We support the three moral and political issues The Manhattan Declaration defends. We support the sanctity of life which the culture of death threatens in the form of abortion, ethnic cleansing, and euthanasia. We also support the integrity of marriage and the defense of religious liberty.
We support these important moral issues but not at the sacrifice of the integrity of the Gospel which this document is willing to make. The pure Gospel is the remedy for these moral issues and the Gospel is rarely mentioned in The Manhattan Declaration.
When the Gospel is mentioned it is weakened when the lines are blurred between what Roman Catholics say the gospel is and what Evangelicals say the gospel is. Throughout the declaration, Roman Catholics and Evangelical are both called Christians. The Preamble states: “It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery.” Christians and Papal edicts are in apposition as though both are equal. The papacy of the Roman Catholic Church helped produced the Council of Trent decrees, as a rebuttal to the Reformation, which pronounced anathema on the doctrine of Justification by faith alone in Christ alone.
The Preamble also states that “Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace.” Included in the name of Christians are Roman Catholics who believe in works for salvation in the form of observing the sacraments. This is not the Gospel of the grace of God that Paul preached, defined, and defended in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11.
Paul said if any person or even an angel proclaimed any other gospel than what Paul preached let that person be anathema or judged by God. And yet in this document another gospel of works is said to be the true gospel.
The Declaration states “We, as Orthodox, Catholics, and Evangelical Christians,” “We are compelled by our Christians faith to speak,” “We are Christians who have joined together across lines of ecclesial differences,” and “It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Albert Mohler said he was one of the original signers of The Manhattan Document because, unlike the Evangelicals and Catholics Together, does not compromise the gospel: “I signed The Manhattan Declaration because it is a limited statement of Christian conviction on these three crucial issues, and not a wide-ranging theological document that subverts confessional integrity. I cannot and do not sign documents such as Evangelicals and Catholics Together that attempt to establish common ground on vast theological terrain. I could not sign a statement that purports, for example, to bridge the divide between Roman Catholics and evangelicals on the doctrine of justification.”
Our quotes do show a bridge between Roman Catholicism’s Galatian Heresy and the true Gospel.
Both of these documents, Evangelicals and Catholics Together and The Manhattan Declaration were drafted by Charles Colson who in both documents seeks an ecumenical partnership between Evangelicals and Catholics. Here is MacArthur’s insightful assessment of The Manhattan Declaration:
The Declaration therefore constitutes a formal avowal of brotherhood between Evangelical signatories and purveyors of different gospels. That is the stated intention of some of the key signatories, and it’s hard to see how secular readers could possibly view it in any other light. Thus for the sake of issuing a manifesto decrying certain moral and political issues, the Declaration obscures both the importance of the gospel and the very substance of the gospel message.
This is neither a novel approach nor a strategic stand for evangelicals to take. It ought to be clear to all that the agenda behind the recent flurry of proclamations and moral pronouncements we’ve seen promoting ecumenical co-belligerence is the viewpoint Charles Colson has been championing for more than two decades. (It is not without significance that his name is nearly always at the head of the list of drafters when these statements are issued.) He explained his agenda in his 1994 book The Body, in which he argued that the only truly essential doctrines of authentic Christian truth are those spelled out in the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. I responded to that argument at length in Reckless Faith. I stand by what I wrote then.
In short, support for The Manhattan Declaration would not only contradict the stance I have taken since long before the original “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” document was issued; it would also tacitly relegate the very worst way---for evangelicals to address the moral and political crises of our time. Anything that silences, sidelines, or relegates the gospel to secondary statues is antithetical to the principles we affirm when we call ourselves evangelicals.