is that they are widely considered, the “white” religious right. This is in spite of the fact that many predominantly black churches share the same views and have the same goals of the white churches. That’s another subject, though.
I applaud his desire to be more inclusive of other races myself, but giving this as the sole reason for not signing seems like a cop out to me. I haven't seen him comment on the actual content of the manifesto yet, which leads me to believe his real reason for not signing is that he doesn't want to be forced to take sides. I think he recognizes that signing it in his case (i.e. as someone who has flirted with the more overtly political side of the evangelical "movement," yet also has attempted to maintain a more "mainstream" presence) would be a lose/lose situation. If he doesn't sign it he'll look like an extreme political right winger as oppossed to a Christian therapist, leader, minister (or whatever he calls himself), yet if he does sign it he'll alienate a lot of the more politically oriented evangelical organizations that have supported him in the past.
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