(If you don't know him, he's a liberal Christian blogger who expertly points out the hypocrisy and, for want of a better word, evil, of right wing Christians. He is doing a detailed critique of the awful 'Left Behind' books that's funny, insightful, and well worth reading, whatever your beliefs, or lack of beliefs. He got named in a "Top 10 Agnostic and Atheist Blogs" list once, because he is one of the best attackers of the right-wing fundamentalists there is)
Pulling a Lieberman
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The Manhattan Declaration was created to threaten these younger evangelicals to get back in line with the precise priorities of their elders. Get back in line or be cut off. When talking to The New York Times' Laurie Goodstein, Colson is much more candid about this than he seems to have been when suckering Ron into pulling a Lieberman:
The signers ... say they also want to speak to younger Christians who have become engaged in issues like climate change and global poverty, and who are more accepting of homosexuality than their elders. They say they want to remind them that abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom are still paramount issues.
“We argue that there is a hierarchy of issues,” said Charles Colson, a prominent evangelical who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. “A lot of the younger evangelicals say they’re all alike. We’re hoping to educate them that these are the three most important issues.”
Paramount. "Hierarchy." "These are the three most important."
That's three ways of saying the exact opposite of what Sider was led to believe.
So, yes, I think that Colson lied to get Ron to sign on and that Ron fell for it.
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http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2009/11/pulling-a-lieberman.htmlThe fatuous foolishness of the Manhattan Declaration
The whole thing is like that -- like a bad parody of the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V. Except of course that Henry was outnumbered. Here instead we have a group of powerful elites, men at the center of political, cultural, academic and ecclesiastical privilege bemoaning their oppression at the hands of the homosexuals and religious minorities they claim run the world. They are overlords posing as underdogs. (It's hard out there for a pope.)
And while that's ridiculous, it's not really funny. The claim of oppression is laughably bogus, but the blood on their hands is all too real. A parody of the St. Crispin's Day speech has comic potential, but a parody of the St. Crispin's Day speech as delivered by the pilot of the Enola Gay is too bitterly callous even for my bleak taste in comedy.
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The anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-religious minority Manhattan Declaration is not primarily about opposing any of those things. That's all just collateral damage. The primary purpose of the Manhattan Declaration, its raison d'etre, is to help the authors and signatories convince themselves that they're better than everyone else. The ridiculous, overweening pride is what it's for.
Chuck Colson, Robert George and Timothy George are blitzed out of their minds on the drug of smug. They're hard-core umbrage junkies, snorting offendedness, mainlining grievance, freebasing uncut self-righteousness.
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2009/12/the-fatuous-foolishness-of-the-manhattan-declaration.html