I would consider myself an Evangelical Christian, but I'm usually reluctant to use that term because I think it's become so diluted and politically hijacked that it's nearly meaningless anymore. A group of concerned Christians is attempting to change that, however, with today's release of the recently publicized paper, "An Evangelical Manifesto." I've read the document, and I think it's a great statement of what our identity should be in Christ, some ways we've lost that identity, and what our attitude should be if we are to recover it again. Principled, yet not unneccesarily devisive, I would be proud to offer this declaration to anyone who asks what I mean when I call myself an Evangelical. I put my name to the document on their website this morning, and I would encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ to carefully read it, consider it, and do the same.
Read the manifesto here.
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7 hours ago
3 comments:
I am terribly NON-excited about this document. I don't really much care about the name 'Evangelical'. I would much rather simply sign my name to a document like the Second London Confession. I liked it better when we wrote creeds instead of manifestos.
Well, I certainly don't argue with the Second London Confession, but I think the manifesto is very much needed in our modern theological and political climate. I think it's a wisely constructed document that serves it's purpose well.
To who? Who's reading it? Who cares what some Evagelical Manifesto Steering Committee says? Is the media going to suddenly start using the term more correctly? Are Fundamentalists going to take a long hard look at the document and change their tack? I don't think it's very useful to anyone in particular, and it's not really all that well put together. It reads more like a long, boring blog entry than something of importance. Heck, it only has one footnote, and that note doesn't even point to any legitimate research. Not only that, but it never once cites a SINGLE biblical text in support of any of its ideas. That in itself is defining of modern evangelicals.
I agree that the things that it says are good things. As a blog post, I could amen it. But apparently, this is attempting to be a more important endeavor. It has some big name guys attached to it. They want to define evangelicals in the public square. I think that we are better defined by a heavily Scriptural and theological confession.
The world at large stifles a collective yawn.
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