Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian
Conscience
Drafted on October 20, 2009
Released on November 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.
Marriage
The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my
flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." For
this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his
wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24
This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the
church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves
himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians
5:32-33
In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union
as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation.
In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and
women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners
with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human
society - indeed it is the institution on which all other human
institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we
refer to marriage as "holy matrimony" to signal the fact that it is an
institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation
at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and
holds marriage in the highest esteem.
Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most
important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare
of all persons in a society. Where marriage is honored, and where
there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits - the
spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in
which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social
pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately,
we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious
erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most
telling - and alarming - indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate.
Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40
percent. Our society - and particularly its poorest and most
vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher
even than the national average - is paying a huge price in delinquency,
drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other
indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a
devastatingly high rate of divorce.
We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too
often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to
model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have
too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about
social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and
call upon all Christians to do the same.
To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and
infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty,
mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform
ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the
institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral
divorce. We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to
instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what
it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that
faithful spouses make.
The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and
multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of
the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of
understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and
religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to
shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for
yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a
sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a
healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and
destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult
satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the
unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is
shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of
life. In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts
of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover
the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.
We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual
and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who
are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have
compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings
possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to
the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist
the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard
as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less
than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God's intention for our
lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s
patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian
community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain
from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection
of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners.
For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not
our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls
all who wander from the path of virtue to "a more excellent way." As
his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call
and wish to answer it.
We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with
us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on
questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who
enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their
unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that
marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and
woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that
marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and
wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is
no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the
personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely
centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting
non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body,
mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish
when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found
a sharing of life at every level of being - the biological, the
emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual - on a
commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual
intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely
metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral
conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and
historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble
or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of
the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic
orientation to the great good of procreation.
We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some
Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the
union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil
rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts
that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the
community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living
together in a sexual partnership the status of being "married." It
would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On
inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of
marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove
anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal
status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not
only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal
validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even
adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous
relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights,
be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on
other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something
abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define
to please those who are powerful and influential.
No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as
a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality - a covenantal union of
husband and wife - that it is the duty of the law to recognize and
support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do
so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those
for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized. Second, the
rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs
in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding
recognizes as "marriages" sexual partnerships that many parents believe
are intrinsically non-marital and immoral. Third, the common good of
civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical
pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding
of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any
society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a
thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically
important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a
culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in
such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what
marriage is.
And so it is out of love (not "animus") and prudent concern for the
common good (not "prejudice"), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to
preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and
one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as
Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a
central part of God's creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband
and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just
as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church
in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever
sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure
that is marriage.
Religious Liberty
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has
anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up
the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release
from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1
Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew
22:21
The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long
and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The
nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God
Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus
Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the
early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had
taken place: "Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant
brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and
meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God" (Epistle to
Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its
foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of
the human person created in the image of God - a dignity, as our
founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in
the exercise of right reason.
Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity
from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained
conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against
his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God
according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and
publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for
individuals applies to religious communities as well.
It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn,
aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual
practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around
these practices be recognized and blessed by law - such persons
claiming these "rights" are very often in the vanguard of those who
would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and
moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of
marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.
We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate
conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions
(including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life
physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to
refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or
participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination
statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service
providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be
deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of
"same-sex marriage" in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities
chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to
place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal
mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of
Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a
quasi-marital "civil unions" scheme, a Methodist institution was
stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of
religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be
used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some
European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching
Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime
laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.
In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline
in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political
leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of
religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of
its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person,
regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens
the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of
republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of
conscience or the ability to hire people of one's own faith or
conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for
example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of
society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the
state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically
warned of.1 Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to
tyranny.
As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and
obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We
recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them
or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to
them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose
of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet
laws that are unjust - and especially laws that purport to compel
citizens to do what is unjust - undermine the common good, rather than
serve it.
Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused
to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and
John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, "Judge for
yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than
God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."
Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience
is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more
eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than
the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a
Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and
citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught
that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted
in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws
degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond
sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King's
willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was
exemplary and inspiring.
Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with
any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in
abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and
euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule
purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them
as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth,
as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the
family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is
Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is
God's.
1Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
