[myspauyijbv]

If you are a Christian, please consider adding your name to this proclamation about the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, the rights of conscience and religious liberty.
I have signed it.

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience
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October 20, 2009

Preamble

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the
literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.

Life
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10

Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The President says that he wants to reduce the “need” for abortion—a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as “the culture of death.” We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.

A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called “therapeutic cloning.” This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and “voluntary” euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of “liberty,” “autonomy,” and “choice.”

We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children. Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.

A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances. ...

For more, see The Manhattan Declaration

[Inettypofonee]

No.

[EspnaConCam]

Rusty Scrottum (sic) has gladly cosigned.

[Abanijo]

wow, this is pretty creepy.

[Mugflefusysef]

Wow. Some internet survey thing-a-ma-bob. This is serious sh!t.

[Relsenlilky]

So religious liberty is fine so long as it's of a fundamentalist flavor.

If my religion believes that any two loving partners have the right to enjoy the benefits of marriage, that a woman's right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy trumps that of anyone to tell her she cannot do so, that I should have control over the ending of my life if faced with a terminal illness, it doesn't matter because the fundamentalists know God's truth on these matters.

I am glad that, at least for now, we still live in a secular society and these radicals are not in charge of me, my body or my love life.

[economex]

Rusty Scrottum (sic) has gladly cosigned.

As has Phuck Yew. Hopefully they'll spam the sh!t out of Phuck's email, info@livingsaviourchurch.com

[Nikitka]

Hey Humber,

Do dogs go to heaven? What if they knock over their food bowl, even when I told them not to? Scrapples does that all the time, but I don't know if it means he is deliberately defying me or if he is just excited. Am I considered his "father" in the biblical sense, because then he would not be honoring me and would be relegated to an eternity of hellfire. Sheesh, sometimes these things can be so confusing, but I felt a lot better after I saw that movie, "All Dogs Go to Heaven". But I doubt it was endorsed by the church, so you can probably see the pickle I'm in.

Sincerely,
Sad About Dog Souls

[RIjdrVs3]

Paul - I understand and respect the anti-abortion, pro-life position, though I cannot wholly endorse it, but this quote worries me:

What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition. This looks to me to be a call for violence, perhaps even revolution.

Do you subscribe to the "Justifiable Homicide" theory of abortion resistance? I assume you are at least familiar with this line of thinking, so I would be interested in your take on it, whether you endorse it or not.

[Anypeny]

i am glad that, at least for now, we still live in a secular society and these radicals are not in charge of me, my body or my love life.

Amen
Amen
Amen!!!

[esanamaserrn]

I wonder if Humber and the rest of the fundamentalists who support this project are opposed to the death penalty? Sanctity of human life and all that.

[trowUrillioth]

oooh yea, cuz Christians are just soooooooo oppressed.

[Alkanyadela]

The unborn Christians?

And regardless it's none of your business. Don't like abortions? Don't get one.

[Haibundadam]

The unborn Christians?

And regardless it's none of your business. Don't like abortions? Don't get one.

Best response yet. Likewise for gay marriage.

[sbgctsa]

I tend to stray away from moral arguments for abortion. It's not a pretty business at all - and it should remain legal, if only because I still remember my father telling me about how he saw a woman brought into the ER with a wire hanger hanging out from under her, bleeding.

[giDdfezP]

Respect for all life should be the goal of every living human.

And yet I don't see anything about taking care of the homeless or uninsured or disabled or mentally ill in the declaration. I guess the life that's already here doesn't have as much value as the life that isn't technically alive?

[Hetgvwic]

In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society

Is it just me, or are these two "affirmations" totally and completely irreconcilable?

[MarythePuppy6]

The anti-abortion people seem to think that abortion didn't exist before Roe v. Wade. The truth is that abortion before the Supreme Court ruling was a back alley affair in which women frequently died. Women have sought abortion for various reasons for thousands of years.

There is a good moral argument to be made for keeping abortion legal so that women do not have to suffer at the hands of illegal abortionists. Whether you think it is moral or not, abortion will happen, and I, for one, would rather it happen in a medical environment than with coat hangers and illegal abortifacients.

[LfYaRf1S]

The truth is, all life is precious I agree, but for a completely different reason, because there is only one life to have and nothing after.

I feel that the ending of a life before it is really aware, before it's a person, because of crappy circumstances sometimes is the lesser of two evils.

Abortion would be a rare occurance if we valued the gift of life as we should. And so would murder, war, genocide, and state executions.

[Charryith]

No declaration, just this...

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