Their first concern regarding politics is that, when we engage with politics as we definitely can and should, we must keep in mind that there are other things more important.

Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology, and nationality, we Evangelicals see it our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, or nationality.

Secondly, when engaging with politics, it is important to see society holistically rather than focusing on “hot button” issues to the exclusion of all else.

We call for an expansion of our concern beyond single-issue politics, such as abortion and marriage… Although we cannot back away from our biblically rooted commitment to the sanctity of every human life, including those unborn, nor can we deny the holiness of marriage as instituted by God between one man and one woman, we must follow the model of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, engaging the global giants of conflict, racism, corruption, poverty, pandemic diseases, illiteracy, ignorance, and spiritual emptiness…

We call for a more complete understanding of discipleship… that thinks wider than politics in contributing to the arts, the sciences, the media, and the creation of culture in all its variety.

This criticism, with its specific mention of abortion and marriage, seems pretty clearly to be aimed at the Religious Right establishment. However, I’m sure there are liberal causes (anti-war, perhaps) that can be held with the same lack of perspective. But again, they are not criticizing an anti-abortion position per se; rather, they are criticizing an all-out bareknuckles devotion to politics and a focus on specific narrow issues as the only ones important to society.

If you think that doesn’t apply to you, then they’re not talking about you. It seems pretty clear to me that it does apply to some prominent people, but that is a matter for their consciences and those of their supporters. If you think a statement like this is not useful unless it points out specific political positions and/or personages to oppose, then you just don’t get it.

No matter what the intention of the authors is (and I wonder about those that signed it later on - shouldn’t they be able to understand it completely?), the document is at least being used (e.g. by the reporting) by people holding one opinion to disqualify those that disagree on issues. Along the lines of using Christian-speak for “let’s all unite”-rhetoric is okay but for pointing out injustices like abortion is not.

In this case, the manifest’s authors would have become (whether willingly or unwillingly) the useful idiots.

The Manifesto stands on its own. If the authors had wanted to give examples, they would have. To my mind, explicit examples are wholly unnecessary, and I see their declining to name names as gracious. I don’t see grounds for criticizing the reporter, who may well have asked for examples and not gotten an answer.

“How can faith be politicized?” Are you kidding me, Mark?

“Do the authors think that more evangelicals should vote Democratic?” No. As the news report concludes, “It’s mainly a warning to people not to confuse their personal faith with political convictions.” Other GetReligion writers have long criticized the media for only seeing the aspects of religion that are relevant to politics. The Manifesto is making a similar point, that Christians should be wary of seeing their own faith in terms of politics. This post seems to be another example of Mark’s opinion to the contrary.

The document struck me as less aimed at those individuals or even their politics, than in exemplifying a longer conversation within conservative protestantism, that between engaged models and of a more quietistic sort. From the Modernist/Fundamentalist battles of the early and mid-20th C, there is a strain of evangelical thought that rejects worldly engagement.

Yet.

The signatories and even the document itself are of mixed minds about the level of engagement. Some clearly are in the quietistic camp (cf. the anti-Constantianism line above), others have a long-time record of cultural, if not political engagement (e.g. the ‘useful idiots’ line; see the c.v. of Dr. Richard Mouw).

As to the politics: with the conservative political brand struggling, it is not surprising that some are looking for a way to unwind the religious involvement with that brand. So the question to explore is the degree to which the signatories are motivated by defeat, alternate political affiliation, or a more quietistic theology.

The problem is, Protestantism is essentially organizationally dysfunctional. No one speaks for the movement. And the same is true for evangelicals. Just a loose confederation of countless congregations in a shifting series of affiliations and alliances.

What do they, as a group, believe? And who are they?

In essence, it seems to me that the Evangelical Manifesto is abortive from page one. These pastors who signed on do not have the authority or right to “define” what evangelicals are and believe. They do not have the authoritative voice for the movement. So who is to say that anything else in the Manifesto is anything more than a nice set of guidelines that individual congregations may adopt - or not, as they choose?

