It’s hard to make something like this stick.

Gary, very nice thinking. I’m certainly guilty of thinking we in this country are the center of the universe. But maybe they are making this declaration specifically for our government’s attention and for what they will or will not do according to this country’s laws. I still think it will just come and go and will reinforce evangelical stereotypes.

Jeff

However, I would argue with this priority just as I would argue with feminists who (in my experience) only lobby the concerns of well-read women of the first world. There’s some pretty serious stuff going on in the world that we seem to NOT be banding together on. Human trafficking isn’t dead. There’s still a billion hungry worldwide. Many do not have access to clean water (which makes infections so much worse). Women are treated deplorably in several countries. Lack of tampons in some areas forces girls to wait out their periods, and they get behind in schools for it.

It is inappropriate to create a document for the cause that furthers Christian morality in accordance with the comforts and preference of only our own demographic, while others overseas (and in America, even) deal with so many issues that they don’t get to sit around even thinking of things like marriage or religious liberty.

While I would consider a pro-life and pro-military/death penalty person to be a paradox, I would utterly not accept someone claiming to be pro-life who makes statements about abortion, but nothing about stopping human slave trafficking.

This document, while its concerns are valid, are too narrow in scope. We cannot seriously confirm the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman and then make no statements about how women (and men) are to be treated. Nor can we seriously affirm the sanctity of human life yet make no statements about fighting world hunger.

One starting point would be to build your vocabulary at Free Rice.com. For every right answer, this site donates ten grains of rice to the UN World Hunger program.

I would move for a redrafting of this declaration to take into account these serious and (I say) inseparable issues. Also, perhaps having a trinity of documents: a Protestant Declaration, a Catholic Declaration, and an Orthodox Declaration. These three would vigorously affirm the same moral imperatives, though their grounds may be different, such as the Catholic emphasis on procreation as the focus of marriage. The Declarations would also pledge mutual support for the carrying out of certain mutual, tangible objectives, even if their theological motives are not completely in accord.

That’s my two cents. [I'm leaving this comment on FirstThings also]