American Christian Right Leaders in Rome
Frederick Clarkson printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Fri Nov 28, 2014 at 10:42:15 PM EST
The remarkable and growing alliance between conservative Catholicism and protestant evangelicalism was on prominent display at a recent event at the Vatican. My colleague at Political Research Associates Cole Parke, reported that the conference, the  "Humanum: An Interreligious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman" featured "similar themes and many of the same faces [as the 2009 American Christian Right manifesto, The Manhattan Declaration] further solidifying the conservative Catholic-Protestant alliance against LGBTQ people and reproductive justice."
The Manhattan Declaration is a covenant among seemingly unlikely allies for "the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty." This three part, closely interrelated core program has been taken up by wide swaths of the Christian Right. No understanding of the contemporary Christian Right is complete without it.

Parke wrote:

Nine Catholic Archbishops joined some of the best-known Christian Right leaders in the United States on the list of original signatories [to the Declaration]. Among them were key right-wing leaders such as James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom; Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission; and Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. Evangelical scholars like Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, added their names to the list. Prominent anti-gay culture warriors like Rick Warren also signed. Key leaders involved with the New Apostolic Reformation--Harry Jackson, Joseph Mattera, and Samuel Rodriguez--were on the list, too.

Many of these same individuals teamed up again this week in Rome at "Humanum: An Interreligious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman," which was convened by Pope Francis. The conference follows a recent synod gathering at which Catholic bishops considered, but ultimately rejected, proposals to soften the church's stances on homosexuality and divorce.

As it happens, the Declaration and the Colloquium also shared a common organizer in Robert P. George, a leading thinker and strategist of the contemporary Christian Right.

Two years ago I wrote an essay in The Public Eye magazine about the significance of the Declaration and the political and theological distance its makers and signers had traveled to get there.

While conservative Roman Catholics have long been a vital part of the broad religious/political coalition known as the Christian Right, finding ways to broaden and deepen the coalition of right-wing evangelical Protestants and Catholics has been a difficult and controversial undertaking. A case in point is the famous appearance by Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on CNN's Larry King Live in 2000. "As an evangelical," Mohler said, "I believe the Roman Church is a false church and it teaches a false gospel. I believe the pope himself holds a false and unbiblical office." Mohler's views are unexceptional in much of evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism. (More recently, Mohler insisted that the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is "not a church," because, in 2013, it elected as a bishop a respected, gay professor of theology.)

The abhorrence has been mutual. In 2000, the Vatican issued a proclamation titled Dominus Iesus, which declared that other Christian churches "are not `churches' in the proper sense." The Vatican declared this a "definitive and irrevocable" doctrine of the Church.6

Reconciling such differences by finding common approaches to address them has been an elusive long-term project. Yet the key factions of conservative Christianity may have found a lasting way forward.

Indeed, Southern Baptists, and Declaration signers, Rick Warren, and Russell Moore were featured speakers at the Colloquium last week.The Colloquium also showed that the alliance is expanding in ways that would also have been unthinkable a generation ago. Unlike the Declaration, the Colloquium featured prominent Mormon leaders.  Pope Francis opened the conference, but did not attend any of the sessions. But in offering the keynote address, he did demonstrate that even in an era billed as reform, there is plenty of space in the Roman Catholic Church for the conservative movement, the Pope's more inclusive tone and reconciliatory statements, not withstanding.  

Parke wrote:  

Though admitting that "things look very black" back in the U.S. when it comes to marriage and family, [Robert P.] George was optimistic about the potential found in the unification of conservative believers. "People are leaving this conference on fire!" he exclaimed.



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