"The Latest Roadmap for the Culture Wars."

Don't miss Sarah Posner's review of Timothy Keller's new book, Counterfeit Gods at KillingtheBuddha. Here's an exerpt:

This assertion—that biblical orthodoxy is somehow apolitical—was put to the test recently when Keller became one of over 100 original signatories to the Manhattan Declarationunveiled on November 20th. Billed as a statement of “religious conscience,” the Manhattan Declaration is something more, something unmistakably fundamentalist and quintessentially political, a regurgitation of the religious right’s assertion that sexual and gender rights are somehow a threat to good Christians’ religious liberty. The signers of the Manhattan Declaration demand that those who disagree with them be reviled and silenced, yet claim they are the persecuted ones:

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 those 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.

The Manhattan Declaration—and indeed Tim Keller’s vision for Manhattan—represents the latest roadmap for the culture wars. With a sleights of hand and clever marketing, this new fundamentalism is portrayed as unquestionable orthodoxy that will at once transform your life as well as that of the nation and the world. No doubt it will, as 21st century evangelists stealthily repackage fundamentalist politics as essential but harmless remedies for contemporary angst.