From
Justin Taylor: This morning a document was released at the National Press Club in the United States entitled An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment, spearheaded by Os Guinness and signed by over 80 evangelical leaders.
Justin Taylor comments: The full document is over 7,400 words, and I encourage you to read the whole thing. It’s an imperfect but nevertheless (in my opinion) remarkable document that deserves serious attention. The press has latched on to the political dimension of the document, but the critique of theological liberalism is much more extensive and pointed.
Justin has a short interview with the manifesto's chief organizer Os Guiness,
here.
The manifesto itself is
here.
UPDATE: Here's my early and provisional response:
I've read the manifesto twice now, and will need to do so again, far more carefully.
The word 'judgement' occurs once, and not with reference to God.
At second reading, there is no clear explanation of what the resurrection is about.
The question of Scriptural inerrancy seems to have been carefully avoided.
These are early responses only, and I am keen to go back and see if these early impressions are valid. Especially, even if the vocabulary of judgement is absent, I'm keen to discover whether or not the
idea of divine judgement is clearly stated. I would have thought it would be linked in some way to the resurrection (see Acts 17:31). I'll need to look more closely to see if I've missed it.
Many good things too. This statement from page 8:
...Evangelicalism must be defined theologically and not politically; confessionally and not culturally.
is surely right (but if so, it makes the initial appearance of reticence on the subject of divine judgement more troubling rather than less).
The desire to put distance between genuine evangelicals, and those evangelicals who have pursued strong secular political affiliations in the name of evangelicalism, is a good one, and I hope this part of the message gets out clearly within the US political scene, and more broadly.
UPDATE II: This is a fine piece of rhetoric:
Our purpose is not to attack or to exclude but to remind and to reaffirm, and so to rally and to reform.
Remind...Reaffirm...Rally...Reform. They have been taking lessons from Obama (and I don't mean that as cynically as it might sound).
But why would you make a deliberate decision 'not to attack or exclude?' Aren't some bad things worth attacking and excluding?