This issue of lack of cohesive purpose or identity in the movement is the key problem with the entire premise of the Manifesto and it undermines everything the Manifesto seeks to accomplish.

It seems ridiculous that reporters would not be covering that tension and contradiction. And the first place to start would be the numerous Christian leaders who DID NOT sign the Manifesto.

We Evangelicals trace our heritage, not to Constantine, but to the very different stance of Jesus of Nazareth. While some of us are pacifists and others are advocates of just war, we all believe that Jesus’ Good News of justice for the whole world was promoted, not by a conqueror’s power and sword, but by a suffering servant emptied of power and ready to die for the ends he came to achieve

Naturally those who live off politics analyze it in political terms and try to decide what it means for a particular election. And they try to map the document to the positions politicians take. Mark, I think that by calling for more reporting on the political possibilities inherent in the document you failed to grasp the essential message that the signers are asserting what it truly means to be an Evangelical first and foremost. And in doing so, they make explicit statements about what that means in political terms: that religion deserves its proper place in the public square:

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

In the corporate terms I’m familiar with: it’s a vision statement not a project plan with specific deliverables.

Chris is right: I wanted the authors of the Manifesto to define this term and elaborate on others. For what it’s worth, your definition was helpful to me.

On the issue of Mike Perry’s comments, you are right: he needs to stick to our coverage of the coverage, not the issue as such.

This board is not for political rants, though sometimes posters get away with them. We are supposed to be addressing journalist issues and religious issues that intersect with journalist issues.

A word to the wise.

Mark didn’t ask for a definition. He asked for the authors to cite examples in which evangelicals acted like “useful idiots”.

That may seem like what he asked to you but wasn’t at all clear to me.

Today, that term might certainly be applied to religious people who vote or want to vote for the Democratic party in spite of its inflexible defense of legalized abortion. Applying it to those who vote Republican is nonsense. The Republican party isn’t advocating any form of systematic, legalized murder. Unlike the Democratic party, once the champion of slavery, segregation and lynching, it never has.

Voting for Democrats to win influence? How absurd. Even fairly successful pro-life Democratic politicians haven’t been able to budge the party one inch in the 35 years since Roe. Giving your vote away in the hope they will change simply demonstrates to them that they need not change.

There are examples of how we should be responding. In the 1990s the drive to “control” gun ownership out of existence was at least as powerful as the drive to legalize abortion in the late 1960s, and yet the latter not only failed, placing liberals on the defensive, the laws are now moving in the other direction.

Why did the National Rifle Association succeed so fabulously while the National Association of Evangelicals and others failed so abysmally? I’m planning to write a book on the topic, but the short of it is that the NRA is competent while the entire Evangelical subculture make it incompetent at anything other than running ‘nice’ churches. It’s not that Evangelicals are doing politics and failing because God isn’t behind them. It’s that so many of them do politics as badly, much as they do numerous other things badly, i.e. dealing with scandals involving preachers. The “scandal of the Evangelical mind really is that there is no Evangelical mind.”

Finally, keep in mind where this is all headed—a culture and a legal system that is deeply hostile toward Judeo-Christian views about marriage and sexuality. Trying to hide behind the walls of a church will get you nowhere. One state has already barred a long established Catholic adoption agency from arranging adoptions because they won’t handle homosexual adoptions. Next in line will be prohibiting pastors who won’t marry homosexuals from performing legal marriages. At that point there will be no place for ‘unpolitical’ preachers to run. At that point it will be too late.

In short, just because you don’t get involved in politics doesn’t mean that politics won’t get involved in you.

There are a number of parallels here with the “church struggle” in Germany under the Nazis, particularly in the sexual sphere. But there’s no space to go into that here.

—Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

This is the direct link to download the full pdf.: http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com/docs/Evangelical_Manifesto.pdf

In your post you asked what “useful idiot” means. It’s someone who can be counted on to react to a hot-button issue by showing up to vote for or against it, and who can further be counted on to vote in other races on the same ballot in ways that the authors of the issue intend.

Another way of referring to them is “the base.”